Your Average Doctors Visit…

…in Kosovo has proven to be just a bit more complicated than we’re used to in the West. Not sure if you all will remember the ‘insignificant’ bike accident I had several months back in Montenegro? Well, my shoulder has never properly healed and at the encouragement of the UN’s OSCE staff doctor, I decided to further investigate and try to get matters taken care of locally. Yea, right!

My first step was to get a 200 euro local MRI scan that turned out to be useless since the machine is too outdated to produce a clear enough image. None the less I had a local Orthopedist review the film who recommended that I head to Europe. I initially started calling around his references in northern Greece where I knew I could drive myself rather simply, except for the fact that if I had corrective surgery I would not be able to drive back…Ok, plan B. Upon the (obvious) recommendation from my company’s home office, I was told that our SOS emergency medical evacuation is intended to assist in such matters. Now I was always under the impression that this was only used in the case of serious life threatening injuries but apparently it is designed for all types of medical assistance.

So within 24 hours of placing the call, my simple shoulder injury had me booked on a direct flight to Vienna, an appointment with a leading shoulder specialist at the leading private hospital and the surgery ‘theater’ on-call for two days after the initial evaluation to fix whatever was wrong. Having suffered any number of injuries before from my mountain biking, snow boarding, rafting or soccer, this just seemed ridiculous. Not to mention the SOS service didn’t let me confer directly with the doctor for over a week so the trip was literally canceled and rescheduled 4 times. At the last minute, Monday morning, I was finally able to hear my options first-hand and instead of postponing till after the holidays and my trip to Turkey, the doctor insisted for me to be on that afternoons flight for examination and check-in on Tues, surgery on Wed and up to 3 days recovery immediately thereafter.

So, here I sit typing in my private hospital ‘suite’ in Vienna the night before my surgery. As nice as the Austrian airlines flight was, or the Mercedes sedan that escorted me from the airport to the boutique hotel around the corner from the hospital, the hospital food is still the same crap as almost anywhere in the Western world (ok, so I don’t know if they even feed you in Pristina’s hospital). Today was quite long with a lot of waiting, several physical examinations, several painful shoulder dye injections to enable the new MRI to reveal the extent of the tear, and no less than a dozen Xrays (see the glow in the photos).

Once they were all finished I was given permission to return to the hotel to collect my bags. Before returning to ‘my cell’ I took advantage of being in Europe by purchasing several nice Xmas presents for my staff, the obligatory bag of M&M’s and chocolate chip cookies to survive the hospital food, an MP3 player for the yoga classes I am teaching in Pristina and a small bag of McDonald’s French fries. Oh, and since the hospital does not have internet I was ironically able to use a computer kiosk located on one of the street corners to send some messages out to family (just like the ones we have in Kosovo J).

Ouch…but all done. The ‘theatre’ was pretty impressive with tons of robotic looking machines and about 8 doctors probing me in German. A couple pills, some drip formula and the next thing I remember was an unbelievably dry throat and echoing sounds of the nurse asking me how I felt…hummm…like crap? I now continue to update my saga with my remaining good hand as the other is wrapped in a sling and padded like a football player. The surgery went well and in fact was essential for the torn muscle to ever heal giving me my full strength back. Lucky for me since more than 4 years ago they would have had to completely rebuild my shoulder vs. just making 3 small incisions and using a camera to place the stitches (the damn thing even took photos). The recovery and rehab will take a couple months but granting me limited mobility the entire time. They are keeping me in town for a couple days for observation and basic physio before having the sedan take me back to airport and then home.

I must admit that thus far it has been a very productive ‘rest’ since I only get German TV (except for CNN but talk about depressing) and I came prepared with laptop to write several presentations and my project quarterly report not to mention several great books, my Albanian lessons and a travel guide to plan out next weeks Turkey trip. And now the kind doctor has given me my very own DVD to watch the surgery over and over (it kind of looks like an underwater scuba video).

As much as I was hoping the saga to be over my flight back home was cancelled so I had to endure an entire day of travel to Skopje instead. But at least I was not my co-worker who I ran into in Vienna who had been stuck for 3 days due to cancelled flights and then they lost his luggage. Had an extra 2 hour drive home but at least the office sent a car to retrieve the both of us.

Well at least according to the very active ultimate Frisbee crew I hang with in Pristina, I hold the quickest record for getting in Kosovo and then needing to get out for medical treatment. One of these days I hope to learn…but maybe after the snowboarding season. En shallah!