OFF TOPIC – AGAIN

As one would expect, health becomes the number one priority for most folks when they’ve had a scare like I recently experienced. So, I’m going to write about it -- again. As an author, I have an eye for detail. Observing people, mannerisms, inanimate objects and the like is just habit for use in future stories. I’d like to share those observations with you, now. CLEAN – There’s household clean and clinical clean. Hospital clean should be of the highest order. Hospital Chiriqui smells clean, the floors appear to have been mopped with a disinfectant but the exam rooms look shoddy and grimy. The girl in the lab who took my blood the second time, had dirt under her fingernails and I assume hadn’t bathed that morning. The Regional Hospital was extremely filthy. In the ward I was housed, there was blood on the floor, insects running willy-nilly across the ceiling and of course the gurney where I was bunked hadn’t seen soap and water since its manufacture – sometime during WWII. When you think you’re dying, none of this makes a whit of difference. However, in retrospect, it gives me the shudders. EQUIPMENT AND PROCEDURES: How can any reasonably intelligent doctor make a decision based on erratic procedures and outdated equipment. Every instrument needs to be calibrated on a regular basis. I’m just guessing here, but if those three EKG machines used on me were set side by side and hooked to the same patient, all three would give different results; same with the BP apparatuses and the lab equipment. Where am I going with this litany of complaints? I’m not sure other than to expose what I witnessed and experienced and hope you are forewarned to this backward health system for the average and less privileged. Bob