The Doctor Will See You Now
But not any time soon, though. From when you ask for an appointment to the moment you actually sit in the specialist's office you will have noticeably aged in the time that has gone by. When you start to have a certain ache somewhere or your general practitioner thinks it would be best for you to visit a specialist there begins a journey whose end is lost in the mists of time. And, of course, it depends on the specialist. Forget about getting rid of any pain in your bones and joints. Unless it's an emergency and a bone is broken, getting a traumatologist to see you for your first appointment is a lot like undertaking a journey from Boston to San Francisco walking. And you'll probably get there before you get called for your appointment.
One December my husband had a sudden pain in his right knee that made working very difficult and sleep almost impossible. He went to his GP and was told to make an appointment with a traumatologist. He was given the first appointment for March and a prescription for pain-killers until then. Good thing he has a strong stomach. In March the traumatologist just took down information and told him to make an appointment for a special kind of radiological test and another appointment with him to go over the results. And my husband got another prescription for pain-killers. We wandered down to the Radiology Department first and were told we would be called with the exact date of the test, which couldn't be scheduled before October. Despairing, we went back and got an appointment with the doctor in October.
That would bring the total time of diagnosis to about eleven months. Uh uh. We were called with the date of the radiology test and it turned out to be after the appointment with the traumatologist when we were supposed to be given the results. So I went and changed that appointment. The next available date was the following March. There is an office where patients can lodge complaints and that's where I went, explaining that was too long to wait for my husband. Oh, I was given nice words, saying that things would be speeded up, not to worry, etc. I never heard from them again.
Finally, the day to see the results arrived. By this time, over a year later, the pain had remitted and my husband could work almost normally. The traumatologist (a different one from the one who had taken down the information) said my husband had a broken meniscus. Fixing it would mean shortening my husband's work-life eventually because arthrosis would set in. He advised us that if the pain was not debilitating we should put off surgery for as long as possible. After that, he bid us good day. Over a year to make a simple diagnosis that could have been done in a month or less. Even so, we were lucky.
We have a neighbor who one August was told by his GP to have a certain test done because he had been losing weight and was slightly anemic with no known cause for the anemia. The following June he was told that that test and another he had done were positive for cancer. He had surgery in July. He was lucky the tumor was slowly growing. If it had been aggressive he would have been having conversations with a couple of angels long before being called in for surgery. My father had had cancer over twenty years ago in Boston. His symptoms were acute which ended with him going to the ER. From there they hospitalized him, ran tests, diagnosed, and operated. From the time he was admitted to the time he was sent home surgically cured less than a month had gone by. The angels would have had to wait in my father's case.
I do admit that the Spanish health system can be considered one of the best in the world. Most doctors are some of the best trained in Europe. Everyone is covered and they don't have to pay a dime except for a percentage in the case of prescriptions. Our tax money pays for everything else. But, between the naturally ocurring saturation of the system and the budget cuts that leave us with less medical personnel and crumbling and obsolete infrastructure, the patients end up paying with their time and their health. There have been cases of people on a waiting list that had already died called up to be given their appointments. The problem is that you set out on a journey to restore your health, but you don't know just when that journey will end, or if you reach your destination on time.
One December my husband had a sudden pain in his right knee that made working very difficult and sleep almost impossible. He went to his GP and was told to make an appointment with a traumatologist. He was given the first appointment for March and a prescription for pain-killers until then. Good thing he has a strong stomach. In March the traumatologist just took down information and told him to make an appointment for a special kind of radiological test and another appointment with him to go over the results. And my husband got another prescription for pain-killers. We wandered down to the Radiology Department first and were told we would be called with the exact date of the test, which couldn't be scheduled before October. Despairing, we went back and got an appointment with the doctor in October.
That would bring the total time of diagnosis to about eleven months. Uh uh. We were called with the date of the radiology test and it turned out to be after the appointment with the traumatologist when we were supposed to be given the results. So I went and changed that appointment. The next available date was the following March. There is an office where patients can lodge complaints and that's where I went, explaining that was too long to wait for my husband. Oh, I was given nice words, saying that things would be speeded up, not to worry, etc. I never heard from them again.
Finally, the day to see the results arrived. By this time, over a year later, the pain had remitted and my husband could work almost normally. The traumatologist (a different one from the one who had taken down the information) said my husband had a broken meniscus. Fixing it would mean shortening my husband's work-life eventually because arthrosis would set in. He advised us that if the pain was not debilitating we should put off surgery for as long as possible. After that, he bid us good day. Over a year to make a simple diagnosis that could have been done in a month or less. Even so, we were lucky.
We have a neighbor who one August was told by his GP to have a certain test done because he had been losing weight and was slightly anemic with no known cause for the anemia. The following June he was told that that test and another he had done were positive for cancer. He had surgery in July. He was lucky the tumor was slowly growing. If it had been aggressive he would have been having conversations with a couple of angels long before being called in for surgery. My father had had cancer over twenty years ago in Boston. His symptoms were acute which ended with him going to the ER. From there they hospitalized him, ran tests, diagnosed, and operated. From the time he was admitted to the time he was sent home surgically cured less than a month had gone by. The angels would have had to wait in my father's case.
I do admit that the Spanish health system can be considered one of the best in the world. Most doctors are some of the best trained in Europe. Everyone is covered and they don't have to pay a dime except for a percentage in the case of prescriptions. Our tax money pays for everything else. But, between the naturally ocurring saturation of the system and the budget cuts that leave us with less medical personnel and crumbling and obsolete infrastructure, the patients end up paying with their time and their health. There have been cases of people on a waiting list that had already died called up to be given their appointments. The problem is that you set out on a journey to restore your health, but you don't know just when that journey will end, or if you reach your destination on time.
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