It might have been stress relief or perhaps the disappointing wedding cake, I am not sure but after eating some of the cake my heart started to explode. I sat on a plastic chair and the beating of my heart shook the chair. My first reaction was to find a quiet spot and lie down hoping things would return to normal; they did not.
After some time Elizabeth recommended a trip down the hill to see Dr Chen. As I entered his office he was leaving to another urgent call and my friend Vincent who was driving, Mayra, Mr Daughter and I headed to Hospital Chiriqui.
The infinitely long ride to the emergency room made me wish the road was finished. On arrival I was moved quickly into the ER and a doctor listened and agreed withy diagnosis, Arrhythmia (tachcardia) my heart was racing and out of rhythm.
It was Saturday night, we tried contacting my cardiologist, he was not accessible. The ER called in a Cardiologist who arrived in about an hour, not good. The Cardiologist said they needed me on an IV with some drugs for twenty four hours to normalize my heart and then another twenty four hours for observation.
Considering all things, I was reluctant, still hoping things would stabilize on their own. Finally I relented and was moved to intensive care where I stayed for almost twenty four hours. Then I had about twelve hours in a private room before discharge.
The reason I share this is that is was my first experience with a personal crisis that had the potential to be fatal in Boquete. If this had been a serious heart attack I would have died before ever seeing a doctor.
Since I did make it the hospital without being able to contact a specialist the wait there might have also been lethal. The ER doctor did nothing except confirm the need for a specialist.
Hospital Chiriqui would not admit me without a credit card deposit, despite my International insurance coverage. They prebilled me $2,100.00
The final billing might be of interest to some people, I have no basis to compare it to the US. So here are some raw numbers.
ER charge was $10
Each EKG was $35
The Intensive care unit cost was $800
The Private room was $120
The all the lab charges, hospital charges, medicines etc totalled $1,635.83 less 20% jubilado discount
The Cardiologist charged $100 for the ER visit and another $875 , also less 20% for his services.
In total it cost me $2,106.66 to leave the hospital in thirty six hours.
The patient care was very good, particularly in ICU.
What I do not know is if any ER would have treated this differently. I do not think it was life threatening, if not waiting for the specialist was probably normal procedure. I know a lot of experts read this blog so I would love to hear some reaction to the service and costs.
Oh no, Lee! I hope you are feeling much better now. What a troubling end to a happy day!
Lo siento mucho Lee y espero que pronto estés bajo control. Nada de tantas vueltas, es mejor llamar directamente al cardiólogo (o al especialista que corresponda, si la urgencia no es cardíaca) y decirle a cuál hospital vas a llegar y dentro de cuánto tiempo.
Glad you’re back, Lee, and thanks for updating your fans. Hope they can corral that runaway stallion! Time to consider diet modification? None o’ my beeswax, of course …
Get knit-up soon, dagnabbit!
Having yiour son get married can be stressful….maybe it was just relief? lol…
on a serious note…glad you got there and it wasnt worse….but as you mentioned not having comparisons to US ER …I can tell you that when I had an ER visit (gallstones attack at christmas 1.5 yrs ago…) I was in ER room for 45 minutes at a cost to my ins co of $4500…I had to wait for 30 minutes before admitted. to ER ..and got EKG , an ulrtra sound, then some morphine…and recommendations for surgery by my regular services surgeon.. 24 hrs probably would have been VERY costly here. Before they found out I was insured by my regular ins co and they thought I was on medicare, my bill was $16,000! I had to protest, telling them I was covered by medicare , but it was my secondary insurer….I smelled a ‘scam’ there…no wonder medicare has money problems!!
my trip there was shorter…I had cooked dinner…a nice pork marsala dish wioth cream/marsala sauce..,.(the cream did it!) .my sisters family from Sweden was visiting…I got the attack, threw up 3 times in 30 minutes , ..but it got worse , my nurse sister decided we needed ER visit…my wifedrives me , my sister next to her, I`m in the back seat…we are 1.5 miles from the hospital…I was in pain ,real pain , at the entry to the hospital we have a red light for the turn , this was about 8.30 at night , no traffic ,but light did not change…I told my wife to run the light ,she wouldnt ,so i decided to walk myself…she wouldnt let me so she power locked the doors…so i had to crawl out of the window ,then ran up to the emergency…10 minutes later as i was sitting in awheel chair being admitted ,they arrived! my wife telling me I behaved like a 3 yr old….but i was in pain.
this was a month after I woke up in Boquete with some abdomen pain that went away (during the independence day celebrations), which was my second attack…
Glad your feeling better. Relative to US hospital charges, I think you did pretty well. Hang in there my friend.
glad it wasn’t too serious, LZ. Sigue adelante.
Hope you are feeling better Lee……….. As far as the cost in comparison there in Panama to the U.S……..of course it is very inexpensive. Me, myself? I would NEVER rely on the medical care there now for anything serious.
hope you have made a full & complete recovery….scary evening after such a special day.
Interesting how your preauthorised credit card charge was $2100! What will your international insurance pay of the total? Is there a deductible? Finally, although it’s just rhetorical, if you had kept your Chiriqui Plan, what do you think they would have charged?
Good Luck
Well, the price it good. We just paid 4x that for a 4 ER hour visit, just to get pain killers and antibiotics in the States. The service is probably similar to the states. It took over 1 hour for the Dr. to even see us for all of 2 mins on a slow night.
Hope you had the $6.66 on you otherwise they may never have let you leave
Certainly looks like they knew how much they had from you and padded the bill till things evened out, medical care used to be cheap here.