Hello Tangerineys!
Today we are finally telling you the story of our second trip ever to the emergency room
in Mexico.
First of all, thank you to everyone who's been following us on social media and sending
us messages, comments, asking how he is.
Thankfully, Jordan is doing a lot better and we're still on like a very restrictive diet
to try to keep all the health issues in check.
But essentially today, we're going to be telling you what the experience was like going to
what turned out to be a private hospital, seeing specialists, the costs involved in
all of this, how much English and Spanish there was, and everything in between.
Alright, let's get into it.
To sort of like lay the groundwork, Jordan was experiencing some symptoms leading up
to this big episode that he had that actually took us to the hospital.
We sort of both thought it was food-related, like food allergies because it was only when
he ate certain foods like wine would trigger this, avocado sometimes and then his throat
would feel like it was closing up a little bit, or scratchy, or difficulty breathing, things
like that.
So, there was a little bit happening leading up to this and eventually we just reached
a tipping point.
I feel like I need to put a gigantic disclaimer; if you see this red rash on my chest, one;
I’m not sunburned and two... well, actually just one.
I’m not sunburned, I don't know what this is, I get this sometimes from heat rash, like
when it's hot sometimes - and you just put sunscreen right there.
Yeah, I just put sunscreen here, so I’m possibly reacting to the sunscreen or my body
just likes to have random reactions for no reason, so it could be that too.
OK, so now that Jordan is done picking up Laska's poop, how about you describe what
happened the morning of - that you were feeling and the symptoms how they like started amping
up kind of?
So, after having coffee that morning, we were meeting one of our Patrons for breakfast
and once I got there, I was not feeling well at all, and I ended up going to the grocery
store and buying an electrolyte water, hoping that it was electrolytes that was making my
head feel light and my arms tingle and my legs tingle, but that didn't help and it just
got worse.
So then I’m - and breathing.
Oh yeah, and I was having difficulty breathing.
I wouldn't have done this if I didn't absolutely think I had to and I was like "I need to go
to the hospital right now where they can take care of me if anything happens", like if I
pass out or something because I felt like I was very close to doing that.
We ran to the car and hurried to the emergency room which was just a few minutes away.
Flying over topes, throwing caution to the wind because Jordan was truly scared, I was
scared.
And so, we're on the way there, neither of us know are we going to have to do this in
Spanish or English because our Spanish is coming along, thanks to Rocket Languages but
specific medical words like that... It'll still be a while before we can fully master those.
So, then we got in there...
I’m kind of freaking out at this point and if you don't know a language very very very
well, then you forget a lot in high stress - And then you get flustered.
Yeah yeah.
This was stressful and scary.
Yeah, in high-stress situations, you know like 1/10 of what you actually know [Laughter],
but I was able to explain, "I’m having trouble breathing, I don't know all these words that
I need to say", like I don't know the word for lightheadedness, I don't know the word
for various organs and I was wondering if there's a doctor who speaks English and very
quickly they hooked me up with a doctor and she spoke English quite well although she
wouldn't admit it.
But before I went in with the doctor, they took my vitals right away and I wasn't waiting
more than a couple minutes to see the doctor and she did a full exam after asking questions
all about my medical history and things like that.
The very first test she ran was to determine whether I might be diabetic or not, so she
did a glucose test and also the same day she did two blood tests, a urine tests...
Any medications? I don't know that word.
Medications?
I'm only taking Benadryl.
But nothing else and not always.
Only sometimes when there's a reaction.
When there are problems breathing.
And the ultrasounds?
Oh yeah yeah, and then they took me in with a specialist to get an ultrasound and that
took about a half hour.
I have never had one of those done before.
Basically they were looking at all of my internal organs, seeing if they all looked OK, if
they could see kidney stones, bladder stones, anything like that.
We got the test results back very quickly.
That was something I was quite impressed with in this whole visit is not only the facilities
were really - looked like very modern and everything like that, but they do all the
tests in-house and they get you with a specialist very quickly and all your blood tests and
urine tests back within a couple hours which is unlike anything I’ve ever experienced
in the U.S..
Something else unique about this, they did take Jordan’s vitals and we had the whole
doctor's visit, they even did the glucose test without payment, but as soon as it was
time for the other things like blood tests and the ultrasound and everything, then we
had to go pay for those things before we had them all done.
So that's a little bit different I think than in the U.S. usually you're paying after the
fact.
In the U.S. they won't even tell you the price until afterwards.
