A Visit to a Costa Rican Clinic

We’ve been in Costa Rica for almost 6 months already, running around with tarantulas, snakes and scorpions, drinking the tap water and eating at all sorts of restaurants and road-side food stands and none of us has been the least bit sick or injured… that is until a couple of weeks ago when Megan came down with a bit of a stomach bug that knocked her down a couple of pegs for 4 or 5 days.

So, not being the sick one, I looked at it as an excellent opportunity to experience first hand what a visit to the local clinic is like here in Costa Rica.

Of course, going on an adventure like this with kids, the very first thing we looked into was the cost, availability and quality of the medical system and we heard pretty much all positive reviews. Also, we shopped around for out-of-country medical insurance and found a good, comprehensive policy that we could afford.

So, with our policy in hand, Megan and I headed down to our local clinic. Having limited Spanish is one thing at the grocery store or the mechanic’s, but the medical clinic is quite another. I was actually a bit surprised that there wasn’t somebody that spoke English readily available, mind you I never directly asked that question either. Maybe there is. Megan was definitely not feeling good, but neither was she dying, so we stumbled through the initial questions at the front desk as best we could. We got confused a couple of times for sure. If I was in there with a really sick kid I think I would have had to find somebody that spoke English.

They asked us if we had insurance and I said that I would be paying cash and then claim it on my insurance policy. After a bit of confusion, they seemed to think that would be OK. After yet more confusion with the instructions, we eventually got in to see a doctor. I’m sure it took us no more than twenty minutes to see him. Things were looking up!

He spoke no English either, so asking and answering questions about symptoms and remedies was a challenge (like that Steve Martin joke, did he say NEVER drink milk, or MAKE SURE you drink milk???) Anyway, we got through that and he finally said that we should take her for a blood test. “Ah, I thought, this will be a drag. I thought I would have to go find a clinic, wait in line again, go through more confusing instructions etc. etc.”, but no, we were just sent down the hall, there was no line up at all, and the guy taking the blood (who did speak English) said to wait about 20 minutes and he’d have the results. Are you kidding me!!!!???" When was the last time it took you less than a half an hour to take blood AND get the results?

So we were given the results and given more instructions. Of these, I basically only understood to “go back”. So we returned to the desk where we originally checked in (noticing a couple of other people waiting in line smirking at the obviously lost gringos) and without having to wait again, were sent right back to the same doctor who saw us initially.  He looked at the results and told us that Megan has “rotovirus”, or one of several viruses commonly referred to as the stomach flu. Most people have come in contact with this virus in their lives and it’s rarely a real danger other than for very small children. This was great news because I don’t have life insurance on Megan yet anyway.

The doctor told us that this is going around Costa Rica these days and gave us a prescription for some Gatorade-like rehydration liquid, some Acetaminophen, and some pills to help the stomach cramps. And we’re done! All that we have left to do is go back to the main desk and pick up our bill.

And the cost you ask? Well, for the medical consult AND the blood work it cost us 31000 Colones, or approximately $59 Canadian dollars. As we had Tylenol at home we didn’t get that part of the prescription filled, but for the liquid and the stomach pills, our total was around 4000 Colones or approx. $7.50 Canadian. I’m still contemplating whether $67 is worth the hassle of making the claim or not. (Probably not).

And from the time we left home to go to the clinic till the time we got back with the prescription filled, it was less than 3 hours. When’s the last time you went to a walk-in clinic and accomplished all of that in that amount of time??

Oh yeah, and Megan got better. (Unfortunately Nathan, Grandpa and I all ended up with the same bug a few days later, but no trips to the clinic were necessary.)