Church, Death, and Bicycling and I'm not Sambo

Salems Kyrka (Church), originally uploaded by Let Ideas Compete.

J and I have had several encounters with the Swedish medical system now. In general, I'd have to say it's a good system (but neither better nor worse than the US system). Both systems have their strengths and weaknesses. One thing I definitely beleive is that one should not believe the statistics oft quoted in the media, by politicians, and by other agenda toting individuals.

For example, we often hear that there are "47 million un-insured Americans" which works out to about one out of every eight Americans. If you remove the 12 million illegal immigrants, we're down to 35 million. Remove those that are economically able to buy insurance but opt not to (for some strange reason) and you're down to around 32 million. Consider that 47% of those reporting "no insurance" are only temporarily without insurance (they'll be back on an insurance plan within a quarter), and we're down into the 20's. I suspect that if you consider that many opt to make payments on a big screen TV, a motorcycle, or some other toy rather than pay for insurance and the number take another big cut. I wonder whether the survey question would deem someone wanting breast implants but was not covered to be "un-insured." Remove the prostitues and drug dealers whose employeers typically do not provide insurance, we're donw to the real number of truely poor. Ahh, but I digress....

So here's the real reason for this blog post. Thursday April 13, I started feeling like I was contracting the flu around 3:00 in the afternoon. I told colleagues I needed to go home early, which I did do. Once home, I laid down on the sofa and did not get up till the next morning at 9:00. All through the night I had cold chills and occassional sweats. My joints and muscles ached. I was not nausous and had no cough ot sore throat.

I drank a cup of coffee, while still lying down. Shortly after I felt a sharp and intense chest pain just under the sternum. It lasted 20 minutes or so and really scared me. I had several more episodes. Finally, J convinced me to go to the doctor around 11:00. By then the pains had stopped but while walking to the doctor, I had another. I had visions of dying on a Stockholm street.

When I got to the doctor's office and stated I had chest pains, I expected "emergency" treatment since I'm an over-50 guy. Instead, I took a number just like everyone else and waited...about 30 minutes. Now I've been to the doctor twice before and J's been to the doctor a several times. Not once have they weighed us, taken our blood pressure, pulse, or temperature - all standard practice in Colorado. (This keeps costs down and they don't need to worry about zazillion dollar lawsuits.) This time they did take my blood pressure. The nurse wrote it down on a post-it note (although my file was up on the computer). Later I saw a doctor and he listened to my heart, took some blood (to detect a heart attack and other things), and had me do an EKG. Now my opinion about the lax attention was changing. I was beginning to get very thorough attention.

After all this, he said he could find nothing wrong with my heart and it was probably a viral thing compounded by my heightened exercise (because I'm training for a 180 mile bike ride in June). However, to be cautious, I needed to go to the hospital for observation. "Don't walk." he said. "Take a taxi or ride the bus." I would have been taken by ambulance in the US at a cost of another zazillion dollars. Anyway, once at the hospital, the quality of care takes another step up. I was admitted to the cardiac unit and the competence of the nurses and doctors was much higher. They took blood every 5 hours, more EKGs, an ultra-sound image of my heart, and more listening, thousands of questions, and finally an EKG under physical duress (a stationary bike). Negative. They can say with 99.999% confidence it is not my heart, not a heart attack, not angina, not pericardisis, not any arterial blockages. Whew! They agreed with the first doctor that it was due to a viral thing coupled with exercise.

Since then I learned that a friend came down with the flu the day I was admitted to the hospital. She was in such discomfort, she too, was admitted to the hospital. However, the thing most notable about her condition was that she was also having some intense chest pain. Only she's around 30 and so they didn't go the "possible heart attack" route.

The odd thing is that in Sweden and in the US there will be no way of correlating her condition with mine unless we saw the same doctor or unless there was an epidemic. We have the technology, I wish we'd use it. Maintaining privacy would be relatively easy to do.

One thing I made official at the hospital: I am not a sambo. I had to answer the question "Are you single, married, or sambo?" Sambo mean co-habitating with someone esle, presumably of the opposite sex. I think "sambo" os a contraction of some Swedish words, but don't recall what they were. Sambos are frequent in Sweden. However, this is not indactive of loose morale values. Indeed, I think the Swedes are very moral and compassionate and truely caring for others. They are not hypocritical (at least that I've seen). So sambo's are not causing the decline of morales or anything dire.....

I was told there's also "mambo" which means "still living with mom."

The photo above is from my bike ride last weekend, a true test of my heart. Riding past, I thought that the week before I might have been in a grave like one of those in the photo. Ahh, but I escaped. Oh, death also reminds me of a movie J and I just saw. The Bucket List starring Morgan Freeman and Jack Nicholson. Five stars in my book....