Yeah.
We didn't know the price either but all of this was like total - like panic situation.
We would have paid anything to make sure Jordan was OK.
But something they told us though was that for residents versus tourists or travelers,
there's a big price difference.
So, we were paying a significantly lower price because we have temporary residency.
You might be able to get the local price if you're living within Mexico somewhere and
you don't necessarily need temporary residency or permanent residency as far as we could
understand, but if you know, feel free to let us know in the comments so other people
can be more informed but they were asking for like an electric bill or a lease or something,
and so obviously with our temporary residency card, we just showed them that and that was
good to go.
So, we came back about an hour later for the test results; the blood test and the urine
test and she was also going to go over the ultrasound test with me because she had been
talking to the ultrasound specialist and I don't know what that doctor was called.
This is actually the problem with not knowing the Spanish words for all these, you would first
have to know them in English, therein lies the dilemma.
There were times where she didn't know the word in English and said it in Spanish and
we were able to fill in the blanks, so that's really comforting to know that we do have
those abilities.
If you are wanting to learn Spanish with Rocket Languages which is the program that we recommend
above all others, they're actually having a sale right now, so we'll put the link for
that.
You can even do a free trial before you buy it, we'll put that down below in the description.
Quick note; it is only for the first thousand people and for four days, so if you are thinking
about doing it, I would jump on it right now because it's a very limited time sale and
number sale, limited time number sale [Laughter].
All the tests pretty much came back negative. Or within normal range.
Yeah yeah.
Like it's the normal range.
You don’t have anemia, the white cells are in normal level.
How's renal function?
And the renal function, you are in range. It's working.
The kidneys are working.
There was a little bit of something weird that they found with the ultrasound but they
said it was probably something I was born with and nothing that should affect me negatively.
So then comes the fun part!
Oh yes, yes.
Jordan you're blushing, why are you blushing?
[Laughter].
Then, he took his clothes off for another woman!!
[Laughter] they're like - "take your pants off" - "you're getting a couple shots in the
ass" [Laughter]. Say "butt," you can't say that!
[Laughter]
[Laughter] "You're getting a couple shots in the buttocks".
That’s exactly how they said it.
One was a steroid to keep my breathe way, what's that called?
Airway?
Airway [Laughter], my airway open for 24 hours, making sure I wouldn't have difficulty breathing.
And then another was - one of the medications they were going to prescribe to me but they
wanted that in my system immediately.
Please don’t die, I don’t wanna go to the hospital again.
Been there too many times already.
After getting the test results back, the doctors’ suspicions in the beginning that it was acid
reflux related was kind of confirmed.
You might think that acid reflux is nothing serious but I actually don't think that's
the case, it can actually have a lot of bad side effects.
In fact, if I remember right, acid reflux or what they call GERD, G-E-R-D is one of
the biggest killers in the U.S. behind like heart disease and cancer.
So with it looking strongly like it's acid reflux [Laughter], basically what we had to
do is completely do like a hard turn and change diet up immediately; remove coffee, no more
drinking margaritas, no spicy food, no processed food, no foods high in fat - no dairy.
And no dairy, yeah things like that - basically I couldn't eat any of the good stuff [Laughter].
So we immediately just started making like fresh raw salads...
There's something on me...
Whole foods, lots of produce, lots of greens, things like that to calm down the symptoms
or attempt to calm down the symptoms.
They also asked you to sleep differently.
Yeah, to sleep at an incline and favor of my left side if I was going to sleep on my
side.
So, in addition to the diet changes, they had us go pick up three different things from
the pharmacy.
I picked all those things up, started the diet changes immediately and I was still struggling
hardcore for several days to come.
So, once we got the verdict sort of thing, we just basically stayed at home so we could
cook all of our own food and be in a stress-free environment and be close to the hospital in
case Jordan needed to go back which did end up happening a few days later.
He felt like he couldn't breathe at all and again the same like tingly fingers and numbness,
lightheadedness, so we hopped to right back over there to see what was going on.
And the other thing that made me want to go back to the hospital immediately,
that second time was I was feeling like I was having a lot of trouble breathing and
then I felt my heartbeat and it was super irregular.
This second emergency room visit, this is on a Sunday now and it turns out going on
a Sunday is more expensive than going on any other day probably because they're paying
the employees more.
So, what did they do this time?
It was a different doctor, so I had to catch her up.
Unfortunately, she didn't speak as good of English as the first doctor.
