Finding a Hospital: Part One

I told myself that I would start looking for a hospital and figuring out the logistics behind registering once we rang in 2017.  In hindsight, I wish I had started earlier because it turned out to be more difficult than expected, mainly because we don't speak German. Oh the joys of living abroad....

We started by asking my doctor for recommendations and his preferences.  We knew that many doctors in Europe do not deliver with their patients, but I wanted to get his thoughts on hospitals.  As it turns out, the week of my due date is his children's spring break, so he'll be out of town if Baby Maximus is timely.  The one hospital that he does deliver at isn't covered by our insurance, so we kind of ruled that out.

One of Mike's professors had twins within the past year and loved her delivery at a hospital, (St. Joseph's) that was less than 10 minutes from us.  This hospital kept coming up and has a great neonatal unit if we need that.  Unfortunately, it wasn't covered under our insurance.  We still wanted to look at it though because there is the option of switching our insurance plan so that we can go anywhere and just get reimbursed.

Our other option was to keep our insurance plan as it was and go to one of the hospitals that was covered.  Unfortunately, there are really only two hospitals that are covered in Berlin for giving birth, one of which is an hour away. The other, Krankenhaus Walfriede, is about 30 minutes away.  It doesn't have a neonatal unit and, if we needed that, he would go to the neonatal unit at St. Joseph's anyways, which would then be covered under our insurance.

We decided that we would go and look at both of these hospitals, time out the drive, and see which one we were most comfortable with and then decide what to do about our insurance.  Then Mike got sick. I called St Joseph's one day while we were in the depths of illness.   I just wanted to make sure we didn't need an appointment, especially since we needed an English speaker. The woman I spoke to said that we just needed to call ahead when we wanted to come.  Fast forward two weeks and we were ready to go tour. We called back to the hospital and couldn't get hold of anyone who spoke English.  After many tries, we finally decided to go to the hospital and see if we could figure this out in person.  We spoke to a very nice nun who told us the only way to make an appointment or go on a tour was to call.

Meanwhile, we were doing the same thing with Krankenhaus Walfriede and having even less luck.  Every time we called, we just got a recording.  We couldn't even get someone on the phone to ask for someone who spoke English.  Luckily, we had more success when we went to the hospital.  We were able to make an appointment to talk to someone.  It's not until I'm 30 weeks (two weeks from now!), but I think we're both relieved to just have an appointment.

At this point, I think we realized that we were not meant to deliver at St. Joseph's.  It seems like everything was pointing us to Krankenhaus Walfriede and that it just wasn't going to be worth it.  We are a little concerned about the distance because traffic on the highway can be HORRENDOUS and can add an extra 15-20 minutes.  Plus, if Mike happens to be in class when the time comes, that's an extra 30 minutes it takes for him to get home, but these are all things that I know many people deal with and overcome.  I just don't want to be the girl who gives birth in the car....

How far did you have to drive to the hospital?  Anything I should ask on my hospital tour?

New Eyes!

I'm typing this blogpost with new eyes! Well...almost! Yesterday, I had LASIK done and it's amazing how fast of a recovery it is!

Let's back up though.  I'm sure that when you read that I had LASIK, you were like "Wait. You had LASIK in Turkey?"  At least, that was my reaction when Mike suggested it.  There was no way I was going to go to some hole in the wall, shady doctor's office and have them operate on my eyes.  Once again, though, Turkey has proved me wrong.   Apparently, Turkey is a huge medical tourism location, especially for LASIK.  When we started looking into having it done here, we found a company that sets up a whole vacation for you surrounding your procedure.  You pay a flat fee that includes your airfare, hotel, the procedure and three days of sightseeing in Izmir or Istanbul.  How crazy is that?!

Obviously, I didn't need the whole travel package, but I did contact the doctor associated with this and made an appointment to meet with her and discuss details, as well as make sure I was comfortable with the doctor herself.  When I called to make the consultation appointment, they wanted to do it in the morning and then have the procedure done in the afternoon, but I wasn't quite ready for that quick of a turn around.  Instead, I agreed to meet with her on a Friday and to go from there.

The consultation was great.  The nurses and receptionist didn't speak much English, which made me a little hesitant, but the doctor spoke very clear and fluent English, which eased my nerves.  After talking to her about the procedure and how it would work, we set up the appointment for Tuesday.

Tuesday came and was pretty chaotic (I'll get to that in another post at some point...), but we decided to go ahead with the procedure.  I arrived at 3:30, but spent the first hour waiting and hanging out.  They did do some test on my eyes, but for the most part, we were just waiting.  It was rough because I was antsy and starting to think about what they were actually going to do, which I had successfully avoided doing before this.

Around 4:45, they came and got me and took me upstairs. The procedure went extremely quickly and I was done and back in the room with Mike around 5:20.  Overall, the procedure was pretty easy.  I realized, though, that whenever anyone tries to touch anywhere on my face, I close my eyes.  Like, at the dentist, I usually just close my eyes.  This whole strategy obviously didn't work out and I was pretty tense, but luckily, it really didn't hurt and the doctors were great.

