Glad to hear that she's back home and doing well.

But now, let the thread jack begin.

Here's my experiences.

Visting my GP is almost the same as visiting my PCP in the US. Both are competent and professional. Prescription drugs are dramatically cheaper in the UK. But emergency treatment or more serious illnesses seem to require a level of stoicism and waiting that I can't get my head around. Are our experiences just bad luck or do most folks accept this as a matter of course?

My memory's a little sketchy on the whole event but this is what I recall, about 10 days before Christmas 2003 SWMBO is flying back to Gatwick from Port Harcourt. She deplanes, heads to the hotel, and collapses. At this point, she's in and out, delirious, fever, shaking, major badness. The doctor knows where she's been, but delays the malaria tests for 2 or 3 days even though our company doctor is stressing to him the importance. I ask nicely and then not so nicely and they do finally run a test but not the follow-ups that are usually required. A group of doctors show up once a day for the first 2-3 days and it's almost like a science project where they consult on the side to decide what test to try next. All were very young and looked very overworked. Maybe it was the fact that it was over the holidays and they were short staffed but on about day 4-5, a different set of doctors showed up and it was like a scene from Outbreak.

Masks, rubber gloves, and plastic aprons. The room is locked down and they start limiting who can come and go (except for the little old lady who brought around the tea trolley, she came in and out and no one said a word. Avian flu oubreak? Fear the tea trolley vector.) On day 5, a tropical disease specialist shows up announces that she doesn't have hemmoragic fever because she would already be bleeding out her eyes if she did. (No joke.) They speculate its dengue and leave medication instructions for the nurses.

Things get worse for the next day or so as there seems to be a handoff mixup. No one comes for awhile, then 2 other doctors show up. They get into a dust up with the nurses and personally wheel SWMBO out of the ward to another ward upstairs. Much nicer, much cleaner, much better on the communication, and care. SWMBO stays for another 2-3 days. My company wound up picking up the tab on the whole fiasco as we were living in France at the time and did not fall under the Samaritan rule. ( I think this is what covered you Bitt) This was at Red Hills.

Similar situation happened this past weekend with SWMBO at Hammersmith. Turns out it was a bacteria this time. 4 days in the hospital but it took until day 3 before she was locked down again and a similar but shorter process started. In both instances, it seemed that we had to wait until we hit a certain point in the system, before the next level of healthcare kicked in.

Granted both instances involved rare diseases but a similar emergency room visits that I've experienced were dramatically different. I took a friend to the emergency room in the US when he had Giardia. They had pinned it down within hours, pumped him full of fluids and antibioitcs, and he was out the next day.

When I had a particulary bad case of bronchitis in Paris after returning from Algeria, I visited the American Hospital in Paris during the height of the SARS outbreak (probably not a good comparision since everyone on duty freaked out). They diagnosed me and released me that day.