But fortunately, she did speak English.
Yes, yes.
She started off by saying "I don’t speak English very well", and then proceeded
to basically be fluent in English [laughter].
Yeah.
So, we went over history again, what we did the last time, and the only test that was run
the second time was an electrocardiogram or an EKG to look at my heartbeat and see what
was going on with that. And it only took a couple minutes.
With those results, she was able to confirm that there were some irregularities in my
heartbeat, both in pace and speed.
So, then she's like "i think you should see a cardiologist immediately".
They were able to set up an appointment for me, just a few hours later it was this cardiologist
who was coming from Cozumel to Playa del Carmen who I guess goes back and forth from those
two places all the time.
A few hours later, we were in Playa meeting with the cardiologist.
Something quite different than the U.S. was seeing these specialists so quickly.
Like seeing a cardiologist the same day was just like - I mean, wild to me.
Back in the U.S. when I had to go to specialists and go to doctors’ visits all the time trying
to figure out what was wrong with me, it could take three months to see a specialist.
Like that would be their first availability, so this was really cool.
We're in Playa del Carmen, the cardiologist shows up and he has the best English of any
of them.
So I was like "oh, thank goodness".
He did his wizardry magic on me, ran some tests to determine whether there was something
wrong with my heart.
The appointment was maybe 30 or 45 minutes long and by the end of it, he was convinced
that there was absolutely nothing wrong with my heart, the lower speed at which my heart
was beating was not abnormal for my age and physical activity level. And that the irregular
heartbeat, like the irregular intervals, that was - I forget the name of it but there was
some condition that was very common, often was onset by caffeine.
So, it's something he'd seen all the time and didn't seem to be worried about it at
all.
Thankfully that was basically it for the hospital and doctor's visits.
I still wasn't feeling that well, my symptoms had improved a little bit at this point.
Something that was super unique was we got the cell number of every doctor that we saw.
I’ve never gotten this cell phone number, I haven't been able to text my doctor ever,
ever in my life.
That was pretty cool to be able to keep in touch with them and like for example, with
my first doctor, I felt like I might be having some side effects from one of the medications,
so I texted her wondering if it's okay to get off of that one and she said yes that
should be fine.
And all of the doctors were communicating with each other on your behalf.
Oh yeah yeah, that was something else I was super nice about it.
If we got this same treatment in the U.S., we would probably be in medical debt for sure,
absolutely.
Forever [Laughter].
Forever.
Funny but not funny.
OK, so now for the prices; just keep in mind that these are the resident prices, so if
you were not a resident, just a traveler or a tourist, it would be more expensive.
We're not exactly sure how much more expensive.
So, the initial visit when we first went in to the ER, it was two hundred and
fifty pesos for the consult itself.
The glucose test only cost twenty nine pesos.
And the organ ultrasound was 1,433 pesos.
The urine analysis and blood tests, all of those that they did, so there were multiple
than like a whole long list, that was 1,698 pesos.
And those super fun shots that they gave you...
57 pesos.
Three prescriptions that they prescribed and then later the one prescription that the cardiologist
prescribed were 828 pesos and 336 pesos.
And the cardiologist visit, that was 800 pesos.
For whatever reason, we had to pay cash for that one because he was coming into the office
or he's like a guest at that hospital...
A contractor or something.
Something like that.
We were able to pay with a credit card for everything else though.
So, total, we're looking at 6,402 pesos.
Given all that went into this, and how fast we got test results back, and how modern the
facilities were, all the doctors spoke English, and everything involved and also that it's
a private hospital, I’m - I’m surprised. Honestly. That it wasn't more.
I thought it was going to be more.
But I would give these whole experience five stars.
All of these doctors were super confident and these hospitals were clean, well-maintained,
new equipment, just as good if not better than what you would find in the U.S. Hopefully
we covered all the information that you guys were looking for out of this video.
If not though, if you have any other questions, leave them down below as a comment.
We're also going to link on the end screen to our previous visit that we at an ER also
with Jordan because he seems to really like going to hospitals...
And that was at a public hospital that time, totally different experience.
But anyway, thank you guys for watching this video, give it the old thumbs up if you liked
it and subscribe to our channel to see more videos of our life in Puerto Morelos, Mexico.
Travels, international travels that we have coming up and one last thing...
I have to loosen up...
OK [Bell rings]...
GONG that bell! So you get notified when we put out new videos...
And we will see you in the next one!