Adventures in the Israeli Health Care System

Saturday night (Motzei Shabbat Chol Hamoed Pesach): Just got back from bowling (finally managed to reach my goal of getting over a 40 in the 2nd game). My throat was starting to hurt. Casually turned to my cousin and said: "Probably won't be able to talk tomorrow."

Sunday morning: Wake up without much of a voice and my throat really hurts. Left gland was swollen. No fever. Not too worried.

Sunday evening: Hurts to swallow. Pushed down a few spoonfuls of chicken soup. Quickly gave up. Go to bed without a voice.

Sunday night: Waking up at night throwing up phlegm and saliva simply because I couldn't swallow it.

Monday morning (Yom Tov): Karen asks their doctor neighbor to come over. Looks at my throat. Says he wants me to go to the hospital. Says he'll drive me himself. But not before he writes a doctor's note on the back of a piece of scrap paper.


Sidenote:

Israel ain't perfect and top on its list of problems is its obsession with pointless and downright idiotic bureaucracy created for the dual purpose of confusing the daylight out of the unsuspecting visitor and graciously providing premature gray hairs to the unfortunate resident.

According to Israel's incredible health care system, in order for the hospital to even consider treating me I first need a "hafnaya" or a referral from my family doctor. That's so I can be treated. Now of course this care costs money. Here's where you would expect to start seeing the benefits of national health care. But why take the fun out of it and make it easy. The hospital needs a "hitchayvut" or promise of payment from the insurance company otherwise they'll be billing you.

These technicalities are made all the more stressingly complicated when you're not a citizen and thus do not have a family doctor, teudat zehut (Israeli ID number) or a standard health insurance plan and the hospital staff doesn't seem to understand that.

With all this said, I have to thank my aunt Karen and Cami, the wonderful YC staff member, who had the patience to wade through the muck that is Israeli bureaucracy.


And so the doctor drives me and Chaim to Shaare Tzedek. Fortunately, the emergency room was not crowded and I was taken quickly, and then immediately sent upstairs to the ENT department. There, once again, our luck held and I was seen promptly by a doctor. From there it sort of went downhill. Somehow I was under the delusion that the doctor would look at me, prescribe some foul tasting liquid medicine and send me on my way. But when he failed to remove anything from the absyss in my throat due to the excessive swelling of my gland and I continued to vomit up phlegym (this time accompanied by blood) I realized I was in for the duration.

They showed me to a bed, hooked me up to an IV that was constantly dripping either steroids, antibiotics or saline and then left me to wait. And wait. And wait.

Time becomes a weird thing when you're in the hospital. It is both your best friend and worst enemy. It quickly morphs into a haze that you at first resist by constantly repeating in your mind your time of arrival, when the doctor last came, when your first dose of medicine was, etc. But you soon begin to loose your grip and the daily routines of life taking place outside your window become more and more distant and you just...float. And inevitably, time becomes measured by the loud rattling of the food trolley coming down the hall signaling the imminent arrival of yet another hospital meal. You feel a moment of assurance by the appearance of this time marker shining a light through the fog of the day. Of course your excitement disappears once you see what's on your tray.

Hospital food is notorious for being bad. Their meals for those of us who can't swallow is even worse. True, some of it isn't bad. I got applesauce a couple times and I even got a pudding once. But most of the time it's unidentifiable slush in a bowl. For breakfast, the mush is white. For lunch, the mush is green. Dinner at least was edible- some sort of soup though I quickly gave up trying to identify it. Hospitals generally consist of elderly patients, patients with disabilities, patients weak from illness and some combination thereof. Which is why it's particularly amusing here in Israel, where breakfast consists of a whole apple, a whole tomato or cucumber, and a hard boiled egg- breakfast items that are difficult to cut, swallow and peel. Fortunately, I had Uncle Chaim who was always willing to eat everything I didn't want.

(Unfortunately my brief stay at the hospital was at the same time as Bubbie's much longer stay in a hospital back in the States. This did however provide us with many jokes about Zayde's unfathomable enjoyment of hospital food and the constant remark that instead of me and Bubbie comparing hospital meals it should really be the two Chaims.)

So I've covered the food. The second most important thing during my stay: the television. For a mere 35 shekels a day I had at my disposal a wide diverse array of TV channels. Of the 32 channels the guy claimed I had, 3 of them didn't work, 4 of them were in Russian, 2 were in Spanish, 2 were in French, 6 were Hebrew and 4 were sports. That left me around 10 channels, some of which only worked certain times during the day, others only had English program during certain hours and only one was an American news channel. FOX news: the one and only. I had the good fortune of being greeted every morning by the dulcet tones of Glenn Beck. During the remainder of the day I had the opportunity to watch conservative propaganda at its finest as they cycled through Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly and the other great pundits of our day until returning yet again to Beck in case I didn't get enough Communist Obama bashing the first time around. I found myself muttering expletives at the TV, unless it was too early in the morning in which case I just made funny faces at it. I am proud to say I take after my Zayde in this regard. He also likes talking to the TV. It always made me smile everytime I thought about what his reaction would be watching these programs. I couldn't decide whether he would be yelling or just chucking something at the TV set.

I was kept at Shaare Tzedek until Thursday morning (I would have been detained longer but I was rather insistent/desperate when the doctors did their daily rounds). I was in relatively great spirits when I finally left the hospital with Karen. By the time we got back to Mitzpe Navo I had enough energy to drag myself up the stairs and collapse into bed. Several hours of deep sleep later, Karen wakes me up and all but orders me to start drinking the chicken soup she just finished making.

Over the course of the rest of the evening I consumed somewhere between 4 and 5 bowls of soup. But I was still feeling utterly weak and lethargic and my sore throat was getting worse as the day progressed. I went to bed seriously worried that I was relapsing.

I woke up Friday morning and I immediately knew something was different. It must have been all that chicken soup because that morning I was 100% completely better.

When you're sick all you want to do is curl up in your own bed and have mommy bring you chicken soup. It sucks to be in the hospital. And it really sucks to be in a hospital in a foreign country thousands of miles away from your parents. That said, I couldn't have asked for a better group of people looking after me. Karen and Chaim treated me as one of their own and Tal, Melanie and Ilana went out of their way to come visit me every day. Todah Raba.