Pronto Soccorso

I got back from Chicago Wednesday evening, December 10. I had a good visit with my family and especially with my grandmother. It had been a very long time since I had spent that much time with her, and since I had seen the whole Butler clan together. The journey home was not so very pleasant, though. My flight from Chicago to Paris was officially delayed just over 3 hours, though it was more like 4 1/2 by the time we actually took off. I ended up missing the connection to Bologna in Paris, despite having given myself a 4 hour layover in case of a delay from Chicago. Then the flight to Bologna was delayed 20 minutes, so I finally got home about 7:30 pm, about 22 hours after my arrival at the Chicago airport the day before.

But, of course, the trip was not the end of my adventures in the last few days! I woke up Thursday morning with a mild backache, and, thinking that it was from sleeping on planes, etc. I didn't worry about it. I got Emily ready for school and walked her there. By the time I made it back to the house, though, my back pain had increased greatly and I had to run to the bathroom to vomit. I managed to call Jeff and tell him to come home from work, and spent the next hour and a half on the couch or in the bathroom crying, vomiting, and trying to deal with the intense pain. Honestly, if I had known how to call an ambulance, I probably would have. Poor Jeff had a dead car battery at work, so it took him quite a while to get home. He finally got home about 10:00 and we took off for the hospital.

We went right to Pronto Soccorso (which means ready or prompt help), the equivalent of the Emergency Room. The nurses did not speak English, but it wasn't too hard to communicate that I was in pain and where it hurt. Luckily, most medical terms are from Latin and are very similar in Italian and English. They put me on a gurney and a doctor (who spoke a little English) did a quick examination before I was sent to what seemed to be a holding room. There were several other patients and their family members waiting there and they were constantly moving in and out. I was still in pain, but not vomiting anymore, and the pain was beginning to subside a little.

After about 30 minutes, I was taken back to an examining room with 2 doctors and a nurse. One of the doctors - I think he was an intern - spoke pretty good English. They examined me and asked some questions and told me that I probably had a kidney stone. Kidney stone is colica renale (renal colic) in Italian. I was given a shot for pain and an IV with more medication. After that, the pain finally went away. The doctors said that they would order an X-ray and an ultrasound, and I was sent back to the holding room.

A little while later, I was taken to another area of the hospital for the ultrasound and X-ray. The radiologist who performed the ultrasound spoke some English, and one of her interns spoke it even better. She could not find a kidney stone in the right kidney (where the pain had been), so she said it must have passed, but found a small one developing on the left. I was then taken for the X-ray and wheeled back to the holding room after the X-ray was developed.

A nurse came a little while later and told me we were going for another visit in another department. I thought at first that she said Neurology, but it turned out to be Urology. The Urologist spoke English and explained a little more about what had happened and what we should do next. She gave me some prescriptions to have filled. She just wrote them on one of the papers that we were given to take home, not on a special prescription pad. Then I went back to the holding room.

A few minutes later, the 2 doctors who had examined me came out, asked if the pain was gone, then told me we were done. The nurse took out my IV, and we left. The only information that the hospital took from me was a copy of my passport. They did not take an address, insurance information, or anything about payment. We were told by some of Jeff's coworkers to call our insurance, which we did, and they said that they would send a guarantee of payment to the hospital. They had a nurse ask about what had been done for me, I guess to make sure we had received appropriate treatment. I was told to make a follow up appointment on the Army base, but they seemed satisfied with what had been done at the Italian hospital.

All together, I did not think that our experience was very much different from an American ER, except that I think the wait may have been a little less, there were definitely fewer people there waiting, and far less paperwork. The whole visit took just over 3 hours. I did notice a poster on the wall about ER visits. I could not read everything that it said, but the gist that I got was that if your reason for visiting the ER was legitimate (a real medical emergency, and there were 3 categories of legitimate reasons, from life-threatening to just needing immediate care) that the visit would be free (on the social health care plan), but that if it should have been taken care of in a regular doctor's visit, you would be charged for it. Seems like a good way to keep people from overusing the ER.

After he took me home, Jeff went and had my 4 prescriptions, including one that I have to take for a month, filled for 39 Euro (about 52 dollars). Just a neat little fact, all the medicine boxes that I have seen in Italy have Braille labels imprinted into them in addition to their regular labels. I hope that I do not have to use the prescription that I was given for pain, because it is an injection. I was given 5 vials and 5 sterile syringes, with instructions only in Italian on how to use them. So now I am home, drinking lots of water and hoping that the medicine with shrink the stone on the left side so that I do not have to go through that again!