I'm voting for France as number 1 in Health Care! Why you ask? Well, as you may recall, I had to spend 4 horrible hours in an Italian hospital after the car accident. After which, I was told that nothing was broken and that I should take acetaminophen, rest, and not lift anything heavy...
Unfortunately, as the pain in the front decreased, I noticed pain in my back that I have never had before! Those of you who are reading this are sharp so, you no doubt, know where this tale is going - and you are correct!
I made an appointment with a French doctor who I have seen before. He took an extensive history, including the information that the hospital in Italy had taken x-rays and that they were all negative. He thought I was joking when I told him that Ed's dental x-ray was bigger and that they had to keep moving the machine around to get the "whole" body.
His diagnosis was that a vertebrae had been displaced by the accident and that it was pushing on a nerve. So, he proceeded to move it back in place and said to call if my back didn't feel better in two or three days. Unfortunately, pain persisted.
So, I called him and left a message with his service. Within an hour, he personally called me back. At this point he insisted that I have another x-ray. Because we were leaving the area, the next day, he called the radiology center, made an appointment for me and told me to return to his office as soon as I had the results.
My appointment at the Radiology Center was for 2:10 p.m. At 2:05 I was called back, told to go in a little room and undress. I was ushered into an adjoining room where the technician barked instructions in rapid fire French which I had to ask him to slowly repeat. He completed the shots in a few minutes. He would have been even quicker if I hadn't had to keep asking him to repeat his instructions. (I don't think I have ever heard anyone speak as quickly as he did.)
The tech kept taking non-stop x-rays of everyone in the waiting area and then the radiologist arrived. He examined the images and then called the patients in to another area, one by one, to discuss the findings. He was dictating as he reviewed my films and spoke to me. "Clearly, the fracture of your vertebrae is here and it is causing the pain", pointing to an area on the x-ray, obviously different from the other vertebrae, even to my untrained eye. So much for the Italian diagnosis!
It took longer to return to the doctor's office, copies of the x-rays and the radiologist's report in hand, than it did to have them taken. What incredibly efficient service and the cost was about 1/4 what it would have been in the States! The doctor, a medical doctor and osteopath, has advised me "to take it easy and not to do any exercise, if it hurts".
