Investigating the Australian Health Care System

I may never poop again.

That’s probably more than most of you needed to know, but right now that’s what’s on my mind. As you can probably guess this isn’t going to be a post about New Zealand. I know, I’m getting further behind, but you will soon understand why.

I knew Australia was notorious for having lots of creatures that could easily kill you (snakes, spiders, jellyfish, crocodiles, etc), but I didn’t expect to be hospitalized THIS quickly. In fact I may have set a record, except for people who have heart attacks on the flight over, or who look the wrong way when trying to cross the street out of the airport and get hit by a car coming from the “wrong” direction. But yes, I arrived late on 10/10, had a day to unpack, do laundry, and get the project details from my boss, went into the field on 10/12, and was in the hospital on 10/13. Why? Well, remember that little ankle fracture from 7 weeks ago in Hawaii? Turns out it created a blood clot that migrated to my chest! I had stabbing chest pains from about 1:30am until morning on 10/13. There was NO comfortable position I could lie in and taking deep breaths made it worse, so I was tossing and turning all night just counting down the hours until my alarm. It stopped hurting immediately any time I sat or stood up, and when I finally got up for breakfast it didn’t hurt much at all (because I wasn’t lying down). I almost second guessed myself about wanting to get it checked out, but I knew I couldn’t handle another night like that one, so my host (Rachael) offered to take me to the walk-in clinic so my boss (Virginia) and coworker (Remi) could go off and do work.

Long story short – the clinic was 99% sure it was a strained muscle, but they weren’t happy about my recent ankle fracture so they sent me to a general physician (GP), who was also 99% sure it was a strain, but ordered an EKG, X-ray of the ankle, and CT scan just to be sure. I don’t really know what the EKG showed – I started crying soon after they made me lie down because it hurt so bad, so I wasn’t really paying attention to what she said. X-ray showed that my ankle was healing properly, so that was good. CT scan also hurt like hell because of having to lie down and take deep breaths, but the woman made an effort to go quickly so I could sit up. (Side note: Did you know that when they inject the dye for the CT scan it spreads warmth throughout your body and makes it feel like you’ve peed your pants? She warned me it would feel like that, but it was very strange.) I was paying for all the procedures when the CT woman came out and told me I had a blood clot in my chest and a partially collapsed lung, so I’d have to wait for their report, take it back up to my GP, and then probably go to the hospital. Oh boy!

I was extremely lucky for two reasons: the clinic and the GP were both unsatisfied with 1% uncertainty that they pushed for further treatment/tests until they found out what was actually wrong with me, and Rachael was there to take me from clinic to doctor to hospital, keep Virginia up to date, and basically enter mom-mode for someone she’s only known for three days.

Anyways, we sat around waiting for the CT report for over 30 minutes. I’m sorry, but when you tell me there’s a blood clot in my chest, I’m kind of hoping you’ll type a little bit faster, especially considering the report was only three sentences. By then it was after 1pm, and Rachael and I hadn’t eaten since our bowls of cereal at 7:30am. We were talking about just grabbing some fast food on the way to the ER since it didn’t seem like this was life-and-death urgent. When we finally got the report and took it to the GP, even she didn’t seem to be in a rush. She was casually two-finger typing a letter of referral to the ER, stopping to talk to us about various things that weren’t necessarily urgent or related, and generally just taking her time. So Rachael asked how urgent this whole thing was and if we could grab some lunch on the way to the ER, and the GP just stared at us for a second and said “… NO!” Oh… my bad. Well if it’s as urgent as you say it is then HURRY UP AND GET ME TO THE ER ALREADY.

The ER people were fantastic. I finally had the special treatment of under 2 minutes in the half full waiting room because of chest pains! Hooray! They stuck like a dozen probes on me from my wrists to my ankles for another EKG I think, 5 different ones on to hook me up to a heart monitor, they took an ultrasound of my heart (could only do half of it because I couldn’t recline enough comfortably), and they gave me a morphine tablet when they saw what lying down and breathing did to me! I got bloods (plural in Australia) drawn, an anticoagulant injection in my stomach, and various pain killers. The nurses and doctor also helped me make (multiple) calls to my travel insurance company and were generally extremely nice and helpful. They were really advocating for me to spend the night for further monitoring, so when another nurse (? She wasn’t in scrubs and I think she was more on the administrative side of things) came over to suggest that I could go home, the other nurses ran over to make sure that I stayed. Aww!

Obligatory ER selfie, on the phone
with the insurance company

The rest of the evening was far less exciting; Rachael bought some food from the café for me to scarf in the ER, she went home, Virginia and Remi visited me in the ER and brought me stuff from home to have for the night (no better way to get to know someone than to go through all of their things after three days), I napped where I sat because I was so exhausted from not sleeping, I finally got moved up to a room on the 5^th floor, watched some TV shows on my laptop, and got lots of painkillers throughout the night. The painkillers were the most minorly annoying thing – the nurse has to get the painkiller guy to come in with his patient binder and get you to verify your name, birthdate, and allergies since they are controlled substances. The ER people were great, but the nighttime guy on the ward was awful. You know that I’m going to be telling you those three things, so when you come to my bedside just have your binder open to my file already! Instead the nurse stood next to me, poised with my cup of meds, waiting for the guy to open the binder, find my file, look at the information, and get me to verify again because he forgot what I had already said. Granted this was maybe a 15 second delay, but when I’m in pain and the pain meds are literally in front of my face but I can’t take them because you are still turning pages, I’m going to get mad at you.

I slept better than the night before, but there were naturally lots of hospital distractions (beeping, nurses, midnight pills, getting vitals checked, roommate, etc). The next morning I just on and off dozed and watched shows on my laptop, got an awful hospital breakfast, and an okay lunch. I wasn’t sure how free I was to wander around – when I got to the 5^th floor and asked the nurse if I was allowed to leave my room she laughed and said yes, like “yeah… obviously you’re allowed to leave!” Well shit I don’t know I’ve never stayed in a hospital! I’ve seen One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and the crazy patients of Grey’s Anatomy, so that’s what I’ve got to go on! They seemed much happier to let me wander the hospital than some other patients – I didn’t need to be hooked up to machines anymore, my vitals were good, and I needed to use the wifi in the café on the first floor to contact my parents and insurance. Kind of weird to wander into a café where everyone else is dressed normally and I’m wearing leggings, hiking boots, and a backless gown.

Rachael came to pick me up after lunch, but we had to wait for like 6 different doctors and nurses to discharge me, take needs out of me, or give me my prescriptions. The doctor was extremely nice and hear about the mayhem that my insurance company was giving me about not covering my prescriptions, so he included the first 3 weeks of my anticoagulants and 2 weeks of 2 different pain meds as part of my inpatient stuff. Hooray!

Now I’m at home (been here two days now). I was told to sit up straight and take normal breaths to help with the partially collapsed lung, so this may be the first thing to ever actually convince me to have good posture. I have 6 months of anticoagulant pills to look forward to, and I’ve been taking some heavy duty pain pills. This brings us back to the pooping. The doctors filled me with a lot of heavy duty drugs, and I’ve continued taking them here at home. As soon as I got home I immediately started taking the max dose of stool softeners… but I had a two day head start with the pain pills, and it seems as if I may never poop again. So that’s where things are! I’ve taken the last couple of days easy just sitting around the house. I may wander outside later today considering I haven’t even explored my neighborhood yet. And soon I expect to be back at work after that one and only day of training. Not the start that I expected in Australia, but it seems to have turned out okay.