We had a medical adventure. I had terrible flare up of "almost chronic" Diverticulitis. Severe pain I had been ignoring for weeks because it would come and go and finally, I ate some chilaquiles with matcha (so delicious) and an hour later I was doubled over. It was time to go to the ER. I assumed they would give me something for the pain, a dose of intravenous antibiotics and send me home. Mazatlán medical system does things a bit different.
They care. They ran me into a CT scan immediately that showed serious inflammation and immediately started an IV and some pain medication. I had a team of doctors that were on my case trying to figure out if there was ruptured cyst, a burst bulge in my intestines or just a run of the mill infection in my colon. In the first hour of being admitted I saw a Gastroenterologist, a Gynocologist, two Internal Medicine doctors and a team of nurses.
I was there for 3 nights. I was well taken care of. The doctors didn’t miss a thing. They were thorough and professional. They were kind and empathetic. They listened and they understood my fears and apprehension of being so vulenerable being in a foreign country and so sick.
They made me feel like family. I was checked in on by every single doctor of the team every day. I had never been taken care of in the United States the way I was in Medical de Cuidad in Mazatlan. As a woman from the United States it is common to be misdiagnosed, not listened to or taken seriously or completely ignored by medical ‘professionals’. This was NOT the case here. The entire ordeal gave me another data point in proving that Mexican culture is rooted in care for each other and nothing, not even profit out weighs the importance of family.
The Mexican medical system is not for profit. The goal is to take care of the people who walk in. As far as I have learned there are two separate systems here. Private hospitals and public. We went to a private hospital because it was closest and at the time, we didn’t know the difference. Private hospitals take health insurance (which we did not have at the time) and the care is generally thought of as specialized. It’s more expensive and there is a high likelihood you would be in your own room. The public hospitals in Mazatlan are larger, much busier and further from where we live. The public hospitals have rules and services to accommodate the masses, conversely in a private hospital we went didn’t even have a ‘waiting room’ I was triaged immediately.
The cost of the 3 days, 5 doctors, the multitude of tests and scans and all the medication was $10,000 without insurance. In the United States, we would have gotten a bill for $30,000 without all the specialized care. At the end of the day, I feel much safer being sick here than in the United States. It is clear where the US has it all wrong. When its profit over people, it isn’t just the people who are sick, it’s the system.
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