A mere ten days (!) since admittance and I think I’m on the mend, and even hopeful they will let me go home tomorrow, since all medicines are oral now. I guess the moral of this story is that if you are feeling unwell, go see a doctor before you get worse, because you may be sicker than you realize.

My arms look quite revolting because of the number of needles I’ve had jabbed into them (blood samples every day so bruises galore, as well as a few IV lines). I was going to take pictures but the whole novelty value kind of wore off pretty quickly and I’m not so keen on souvenirs as I originally expected to be (although I must at least ask for copies of my x-rays, since I’ve never had any before).

This whole experience has been covered under public health, meaning that it will cost me nothing financially, which is obviously a huge relief. I have seen two patients come and go in my ward who had paid through the nose for private insurance but then ended up in here anyway because their private doctors were unavailable on a weekend or because of the emergency nature of the procedures. At first they seemed rather upset that their premiums accounted for nothing, but then when they were well treated and looked after (just like everybody else) they just accepted the situation.

Rant:

Please support public healthcare, because if you support it (ie pay for it with taxes) it will support you when you are least expecting it, and when you aren’t requiring it it will support a whole bunch of other poor sods who maybe can’t afford private insurance anyway. I have heard so many fucked up stories about people getting screwed in the private system anyway because the insurance companies’ scheduled payments do not actually cover the expenses involved, as well as outright greed on the part of Australian insurers who notoriously swallowed [stupid shortsighted] subsidies offered by the [stupid shortsighted] government to push people into private healthcare. Some years back the government decided that healthcare was too expensive, so private organizations would manage it better, hence as an incentive they offered families subsidies for taking up private insurance, and within months insurance companies simply upped their fees by almost the exact same amount. Oh yeah, and the government also put a time limit on the subsidies so that anyone who didn’t sign up by a certain time would be penalized with larger premiums for life. Fuck that shit.

If a small nation like NZ can afford to run a decent public health care system then so should a larger, richer one, like Australia or obviously the US. If the health system is as dodgy as it sounds over there then you have a lot to be worried about. No one should have to worry about financial security when their health is at stake!