My horrible Ethiopian medical story

While in Ethiopia, I got sick. Nothing major, or out of the ordinary really, but it turned out to be a total nightmare.

It only turned out to be a simple case of traveler's diarrhea. Oh, I applied hand sanitizer liberally before every meal, didn't eat uncooked food, at least knowingly, but when you're in one of the most rural places on the planet without running water, or electricity, it's really bound to happen that you'll get it, so I wasn't shocked. When I was sliding into first, and I felt something burst, I took the Levaquin my American doctor gave me before coming to Ethiopia in preparation for just such an instance. I was covered...

Or so I thought. The prescription I was given cost me $125 for 10 pills of Levaquin. I took one, and immediately started having problems. My temperature rose, I started throwing up, and I felt like I was going to pass out and literally die. This wasn't supposed to happen! I came prepared like the true American brat that I am. I was supposed to take my expensive medicine and everything was supposed to be all right!

At the time, we were in Debre Markos looking for the blind school that we came to visit. As I felt no better than a piece of excrement just passed from the bowels of a bovine, I requested of our interpreter and driver to find a doctor. I felt bad inconveniencing everyone on our trip, but I really felt awful.

We found a doctor after driving around a bit, and asking a few people on the street where we might go to procure such a person for their skilled services. I was completely not expecting what happened next. I followed my trusty interpreter, Binyam in the door and I stumbled in. The receptionist made me fill out a form and had me pay 20 birr (the equivalent of less than $2). OK, I was expecting that, but what I was NOT expecting was that she didn't ask to see my insurance card. In my head, I was thinking "how much is this going to cost me when all is said and done?" I lurched at the thought. Then what does she have me do? Instead of telling me to quietly have a seat in that chair over there, where I would quietly sit for two hours waiting to die, she leads me out of the room and into an examination room. I thought, "is this how you treat people in your hospitals? Where is my two hour requisite emergency room wait?" I was slightly comforted when a voice told me to sit down in a chair in the examination room, wholly expecting to have to wait in there, when to my absolute shock and amazement, it was a doctor. He had followed me into the examination room? Really? What kind of shady operation is this anyway? This isn't how things happen in America! Why, in America, they make a patient wait in the examination room at LEAST 15 minutes before anyone comes into the room, where someone will take your temperature, scribble notes on a page, and then walk out, so I can quietly ponder about how plain the walls are before a doctor finally comes in 10-15 minutes after that. How absurd that I didn't get such world class treatment that we find in America!

Next the doctor begins asking me questions. Thank God some sense in this whole mess! Oh but wait... that's the thing. He actually made sense. He spoke perfect English to me. What the hell? AND THEN he had the nerve to prescribe me Cipro not 15 minutes after I got there! And furthermore, he had the audacity to prescribe me what my American doctor should have prescribed me in the first place. Who is this pretentious idiot?

Suddenly I had a primal urge to purge my bowel, and it was coming out whether I wanted it to or not. The doctor showed me the restroom, merely a hole in the ground. Wait, wait a minute... WTF?! No toilet paper? I guess this is one of those BYOTP parties. Breath... Count to ten... All right, I can deal with no TP. Fortunately I did bring some with me, and before I knew it, I was clean.

The doctor blabbered about going to get the prescription. Standard fare. But wait! What's this?! Come back after picking up the prescription? What for? To get my test results? That should take at least 24 hours to get back from the lab. Your lab is on site and the technician is on hand? How much is THIS going to cost me? What?! 20 birr! That's an outrage. Tests should at least cost $200 or some insane figure like that. All right, if you say so doctor.

The pharmacy was a few blocks away. They filled my two prescriptions and charged me 40 birr. By this time I was ready for this type of shock. Prescriptions really should cost more like they do in the US, but if they didn't want to charge me more, then I decided I was going to just go with it.

Back at the doctor's, the technician told me that I didn't have malaria or yellow fever, and ran a test on my stool, where he found the culprit: parasites. The doctor told me to just take the Cipro as directed and I should be fine in three days. And HOW MUCH did this whole charade cost me? 80 birr, or less than $8.

If I can get first rate medical care like this in one of the most economically disadvantaged countries on the world, why is it so difficult to get quality affordable care in the United States? You can't convince me that our health care system doesn't need reform. Needless to say, my all-knowing American doctors have lost a patient for prescribing the wrong medicine, just to get me to pay more for an over-priced drug.

Please write your representatives telling them to support health care reform and a public option.