The hospital needs renovation, no question. However, my Mother received two surgeries there after a…read morebad fall both which required a very high level of skill. The surgery was successful and doctor's in Dallas checked her over when she was able to return. They told me that she had gotten excellent care.
The hopital didn't really provide food to the patients, or not food you would want to eat. I took food everyday. No one, not even doctors spoke English. Luckily I had my friend to interpret. Shortly after we got there they took my Mother away, not telling me where but said "stitches" when I asked after 5 hours waiting in the middle of the ER. This space was a mix of people on gurneys with various needs with a small area in the middle of the room with 10 chairs in a circle for family and patients not needing a gurney. A girl with 2 swollen black eyes sat next to me and told me her woes from the previous night. She was still drunk. An elderly man would occassionally rise up, arms stretched moaning loudly and say "Sil vous plait" and then fall back into the gurney. A couple of inches from my right shoulder was a bare foot, dirty and bloody. I decided best not to look right, best not to look left, if I looked at the floor I could miss the Fellini scene. We got there at 5:00 in the morning and it was 7:00 before I saw Mother. The doctor said her eye is gone. I said "Gone? where did it go?" My friend explained she no longer had an eye. Then there was bleeding on the brain from one of the bones which was broken in the fall. She went to Intensive Care. The next morning when I arrived for visitation I was told she was gone. They had moved her for brain surgery. massive rush to find my friend and get to the second hopital, this one. The taxi left us at the bottom of a dirt road. We had a Letter identifying the building. We walked up the hill past many of the hopital's complex of buildings. All in deplorable shape. Patients in their open gowns smoking cigarettes outside the doors. We made it up the hill finally and found her with much effort. She was out of surgery but we couldn't see her, so we left. For the next week i walked 30 minutes to get food, took a bus 45minutes, then walked another 30 minutes up the hill to her building. There were no doors on the building, there were no lights on. the room was large with french mouldings, decorative cement tile floors, large french doors looking onto a beautiful veranda. At some point in the past it was an elegant hospital. Two nurses were washing and combing and drying my mother's hair very carefully. They also came daily to massage her arms with lotion. There was no built-in equipment, a pay TV that looked like it was from the 60's which we couldn't get to work. The food was some sort of grain patty, whitish with a yellowish sauce. This was served everyday. It was an adventure, not in the best way. However I can report that the bill for 2 weeks of hospital, ICU, ER, 2 surgeries, ambulance, meds, etc. total was about $25,000. We pay tremendously for the bank lobby atmosphere of our hospitals. I think there could be a middle way less expensive, less fancy with a focus on care of the patient than on the furniture.
