Sampling Health Care

Well, we were planning and looking forward to sampling pizza as we traveled country to country. I didn't expect to be sampling health care as we went, but that's how it goes sometimes.

Sam came down with a high fever for several days after our Thanksgiving celebration along with a severely sore throat. Concerned about strep throat, I decided we needed to see a doctor. Despite my trepidations about managing all this (while Dave was in Stockholm, too!), it turned out quite easy. There were Google reviews available for local doctors, but I chose to go with the doctor my sister recommended in the next town over. I bundled up the boys, we got a bus and showed up for the first come, first serve morning office hours. This is a private practice run by the doctor, so it's completely up to him how it goes. We just gave them our name, waited behind about three other people and were seen after about a 30 minute wait. He asked for some basic health history, did an exam, agreed it was strep throat and wrote us a prescription to take to the pharmacy. We paid cash for the visit (50 Euros) and he provided a receipt we could use for our reimbursement from our health insurance if we chose. A one block walk to the pharmacy revealed the antibiotic was in stock and we had only to show them the prescription, pay the 26 Euros and walk out. I'm not even sure we'd gain all that much reporting it to our health insurance since the "fully burdened" rates we paid for the doctor and medicine were so low! The only downside was the bus wasn't due for a while but Sam felt up to walking back, enabling some playground play for his brothers en route.

Sam was feeling better in four days when we left the south of France on December 5th to relocate to Strasbourg. We rented a van and planned to drive through Italy and stay in Lugano, Switzerland. We'd reserved a hotel room and surprised the boys with the fact that it had an indoor pool. Yay! We quickly changed so we could swim before it closed and get dinner after. It was a beautiful lower level pool and we had it to ourselves. Everyone had just gotten in and was swimming to the other side when I heard Sam in pain. He was next to Dave who was holding Adam and I saw him crying and going towards Dave. Next thing I know, blood is starting to stream down his face. I shouted that he was bleeding, we rushed him out of the pool and I had to figure out where it was coming from. Turns out there was a submerged ledge/platform for little kids to walk on that had no demarcations and he had swum right into it since none of us had seen it yet. He'd lacerated the skin on the bridge of his nose and it was fairly deep. Well, we scrambled to get paper towels, calm him down, calm his brothers down who were concerned for him. Christine ran up to change, get a butterfly bandage, call his doctor and in the end we all changed and drove to the local emergency room to get it checked out. It just wasn't clear if stitches were necessary and I wasn't prepared to make that call on a facial wound! So, for the second time inside of a week, we were seeking health care, now in the Italian-speaking part of Switzerland. Luckily enough of the staff spoke English for us to get by but small lacerations are the bottom of the triage totem pole so we had to wait until almost midnight to be seen. Dave and the younger three walked down the street to get dinner and joined us right before Sam was seen. In the end, two steri strips were enough to hold it together, so after bracing for stitches, none were needed. Phew! Even this visit only cost 200 Swiss Francs (no, they're not on the Euro) in total, though we did alert Kaiser we were seeking care at a non-Kaiser ER so we may get some of that back.

I sincerely hope we only ever have a sample size of two for this particular category, but at least we were well taken care of and all healthy now.