Magyar Medical Madness

By Bill Lower

Welcome to Hungary and welcome to the premier issue of Inter Relocation’s monthly newsletter. We trust we find you in good health. Actually we don’t have to trust: we know. Because to get your Work Permit, you would have had to have passed a medical exam by a medical doctor. I qualify ‘medical’ because here, many professionals have the title ‘doctor’, including lawyers, which is just one of the many contradictions you will discover while living in Hungary. It seems foreign to me to hear lawyers called ‘doctor’ because, where I come from, most lawyers are enough to make you sick.

To pass your medical you would even have been screened for potential occupational health hazards. For instance, you would have been asked if you spend more than two hours in front of a computer and, if you’re prone to bouts of denial (another known health concern), you would have answered “no”. Of course, we all know that about the only people who don’t spend more than two hours a day in front of a computer are those who can’t afford to own one.

Despite your good health, there will come a time when you will receive some sort of medical attention here, whether it’s getting a flu shot or treatment for some type of illness or injury.

There are things you should know about health care in Hungary. First, the educational system here is superb and Hungary has global recognition for many health care related disciplines, from veterinary to dentistry. Yet, however well trained and skilled health care professionals are, there is a vast range in the condition of medical facilities. If you have private insurance and are covered through your employer you will be able to access the full-service, western style health care resources. You will find no language issue as many cater to the expat community. Not only will this feel like health care from home, you’ll also be helping Hungary. Heaven knows this country needs and appreciates people and companies who pay full retail. US style.

If you are using the Hungarian public health care insurance you can encounter everything from high tech robotic equipped hospitals to neglected facilities that make M*A*S*H outfits look like the Mayo Clinic. While some of the bricks and mortar may be concerning, the caliber of their people is not.

Two personal experiences illustrate the extremes. One occurred during our first visit to Budapest. We were here for three months, covered by Blue Cross and our home provincial insurance. In hindsight, I wish we had donated the money we spent on Blue Cross to charity. But that’s another story.

After two months in what I nicknamed the Hotel Ikea, a short-term apartment outfitted with Ikea’s low end best, I developed an urgent need for health care. In our Hotel Ikea, there was not one bed, chair or sofa fit for human habitation. Surprise, surprise. After two months I was stricken with something I had never experienced before: sciatica with its lightning fast, debilitating shots of pain. We had used a competitor of Inter Relocation (I didn’t know about IR then) and called them for help. Help they did. I had an appointment that afternoon with one of their doctors. We took a cab to their office with me cursing every bump we hit en route. And there were many. The name of the street we traveled, ‘Rottenbiller’, took on a special meaning for us.

We got to the address and found ourselves trying to get into an apartment building. There was no sign of a doctor’s office. My wife phoned our contact and told her our predicament. A few minutes later a woman in a white lab coat with a cell phone pressed to her ear came running around the corner.

Patient, meet doctor.

The office was in a corner building with its address on one street and the entrance on the other. Don’t worry, you’ll get used to stuff like that. Trust me. So into the office we went and sat waiting for the doctor to see me. The waiting room was shabby, dark and tattered and I saw ashen grey, elderly people waiting patiently, like good patients. I have seen that ashen grey complexion before and am pretty sure what it says. Cancer has a face.

When my turn came, I was directed into the doctor’s office to find three white lab-coated ladies. One was the doctor, one was the nurse and the third was what I presumed to be the assistant. The doctor spoke quite good English and the other two pretended they did not. But I think I know otherwise. I’ll get to that.

The doctor gave me a quick examination and, given that I had never experienced sciatica before and given that I am a pathological pacer, the request to sit down was met with sheer terror. Not only do I not sit still, I don’t sit. I confess that I was harbouring fears that something was going on that was going to permanently immobilize me and I did not handle those fears and pain like a man. I handled them like a wounded animal. Now I know exactly why a wounded animal is extremely dangerous. They lash out at anything as if anything in reach is the cause of their pain. Don’t believe me? Ask my wife. So it was with great relief when the doctor tapped on my knee causing a knee-jerk reaction. Great. We could rule out being crippled. Now, what about the pain?

For that, I would get a shot.

