Hospital 2

This week I had to go twice to the hospital in Brasilia to have blood tests and get hooked up to the electrocardiogram as part of my treatment for the study of deep vein thrombosis. It was a little boring and having a long bus journey to the capital twice in three days was a little tiring. I have been treated for six months more or less now and the treatment is working but very slowly. The doc told us that this happens in some people and in others its really fast and for some people they have to take meds for the rest of their lives. I now am part of the next phase, taking meds for another 15 months to study how well it works. Its more or less the same routine as before, a four-weekly checkup to make sure that I’m taking the right amounts of pills and to alter if its needed. I have to have some more blood tests but the place that will do them requires more info from my main doctors and here in Brasil this usually means piles of paperwork, my doc said it’ll take a week or so to get everything they asked for ready. Theres so much bureaucracy here in Brasil, documents are required – sometimes in triplicate – for everything and anything. Hopefully it won’t take too long to get it all organized.

The hospital

I have been getting treatment for around the last four months from the Hospital in Brasilia for deep vein thrombosis and have to go every four weeks for a check up and blood test. I’m taking part in a study for a new drug to help combat this type of illness and take a mix of drugs, but which drug I’m taking I don’t know, and neither do the doctors. I think it’s called the Double Blind Method. At first there were some side effects to the drugs, I knew all about them but they were still an eye-opener. The worst one was the bleeding of the gums, and I mean bleeding. Waking up with a mouth full of congealed blood all over my teeth, gums, face and pillow was an experience that I’ll pass on next time round hahahaha!! It took more than a month for the side effects to pass as I became accustomed to the meds. The docs told me that in a couple of months I will have to have a full work up as part of the study and this requires many tests that the Brasilian public health service generally don’t pay for. The costs of these tests are very high, and we’re not talking about a few pounds or dollars here, one of the six tests was over R$2000. It’s possible to ask for a procedure here to ask the health service to pay for this for me and we went to visit them this afternoon to fill out the documents required for this. Roberta was with me to find out more about this, although my doctors at the hospital all speak English there was no guarantee that they would at the Ministerio Publico De Saude. It was a few minutes for the consultation and everything was all sorted with the costs getting paid for me. They will do this as my father also has this problem and needs to take medication for thrombosis for the rest of his life. I have to wait now for the hospital to give me that day to go to the hospital and have the exams, should be a lot of fun