The Travelling Teacher: El Salvador - Medical Misery Part 1: the Maddening Meniscus

May 15

Hello everyone!

Click here for Medical Misery Part 2

Hannah and I don’t think we’ve had the best of luck since moving to El Salvador. Cars breaking down, the house flooding, dogs getting sick. The one thing we’ve had is our health. Well, until recently…

Hannah in recovery after surgery

Internet picture. Been here a few times this month
but never thought to stop to get a photo...

That is a picture of Hospital de Diagnóstico. I have been to this area before as it is where many medical specialists have their offices. When I returned from the Dominican Republic in early 2023 with a large, strange swelling on my collarbone, I came to the dermatologist here to get treatment.

Quite a bit of pus!

The treatment room of the dermatologist - as you can
see from the poster, they also do plastic surgery

I have been here a lot in the last month. There are two chapters here: one for Hannah, and one for me.

On the phone pre-op - she wasn't allowed her
phone later on, which caused some problems

My new toy - note the large boot on my foot...

Hannah’s hospital hell

Whilst this visit happened quickly, it wasn’t expected until the final day of April. Hannah’s had a chronic issue with her knee for a few months. It turns out that the ‘issue’ was a complete meniscus tear. Surgery needed.

Novak Djokovic had a similar issue, then won Olympic
gold a few months later. That's what Hannah is clinging to...

One perk of being an international teacher is decent insurance. We set a date for May 15th. All that had to happen was for pre-authorisation to be cleared before then. Every necessary document was sent on May 5th. We were told it may take 3 to 4 days. So we waited…

…and waited…

…and arrived at May 13th with no news. Unaware as to whether Hannah’s major surgery was actually happening. I managed to find a WhatsApp chat number (very well hidden) and sent a message. This was the reply:

It wasn’t one hour. It was five hours, with me receiving the messages in the middle of a run. Having to stop every couple of minutes to send messages to try to find this mysterious pre-authorisation was frustrating (foreshadowing: not the most frustrating run of the month). A particularly joyous moment was being told that, without pre-authorisation being confirmed, the procedure would cost us almost $20,000. Oh, and that not enough documentation had been submitted, even though we had submitted everything that had been asked of us.

After confirming that Hannah was not a professional tennis player, it eventually came through later that evening. Push on as planned to a 5:30am visit to the hospital, with the surgery happening at 7am.

After waiting a while and other insurance elements needing to be sorted out (foreshadowing: not the only insurance issues to occur that day), Hannah went into surgery at around 8am. I was told it would take one to two hours. As instructed, I went up to floor 4 and waited. For 3 hours, with my only break being to get a Wendy’s (foreshadowing: not the only Wendy’s to be eaten on that day).

Wendy's is a short walk from the hospital

It gets to a little before 11am. Concerned and annoyed, I start ringing the reception bell ceaselessly until a receptionist the actual doctor arrives. In broken English, he explains what he did (it went well and he did some stitching and some trimming) before allowing me to enter the ‘recuperation room’ to see her. Hannah is high as a kite - she barely remembers me coming in. What’s remembered is that I’m not allowed to leave her phone with her or make a call in that room, and that I’m essentially told to leave the hospital and come back at 6pm; at this point, they’ll tell me whether she is able to come home that night.

Maxi knew something was going on,
so decided to hide in a cupboard

I return at 5:45pm to floor 4. A few people in the waiting room but no workers to be found. No light on in the reception. It gets to 6pm. That’s enough time, I think. Ringing the reception bell ceaselessly doesn’t work this time, so I do something I probably shouldn’t have done. I go to the imposing, silver doors of the ‘recuperation room’ and touch the doorbell. Not touch. Hold. Until someone comes to open it.

The recuperation room looked something like this - it's an internet picture

The door slides open to show a room…with no patients. Before I combust in horror, the worker is able to explain that patients have been moved to floor 5. Up I go, and they locate Hannah’s room. Of course with no phone, Hannah was unable to communicate with me that she had been moved. And of course, nothing had been communicated by the hospital. This seems…dumb.

The room looked similar to this - the first picture of the blog is
what it actually was like. It had a TV but they didn't give Hannah the remote...

After an interminable wait with a machine beeping every 10 seconds, the doctor comes in, inspects, says all is good and that we can go…as soon as everything has been cleared by the insurance company. Not this time, I think. I have their WhatsApp now. Remarkably, it took less than 5 minutes, rather than 5 hours, to be connected to an agent, who quickly asserted that they had given approval for Hannah to leave.

Only then we were told that the hospital’s local insurance needed to clear us to leave. Why, I don’t know. The one doctor who spoke decent English said this would take…1 hour. It’s already gone 8pm. I used this time wisely to go to Wendy’s to get my second substandard fast food meal of the day.

View of the hospital from the car park at 9pm. Parking was
free because of the scale of the procedure, which was nice.

After jumping through seemingly unnecessary and invisible red tape, we were able to leave soon after 9pm, with me ready to play nurse for the next couple of weeks until Hannah flew back to the US. Well, it started well…