Czech Hospitals

Unfortunately, we now know more than we wanted to know about Czech hospitals.

Last week Sophie spent four nights in the hospital with an ear infection (she's fine now, so no need for you to any worrying...we did that for you).

Although the experience exhausted us emotionally, we left feeling surprisingly positive about Czech health care. A few observations:

1) No privacy, brave kids, and mellow parents: Sophie was garrisoned on a ward with her fellow nose, ear, and throat patients, ranging in ages from two to seventeen, all housed in four coed rooms which were separated from one another by glass. Imagine our first reaction: "Sophie in the same room as a teen aged BOY?!" But the more we hung out, the more we appreciated the charms of Czech hospitals (no, there wasn't any beer or mushrooms, but we did have to wear slippers!).

But first we had to get over this shock: there were virtually no parents visiting their children! It was enough to almost make us feel self-conscious about being with Sophie the moment the doors opened in the morning until she feel asleep at night (they wouldn't let us spend the night). That said, it was pretty incredible to watch all these LITTLE kids--who could barely speak or walk--being taken care of by the occasional nurse, but more frequently, by some older kid who might to read to them or help them out of their crib so they can go to the bathroom. I was humbled by these children, their resiliency, and their capacity for responsibility and independence!

2) Inexpensive health care: A visit to the weekend clinic here in Brno costs about 300 Czech crowns ($15). Sophie's week in the hospital cost about 6500 Czech crowns (~$320). So yes, health care must be subsidized at some level. And yes, Czech hospitals seem much more frugal than they are in the US (i.e., no buttons to make the beds recline). But it did make you want to be a fly on the wall when health-care big wigs in the U.S. are lobbying our political representatives. By the way, the hospital's frugality did not seem to extend to the actual health care: Sophie got all the proper tests, x-rays, hearing tests, etc. That said, I would have endured a bill of $400, if they could have hired an on-staff translator.

3) Trigger-finger hospitalization: although we were completely surprised when they told us Sophie would be sleeping over in the hospital for this infection, we were even more surprised when we met the other kids on her ward: many were in the hospital for something that would be an out-patient procedure in the U.S. (e.g., removing wisdom teeth). Sophie had room mates sleeping in the hospital in ANTICIPATION of surgery, not just from the recovery from it. The average stay were so long (4 or 5 days!) that, in addition to usual "activities" for kids, the hospital also has to provide "school" every morning for those patients conscious enough to shuffle down to the little cafeteria/activities room.

Thus, there was this interesting mix of kids in post-surgery catatonic slumber and perfectly peppy kids who were bored out of their knockers (seriously, with the wrong "sleepy to healthy" ratio the place could have easily gone "Lord of the Flies"). Needless to say, sweet Sophie was a welcome distraction for all. But the co-mingling of healthy with recovering, older with younger, and girls with boys engendered a very groovy atmosphere.

4) The power of communication skills: The worst part about this experience was our lack of Czech. (e.g., imagine my reaction when they told me that Sophie needed "to go to ambulance"..."ambulance" means clinic; it has nothing to do with sirens or blood-stained EMTs administering tracheotomies). Sophie didn't seem to mind everyone jabbering away at her in Czech, but Betsy and I both wished we could do a better job advocating for Sophie and asking clarifying questions. On this front we learned three major lessons:

• Start taking Czech lessons ASAP!
  

• Distill one's questions and request to a limited number of gestures and words (e.g., "sucking chest wound"). This worked both ways: the most helpful hospital personnel were those who accepted the language barrier and used short key phrases that we could find in our dictionaries.
  

• Smile and have faith in humanity. Help came from the strangest quarters. Our guardian angel was the ward "matron." Although she spoke not a single word of English, she put aside her laundry and food-service duties to call for doctors, walk us down to hard-to-find clinics, or rustle up the dermatology staff who had "left for the day." What a hero.

My general advice? Avoid having your child hospitalized in a country where you can't even imagine being able to say the word for "Thursday" ("čtvrtek"--as in "what do you mean she'll be in the hospital until Thursday or Friday?!!). But if you can't avoid the hospital, relax, put on your slippers, and trust that just about everybody wants to love and care for children, especially when they are as brave and cute as Sophie.