The next thing I must confess is that I am a card-carrying wimp. Don’t believe me? Ask my wife. At the sight of the needle I must have reacted because the doctor immediately instructed me to lay on the examining table. Everyone in the room was quite amused. Everyone but me, of course. So after the terror of seeing that steel probe shoved in the air and then into my arm, the doctor then picked up the phone and called someone, spoke for less than a minute and when she hung up she said she had arranged for a neurologist to see me.

When?

Now. Now???

I don’t know what your experience is with whatever health care system you have where you come from, but where I come from, about the only thing that happens ‘now’ in health care is death. Where I come from they did manage to eliminate waiting lists. They instituted “wait times”. So instead of going on a waiting list to see a specialist and taking three months to get the appointment, you were informed of the wait time to see the specialist. It was three months.

The hospital where I saw the neurologist was a first for me. Hopefully, a last. We made a mistake and believed the neurologist I was to see was on the third floor, necessitating a trip in the elevator. I get nervous about getting in a hospital elevator when it is not much larger than an upright coffin. Despite it’s size, it also had an operator, although she had few teeth.

When we got to the third floor, my wife watched in horror as a nurse went from ward to ward delivering medicines and such in an old grocery cart. When we learned that we had to be back on the first floor, my wife asked if there was a wheelchair to transport her cursing husband. The nurse said there was only one for the floor but she would try to get it. And she did. There is no lack of compassion or professionalism with health care workers here, from what I have witnessed. Some supplies could come in handy however.

The journey back to the first floor could be a book or at least a Franz Kafka short story. The short, short story is that the elevator and toothless elevator operator arrived at the third floor, disgorged an elderly woman on a gurney who appeared to have just come out of surgery, and when those of us waiting for said elevator tried to enter, she refused entry. The doors closed and the elevator disappeared, never to return.

So. It was the stairs. The helpful nurse who commandeered the only wheelchair on the third floor also commissioned a Hungarian couple to help us find our way back to the first floor, since our lack of Hungarian was quite apparent. The language barrier gave me (rightly or wrongly) the permission to believe that I could vocally curse in reaction to my pain and no one would be the wiser.

After the elevator vaporized before our eyes, I abandoned the wheelchair, clung to the handrail on the stairs, cursing with every painful step. I turned around to see my wife, five foot not much more, following and what I saw was this: a midget-like woman with a bouncing empty wheelchair in close pursuit and two Hungarians politely scurrying behind, fulfilling their moral obligation to help this pathetic, non-Hungarian speaking foreigner get to where someone would put him (and them) out of his misery.

When we arrived where we should have gone in the first place, we waited again. Maybe half an hour. When I was called in, again it was three white lab-coated white women: one the doctor, one the nurse and one I am assuming who was a nurse’s aid.

There was an examination, confirmation that I was not yet a cripple and then, a shot for the pain. Only this time, the shot would not be in the arm. So, friends, in what other body parts do they administer shots? The doctor spoke very good English and the other two acted as if they did not. My wife was there as both my protector, comforter and now, witness. When I was instructed to drop my pants so that the doctor could do her dirty deed, I said, “Wow! I’ve never dropped my pants in front of four women before.” They all broke out in laughter. Didn’t speak English? My ass.

So there you have experience number one.

The next came after we had moved here and involved my wife, Susan.

My wife is a saint. If you have read this far, you would probably agree that anyone who could put up with a Rotten Bill-er would have to be a saint.

There are certain medical conditions that can cause alarm. Any kind of signal from your heart tops the list. The irony is that any kind of a signal from the heart can in itself cause heart problems.

And there we were.

As it turns out, it was a non-threatening version of angina although I personally believe that nothing is non-threatening, even getting up in the morning.

Susan got on the phone, called a cardiologist and made an appointment. That was Thursday afternoon. The appointment was for Monday morning.

The hospital was a huge complex spanning a city block. And new. There were stainless steel dolley-like containers outside the elevator and I had no clue what they were. Then the elevator doors opened and out came a low, motorized machine that looked like a skateboard. It went under one of the docked containers, raised itself and took the container back into the elevator and to parts unknown. So, while in one hospital a nurse was using a grocery cart to deliver medicines and such, this hospital had robotics doing the same thing in a very high tech way.

After having an ECG, the cardiologist who saw my wife said she should have a stress test.

When?

Now.

He escorted her down the hall and took her to the room for monitored stress testing. After a few minutes, the nurses asked my wife if she was an athlete. Yes, Susan passed with flying colours. So did Hungary’s state health care system, in my book.