When wealthy people in Indonesia need medical treatment, they often run out of Singapore. Daniel Pope thinks he knows why.
When several years of overwork in the decadent pleasure of pursuit had started giving my friend expatriate panic attacks, he requested a consultation with a psychiatrist. I could not resist quipping, "Well, you certainly would be crazy to want to see an Indonesian psychiatrist."
I was not a newcomer to the Catch-22s and other features of Indonesia's medical industry. a dentist once told me during a routine check-up even if I had a bad tooth, it could not extract it because he had recently undergone heart surgery and was not allowed to do anything intense.
But at least he had a fully equipped, private surgery. in Borneo, once I looked into a shopfront window and saw not a store of any kind, but a dentist chair rooted in the center of an otherwise bare floor. the dentist was lying in a seat by the wall. He was reading a newspaper as a wait for a customer barber to walk. It was also smoking a cigarette.
I can not respect any doctor who smokes. It is like a fireman who burns deliberately or dietician who stuffs his mouth with bread rolls with cream. Not that my own old smoking habit has never been impeded by such a belief.
One day in 2002, I was riding a cigarette on my home office in central Jakarta when my arm suddenly died, becoming like a rubber appendage. Sensation came gradually, but not completely. My arm was left feeling vaguely disk and uncoordinated. If I tried to touch my nose I hit in the eye.
Although persevering with the construction of the cigarette, I went momentarily blind in my left eye. It was time to
see a doctor. I just hoped he was better than the last time I saw one.
This time I had been diagnosed with amoebic dysentery and was prescribed an antibiotic called Flagyl. Turning to leave the surgery, I asked the doctor if I'm allowed to drink alcohol with this medication, since I was still partying to finish.
Frankly I expected a "no" (this would surely be the default response, even if the doctor was unsure) flat. But after some hesitation, he replied, "Just a little," and therefore beckoned with his finger and thumb I have to say I'm skeptical, but I am Jakarta branch of an internationally renowned clinic. so what that I know.
with friends that night, I drank two large bottles of beer, which in those days amounted to much less than just a little in my view, and woke later in the night sicker than I had ever been. I vomited so hard I thought my honking could stifle amplified call to prayer from the local mosque. the next day I felt nauseous.
But the next day I felt good, so I was drinking again ... and was sick again suspecting Finally -. or accept reluctantly - that drinking above take my medication was the cause of my trouble stomach, I looked at the line of antibiotics (which was at the time when the Internet was still a big problem)
.The first information line read "DO NOT TAKE THIS MEDICINE WITH ALCOHOL; It can cause nausea, stomach cramps and vomiting ... "There are only a handful of antibiotics that have a high risk of side effects when taken with alcohol. I consider myself unlucky enough to have been prescribed one of them. I also curse the doctor not to advise me correctly.
I cursed quietly, mind, wanting to avoid causing corporate lawyers.
A few years later in 2008, a woman who complained in emails to friends on the unsatisfactory service she had received in a Jakarta hospital was arrested quickly, charged under the criminal code libel, convicted and imprisoned.
Although the case has become a public relations disaster for the hospital - and conviction of the woman was reversed - it shows that it is best to seal his mouth with a Elastoplast on these issues
.Back to my last problem, the left side of my face was paralyzed, and I had known some mental abnormalities are not related to alcohol consumption. With a companion at my side, I got to the questionable assurance of a private hospital in South Jakarta. Here, I underwent an MRI. My companion standing near the screen, alarmed me crying, "My God! I can see your brain! "
The doctor had a less hysterical appraisal He said I suffered a transient ischemic attack or TIA. - A mini-stroke. - Whose symptoms were temporary numbness He recommended a living caution to the hospital and took me through some glossy brochures to hospital as a travel agent asking me to choose a hotel to stay in. He also listed the size of deposits that must be paid before I would be allowed in a service rather than pointed in the street.
Encouraged by the word "transient" in the name of my trouble, I replied that I'd rather stay sick. So the doctor prescribed a daily dose of aspirin and advised me to take the usual measures - stop smoking, eat well, exercise regularly. - to help reduce the risk of further attacks or worse
Just aspirin alone later the next morning in my class at school where I taught, a small bomb exploded in my head. The left side of my face felt like it had been taken off. My ears rang. I could not speak (at least not without looking like the Elephant Man). So I gave my students a smirk, and stumbled from the room. Perhaps an observation in hospital was in order after all.
Recalling the high prices in the brochures MRI doctor showed me, I chose to stay in a public hospital in order to save money. hospital bills are usually long and meticulously detailed in my experience. In short you would think they should include the price of each individual molecule making your dressings and bandages.
The conditions in the lively establishment in the center of Jakarta, where I settled in bed were so primitive that I expected to see Florence Nightingale in service. The halls were crowded and open rooms, though old and with their heavily scuffed paint, make-shift seemed as if set up in the urgency to deal with a disaster like an earthquake. It was hectic. smoked visitors. The patients were smokers. Doctors smoked.
As a teacher EFL, I had learned a lot of doctors and nurses. They were invariably enthusiastic students. Indeed, a general practitioner taking a conversation classes in English, when unable to attend a class, had insisted on the participation of a speaker phone connection. It was therefore represented in the classroom by a small green phone on a desktop computer. In this slender form diminutive-sounding it answered the questions and generally remained involved throughout the lesson.
However, I began to have concerns about his reason for wanting to be absent from the classroom. Indeed, while the rest of the students wrote in silence, I clearly heard from the speaker scratch and hiss of a lighter being hit, followed by the gentle crackling of inflammation tobacco, and finally the audible satisfaction GP exhaling smoke. Then cough.
Every so often, my expatriate drinking buddies having fun, or perhaps celebrate their survival after years of unhealthy excess, counting off on their fingers the number of people they had known over the years that had bitten the dust Java. Some of these deaths by medical negligence.
I am happy to say that after my stay in hospital and a few changes in lifestyle, my ZCI finally cleared and I'm not on that list. Nor has the berserk state of the medical industry in Jakarta I was never encouraged to seek the services of a psychiatrist.