When it was over, they took me back in the room where Mike was. I felt completely fine at first, and then all of a sudden my eyes started burning.  By the time we got in the cab to go home, I could barely open my eyes and had tears streaming down my face.  Mike guided me like the blind person that I was to our bed room where I fell asleep for an hour.  When I woke up, my eyes still hurt and I found that sitting in the bathroom where there is absolutely no light was the only solution.  Luckily, the burning subsided once I was able to put drops in my eyes and by the end of the night, I was able to hang out, although I was still struggling a little and looking at a computer screen was definitely not an option.

This morning, we returned to the doctor for a follow up and she said everything looked good.  She said that my distance vision would still be a little blurry (which it is), but that's completely normal and would get better within the next few days.  Today was pretty incredible because I was able to live my life almost normally.  I went to a meeting and was able to fill out paper work.  I was looking at my phone and am now typing on the computer.  The only things I've noticed are that I have a little bit of a headache because I think my eyes are tired and my distance vision is not quite there yet, but other than that, it's like whole new eyes.  Oh and I look like I've been getting high because my eyes are so blood shot, but really, minor details.  :)

I'm so glad that we decided to do this.  Last year, I ended up paying ~$300 for contact lenses and a contact lens consultation because they aren't included in our insurance.  We payed ~$1300 (thank you tax return!) for LASIK in Turkey, so in five years, we will have saved money.  I felt completely comfortable with the doctor and she was extremely professional.  Overall, it's been a great experience and I'm thankful that we chose to do it.

The ear saga continues...

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Y'all, I can hear again!! This is truly a wonderful thing.  If you've been reading the blog, you know that I got swimmer's ear when I was in Kas.  I had drops to put in my ear, which initially helped, but after a while, I just felt like my ear wasn't getting better.  I finally agreed to go to a doctor, but neither Mike nor I really knew how to go about doing that or what that would entail

There is a doctor on base that Mike will go see if he has a problem, so we went there hoping that I could go, too. They don't see family members, but they helped us schedule an appointment at an ear, nose and throat doctor a block from our house.

When we went, the doctor spoke English, so I didn't need my translator (Mike).  I'll spare you the details of the appointment.  Lets just say that about 20 minutes and a lot of earwax later, I walked out being able to hear and very appreciative of this Turkish doctor.

Overall, it was a very easy experience and I think it was good for us.  If and when we need to go back to a Turkish doctor for some larger medical issue, we will kind of know the ropes.  It really wasn't any different from what the doctor's office is like in the United States, plus the doctor spoke English, which was an added bonus. We learned a lot from this whole experience, mainly being that you don't need to clean your ears at home :)

Kas: Day Two

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We woke up early the next day because Mike had arranged with Can to do two days of diving so that he could take a class and get his Advanced diving certification.  I was going along for the ride again and very content to read my book and soak up the sun.  The boat this time was a lot smaller than the boat in Fethiye and there weren't nearly as many people aboard this time.

I snorkeled in the morning while Mike dove. I saw a sunken ship and a ton of fish, so it was definitely better than Fethiye in my opinion. We had heard that Kas is more protective of their fish than Fethiye, so it's better diving in Kas. 

Unlike the trip in Fethiye, the boat in Kas didn't serve lunch.  We had signed up for all day of diving, so they let us off the boat and we went and grabbed lunch before returning to the boat.  Some people had only signed up for either the morning or afternoon dive, but our group was mainly the same.  

The afternoon was a lot of the same.  We went to a different location and I snorkeled again.  I didn't see any shipwrecks, but lots of fish. 

When we got off the boat, we headed back to the campsite to shower and change before dinner.  I had been battling swimmer's ear and really hoping that it would go away on it's own (wishful thinking), but had finally succumbed to the fact that I needed to get drops to put in my ear. In the US, this wouldn't be a problem.  I've had swimmer's ear a ton and have always cured it with a quick run to CVS for some over the counter drops.  Here, I had no idea what that would look like. 

So, before dinner, Mike and I stopped into a pharmacy.  Luckily, one of the men behind the counter spoke English (I think probably because they get so many English speaking tourists in Kas).  He explained to the pharmacist what I needed and out we walked with ear drops!  The whole process was so much easier than I expected and the drops seem to be working.  At least, I haven't lost my hearing....

After that, we found a nice restaurant off of the main tourist strip and enjoyed a bottle of wine and some non-turkish food. I had a steak with mushroom sauce, which was okay and Mike had sea bass. Mike said his fish was good, but neither of us can get over how the Turkish don't use any sort of seasoning or added flavor to the fish.  You literally get the entire fish on a plate and that is it.  No blackened or any sort of spicy fish.  Just the fish. 

Anyways, after dinner, we headed back to camp for some reading and relaxation. i hadn't been feeling great all day and they have live music every night by Can and some of his friends, so it seemed like the perfect end of the night.  Little did I know that as soon as we got back to camp, I'd have a visit from a friend.  First name "Food" last name "Poisoning."  It was a rough end to the day, but luckily I seemed to recover by the morning and was ready for another day on the boat.