A medical experience

So there I was, preparing myself for a week of leisure (well, I had quite a few jobs saved up!) when on Tuesday morning I awoke with stomach pains and shortly found myself rushing to the loo... I'll spare you the details, except that I'm pretty amazed I didn't faint as I felt so awful, was sweating like mad and could hear the blood rushing in my ears!

Anyway, after a while I managed to phone Peter (Dee is away at the moment) and got him to send Cecilia, their house-girl, over to me. Even though she wasn't working that day, she sat with me for a while and just having someone there really helped. She got me some water to drink and I started to feel slightly less awful, but we decided I ought to go to a doctor to get checked out. Peter very kindly made an appointment and drove me to Karen Surgery:

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I saw a lovely lady doctor, who turned out to be the niece of a lady I met at my home church before I first came to Kenya!!! She suspected a bacterial infection, probably food poisoning, and sent me for a test to confirm this, giving me a prescription for antibiotics to get if this was the case. So I spent the afternoon at the local branch of Nairobi hospital, which happens to be in a nearby shopping centre (you can see the signs on the top floor in the first photo):

Photo credit

Photo credit

The hospital is beautifully clean and I didn't have to queue, I just went straight to register at one desk and pay at another, then took my sample to the pathology lab where they told me the results would be ready in an hour. Conveniently I was then able to go downstairs and into the Nakumatt branch to stock up on a few things like crackers and white bread, which experience has taught me I need in such circumstances! It would have been perfect if I hadn't been feeling so awful, but I managed to get the things and withdraw some more cash before returning to sit in the path lab waiting area. In the event it was a bit more than an hour, and I was almost falling asleep by the time the results were ready. From there I phoned Karen Surgery and was able to speak with the doctor who said I should start on antibiotics as the results indicated she'd been right about the bacterial infection. I should know more tomorrow when I get further results. The hospital has its own pharmacy, so I was able to get the medicine there and then, together with some more oral rehydration stuff, and then I returned home.

All in all my first experience of doctors and hospitals here was extremely positive; however, there's another side to it that you may have already guessed... the cost! Now, I have fairly good medical cover on my insurance and tomorrow's job is to find out how to claim back - I've never had to do this before but I've got all the documents and receipts and I'm hopeful it will be ok. But it made me think - what do most ordinary Kenyans do? Surely most people just can't afford good healthcare and that's the end of that. I estimate that I paid around £60 with the consultation fee, medicines, payment for the pathology report and so on. We are so fortunate at home to have the NHS - Cecilia couldn't believe it when I told her that going to a doctor in England was free! I know our hospitals have their problems, and the speed of things here in Kenya was much better than at home, but it seems so unfair that these wonderful facilities are only available to the select few, while most people have to visit sub-standard doctors if they go anywhere at all. Just another stark example of the gap between rich and poor...