small world she said: God is bigger than your problem.

reverse aerial view from Santa Lucia hill

Apologies for the long gap in posting. After the holiday break, I came down with a fever and viral throat infection, which kept me incapacitated for a couple weeks. Since I was practically bedridden, that time doesn't make for the most interesting blog material. These are pictures taken before and after my self-imposed quarantine.

By the way, being horribly sick for an extended period is just about one of the shittiest things that can happen while abroad- apart from being murdered, gang raped, or being told to go back to China because we don't need more of your kind here (okay not on par with the first two, but still unpleasant). It's bad enough that this debilitating virus gives you a painful idea of what it's like to consciously decompose, but you have to go through this bullshit in a place where everything is unfamiliar and no one will baby you.

Kamille Goes to a Private Hospital in Chile

When I returned to the farm after the holiday, my mild fever turned into crippling fatigue, cold sores, and a painfully sensitive mouth and throat. Eating solid foods was excruciating. By solid foods I mean it was a struggle to swallow oatmeal without pushing back tears. With a self-torturing iron maiden for a throat, I stuck to juice boxes, strawberry milk, and chocolate milk. Naturally, I lost some weight. But besides enjoying a creepily awesome, effortlessly sculpted Olson-twin body, I couldn't function on a constantly empty stomach. I could barely read [joke about dumb skinny models?], and I sure as hell couldn't write a coherent article from Spanish to English in less than two hours. So I couldn't work.

I took a bus back to Santiago to see a doctor, spending US$60 on an emergency room visit for the doctor to tell me what I already knew from consulting the internet. Not to mention the added frustration that he spoke no English and my Spanish medical vocabulary could use some expanding. Vital information- an accurate description of my symptoms and explanation of his diagnosis- could have been lost in translation. He wrote me a couple prescriptions for painkillers and cold sore cream. The cost of the medical visit and drugs totaled about US$100. Luckily my medical insurance reimburses the cost of emergency room visits, but this was the first time I'd ever had to pay, at least for now, out of my own pocket for health care. A common virus, basic treatment, one hundred dollars.

Back in the States, I blindly enjoy being covered by my parents' health insurance. Because I could see a doctor and acquire medicine without ever knowing the actual cost (save for a trivial co-pay), I could maintain the delusion that medical care didn't have a price tag at all. As a kid, it's easier to disassociate something as socially dividing as money with something as supposedly universal as wanting to be healthy (or wanting to live)- when you don't see a price tag.

So imagine my surprise, when I walk into the waiting room of the Santa Maria private clinic, take a number, walk up to one of the neatly uniformed ladies seated like travel agents at their desks, and see a big fat list of prices for emergency room consultations openly displayed on the wall like a fucking fast food menu. Each price corresponded with the nature of the visit. If you were conscious and could walk, congratulations you get the cheapest rate. If it's likely to be a neurological emergency, you're fucked. Simple, direct, in clean block lettering. There's no delusion about it; this is a business with services to sell.

I'll take combo #1 with a side of consciousness. (A poorly framed shot but you try discreetly taking photos in a hospital waiting room with a steady hand.)

My visit took no longer than 20 minutes. That's a $60 visit in 20 minutes. Although we don't know the overhead included in these costs, keep in mind $60 is the cheapest consultation rate and duration is not factored into the price. That said, here is a far-fetched and obscenely oversimplified equation to ponder : If visits average 20 minutes, costing $60 each, the hospital theoretically receives $180 an hour. If I'm a bored, particularly capitalistic doctor, I can boost productivity on this hospital assembly line by shaving minutes off each visit. I can manipulate the system to my advantage if I go through patients faster. Consult, scripted small talk, diagnose, repeat. Shit I could whittle that sucker down to 5 minutes inflating my income to a whopping $1800 an hour. I'm not saying that my doctor was hurried or inconsiderate, but these were the irrational concerns that crossed my mind now that I knew the price tag. I was an ailing patient and a discerning consumer.

After that waste of money and what little energy I had in my food-deprived noodle of a body, I picked up the prescriptions at a nearby pharmacy. Having to pay the full price for my drugs, I wrongly cursed Chile for the exorbitant prices. Once again I learned I was paying actual costs. It wouldn't have been any cheaper in the US. This is the true cost of drugs without the help of government subsidies (to keep drugs affordable) or the mask of insurance (ignorance is bliss).

To the average American middle-class college student, $100 is a lot of money. To the average working Chilean, 100 US-fuckin'-D is a lot of money.

If I didn't have insurance, if I had to spend $100 of my own hard-earned money, I probably would have stayed in bed and prayed that the undiagnosed suffering will go away on its own. I wonder how many people have to make that decision(especially when it involves thousands of dollars), in countries (that's you, home country) where public clinics are scarce and the few that exist are understaffed, poorly funded, and/or can barely provide the bare minimum of medical procedures (penicillin for all!).

I'm better now. And I think I prefer to know the costs. It's a healthy reality check.

Presidential elections in Chile were this past Sunday. The center-right millionaire won, breaking the 20 year leftist coalition's hold on the government. Woot.