Two screws and some bailing wire

Last week I went the doctor. It took two months but I finally had enough of the pain, and limited mobility. These things make Mike a "grumpy-boy."

The hospital was nice, clean and orderly. It's a Japanese "chain" hospital in Sofia and I'd heard good things about it. My girlfriend had made the appointment but, as I am A) not Bulgarian, B) not employed with a Bulgarian company and C) uninsured, she had to make the appointment in her name until we were able to come in and straighten it out.

The front registration desk was uncrowded and calm. After using my passport to register as a patient, we were directed down a hallway to another registration desk. At this desk, my "girlfriend's appointment" was changed to "my appointment." After paying the foreigner's fee of 50 leva, we were off to the waiting room. My appointment was for 5:30pm and I had little faith that we'd be seeing a doctor anywhere near that time.

No sooner had I told my girlfriend this than I the nurse (also called a medical sister in Bulgaria) called me into the examine room. Good foot remove from mouth, I limp into the room. I had been driving in Sofia traffic for a few hours and my foot was aching.

The room was clean, the doctor was friendly. He listened to my silly story, examined my toe and sent me off another registration area to schedule an x-ray. Apparently, "x-ray" is a term used more in the US. In Bulgaria it was referred to as "imaging", a more technically correct term.

Paying and scheduling the the imaging (another 30 leva or so,) we sat to wait. Three minutes later, the door opened and the imaging technique showed me in. He had a good chuckle at the start of my story about how I broke my toe and seemed not to need to hear the rest of it. He took two images and got my name spelled correctly and off I went to the waiting room again.

The ache in my toe told me the toe was broken. The x-ray told the doctor it was broke, offset and rotated slightly. After a two months, he said it wasn't likely to heal on its own in this position.

He summarized my uninsured options: ignore it and hope that the bone heals enough to not bother me or have a small surgery to reset the bones and put in one or two surgical screws to hold them in place while they heal. He also included a general idea of the cost of the later option.

A few days go by and my toe is still recovering from the beating it took from the clutch the day of the doctor's visit. I look at this a blessing - it made certain the x-ray showed a well broken toe. I gave in to my desired to be "all better again". Lili and I made a second visit to the doctor's early in the morning, without an appointment, so we might get some details on the procedure and more details on the costs (my paycheck isn't consistent right now and need to identify costs to avoid surprises.)

Again, I didn't feel like we were going to see the doctor in person without an appointment but, after waiting fifteen minutes, sure enough, he arrived at the examination room. He saw me as he passed the waiting room and I explained that I waited some details. My expectation was to be told to make an appointment but, instead, we went into the examine room and had a ten minute conversation on what I needed to know about the surgery (about 1300 leva.)

Later that day, the surgery was scheduled.

I have to say I am impressed with this hospital in Sofia. My Lili visited the US, we had a brief visit to an emergency care factuality and, while not crowded and very calm, they were not in any hurry to met the patent who was in pain. Other visits to US hospitals were wildly chaotic, passive-aggressive unfriendly and required a great deal of paperwork. I guess having no insurance has its paperwork blessings. Its probably not really fair to compare the two types of experiences but they are, after all, my only experiences.

Wednesday I will go for the surgery. I may get one or two screws and, if necessary, a small plate put on my toe. The doctors will decided then to use either full or local anesthesia. I'm actually more concerned with the anesthesia than the procedure. If its local, it sounds like I'll have my nerve endings turned off from the waist down for a few hours while they open, fix and close my toe. Of what I know of anesthesia, I don't want to feel the horrid cold of silent nerve impulses.

Later this week, I may have more time to blog as I will be on my back, foot and toe in the air for a week or more.