emergency health care in Hungary

You know how parents say those obnoxious things like, "Don't run around the pool! You'll get hurt!"

Turns out they were right.

Yesterday at the Kliewers a trampoline/water fight escalated into Austin throwing Heather into the pool. In her haste to retaliate, she ran out of the pool, slipped, and tried to brace herself against the wall -- just in time to slice her hand open on a large metal plate. Not pleasant.

Fortunately, we have a nurse living nearby who is fluent in Hungarian (and 8 other languages! She's amazing). She took us on a tour of our local healthcare options.

First stop: the nearby town of Erd to the clinic. No English anywhere. No way we could possibly have found it without Beth. No way they could help us. They directed us to a hospital in Budapest, which we found out was the only emergency room open in all of Budapest that night. A city of two million. One emergency room. We braced ourselves for a long night!

At the second place, the emergency room was not, as one might think, at the sign labeled Trauma Care. Nope, you had to drive around for several minutes until you found the orthopedic center. Because that makes perfect sense.

Anyway, we got in and out relatively quickly, and Heather didn't need stitches after all, although she's all wrapped up and her hand is pretty much useless. :) And despite the communication issues, and substandard medical practices we witnessed everywhere, we were surprised to find one benefit of Hungarian health care: the whole thing was free. everything, including the tetanus shot. We slipped the doctor a tip of about $15. nice. We've learned that there is an American health clinic -- but the charges are also American, and would have cost a couple hundred dollars. Fascinating.

I'm afraid I'll have to experience a bit of Hungarian health care myself, as my allergies are killing me today. I can actually see the pollen moving everytime the wind blows -- and with no air conditioning and temperatures around 85 degrees, we have to have the windows open. I'm dying. It's lunchtime, and just today I've already used several tissues and an entire roll of toilet paper.

Yeah, Field Day outside on Wednesday is going to be loads of fun.