Never Ask…

“What else could happen?”

I should know this by now. Yesterday, the children were at their father’s cousins’ home. Someone thought it was a brilliant idea to allow the middle child (6 years old) to sit ON TOP OF the billiard table while the “bookends” jumped from sofa to table and back again. Unlike her siblings, the middle child is EXTREMELY cautious and obeys “the rules” to the letter of the law. So one wouldn’t think that *she* would be the one to get hurt.

No one knows quite how it happened, but she fell off the billiard table and smacked her head on the marble tile floor. With the headache, dizziness and glassy eyes, we took her to the ER to get checked out. This hospital was different from the one I was at, but also excellent. We were triaged into the ER in UNDER 1 minute and were taken to CT within FIVE minutes of our arrival. They ran the CT and had us back in the ER in under 15 minutes. Everyone was extremely kind and gracious and EFFICIENT.

Total cost of the ER visit: 128.000.000 Rupiah (+/- $130 USD)
Having a 100% OK kiddo at the end of it all: Priceless!

Now let me just say in parting that the ER bill when broken down looked something like this:
100.000.000rupiah – CT scan
27.580rupiah – CT film
270.000rupiah – ER cost including doctor, administration, etc.

If we were back in the states, the ER copay alone would have been $150 and the total bill would have been in the thousands of dollars.

To put it in a little local perspective, the minimum wage here is 120.000.000 rupiah/month, so an ER visit for a local person making minimum wage would be a hard bill to pay. But I can GAURANTEE you that an ER visit at our local hospital back home wouldn’t cost $1300 (Florida min. wage is $7.5/hr, X40 hours, X52/12 to get monthly wage) total out the door cash price. Multiply it by 10 or 20 and you’d be close to the actual “cash price” of a “simple” ER visit. A Jakarta local could possible scrape together an ER visit cost, but I don’t know anyone who can scrape together $13000+ for an ER visit.

Now if you’ve got decent insurance in the States, you don’t have to come up with the “cash price”. You pay your copay, meet your deductible etc and you’re good. But what happens if you DON’T have insurance for whatever reason? Then what? I try to stay pretty apolitical here, but the differences in medical care and cost between the States and here are pretty striking. Something’s got to give. I don’t have the answers and even if I did, no one is asking me for them.

One more thing, health insurance isn’t available to everyone here. For most workers, they alone are covered by their employer thusly: they get sick, employer pays the bills for THEM ONLY. They have to pay out of pocket for their dependents. Or, if you work for an employer that offers health insurance, if you’re male, you are covered and your dependents if your wife doesn’t work. If you’re a woman, your insurance only covers YOU. Unless you’re a single mother in which case it covers you AND your dependents. This is to prevent “double dipping”. It looks bizarre from the outside, but I think it’s one thing that possibly helps control health care costs.

Beware the Ides of Ice

Technically, the Ides is the 15th, but work with me. I had the ice on the 15th and ended up cooling my heels in hospital for four days with a roaring case of food poisoning, fungal infection of the lower intestines, bacterial infection and diarrhea that was… Well… There’s no way to politely put it. I’m sure you can imagine.


Thursday evening after we got home, I was feeling like death warmed over and so after paying my dues to the porcelain god, I went to bed. Friday morning I woke up around 1030 feeling crappy. After taking my temp which read 38.5+C (101+F) and feeling pretty low, I decided to get out my handy dandy Indonesian grammar book and write a note to Ibu Sum – to be read by my oldest – asking for someone to call Mama, get me to a doctor and generally keep me from dying.

My brother-in-law happened to be home, intercepted the note and drove me to the nearest hospital where I was triaged and seen by an internist in under 20 minutes. From the time I was triaged until the next day, I was delirious and alternating between having chills and feeling like I was on fire. Blood work was done, urine samples were taken, even stool samples were eventually taken.

I didn’t – make that COULDN’T – eat anything from Friday until Sunday morning. If I ate ONE BITE of anything, within 5 minutes, I was running for the border, dragging my IV line with me. I was hoping that I would get to go home before Sunday, but it was not to be. Which really added insult to injury because my husband – whom I had not seen for three weeks – was arriving Sunday morning. The absolute last thing I wanted was for him to see me laid up in a hospital bed with IV lines and a portable toilet by the bed. But, he arrived and I swear I started to feel better the moment I saw him. I could have eaten him up with a spoon!

There were a couple of things that kept me going while I was in hospital: 1) a forum I’m on had a thread about “Child hits doctor” which ran into the thousands of posts and it was so unwieldy that “cliffs notes” had been posted summarizing it. I remembered a lot of those threads just to keep from going crazy while I was bed-bound. 2) the portable potty seat was labeled “Dharma”. I kept thinking that the label was all wrong! Instead of looking like this:

it should have looked like this:

Yes, I really was that delirious. But by Monday, I was raring to go home. Not just because my butt was sore from laying in a hospital bed, but also because Wednesday morning we were leaving for Bali and I was NOT missing THAT for no reason. Nuh uh.

Summertime... Summer Summer Summertime

Or something... I've not added an entry in a month which almost forever on the interwebz. I've been a little busy with birthdays and recitals and being sick and then a handy dandy trip to the ER. Which was fun. Really. Nothing says F-U-N like being on the table in the ER and then your BP crashing REALLLLLLLLLY LOW and having your arms seize up and then suddenly there's like 10 docs running EKGs and whatnot and shoving O2 canulas up your nose in an effort to keep you from de-satting and crashing. Oh yeah. Fun times. I was laying there with my body frozen and thinking "Gee, this is like an episode of "House" except I'm not acting and there's no Hugh Laurie. Sucks to be me..." The good news is that I don't have Toxis Sinovi-something-or-other and it's just Bursitis. The even better news is that I have a NICE NSAID to help the swelling.

The Elder Princess Ella is at "dance camp" all week. YAY! She's enjoying herself royally (ha ha). Next week is "zoo camp". Hoorah!

Today was the follow-up for Lorenzo's ortho appt. I drove 45 minutes each way to hear "He looks great" and spend less than 15 minutes in the doc's office. Oh well. That's life...

Next Tuesday the Younger Princess Ella gets a kidney U/S and a VCUG - all because of one measly UTI. Fun times will be sure the be had by all (not).

Once we make it past next week then we have zoo camp for the littles, VBS for the girls and dance camp for the middle child. Then there's a 2 week breather and the middle child starts VPK (Voluntary Pre-K). First grade starts the first week of September for the oldest of my progeny. Wheeeeee.

And the really good part? We *all* start dance class on August 18th. That includes me, too. Srsly. I can has tap shoes. And ballet shoes. And jazz shoes. And recital costume apparently. So that's the update for now. See you on the flip side.

Oh and RIP George Carlin & Tim Russert.