Hospitality of New Zealand Hospitals - a First-Hand Account

Most of you probably don't know, but a few weeks ago, I was in the hospital.

If you're squeamish, you might just want to skim over this. You've been warned.

I mean, I have to cover all the bases for my readers, so no stone left unturned, gall stone or otherwise.

At the 24-Hour Surgery place...

When I went to bed that Friday night, I felt like I had a bad stomach ache and a bit of chest pain. For the next four hours, the pain grew excruciating, so much so that not only couldn't I sleep, but I was screaming. I became nauseous as well and was certain I would throw up. Josh finally convinced me to go to the 24-hour doctor and off we went at about 2:30 in the morning.

Once there, I had grown so nauseous that I vomited. Normally, my stomach aches dull after I puke. Not this time.

Once they called me back, Nurse Natalie was quick to make sure I had pain and nausea relief, which I was eternally grateful for. I will say that I've never had strong drugs like that, but man, that first round of morphine did the trick.

In the meantime, I met Dr. Michael from Ohio. Small world, right? He looked at my "I don't have an accent, y'all do" sweatshirt and guessed that I was from West Virginia. I enthusiastically said "No! Kentucky!" He said Kentucky wasn't somewhere he considered Southern. I told him it definitely is. I also called him a buckeye, which he seemed to take as a compliment.

But despite his Ohio-ness, both he and Nurse Natalie took care of me the best they could. After doing some tests, they found that the only odd result was that my white blood cell count was high, which means I had recently been fighting off an infection.

Finally, I was able to sleep for a while. I was exhausted.

I've never had an IV until this
incident. Not pleasant.

Because it was a Saturday morning around 6:30, they did not have all personnel there. They referred me to the Emergency Department at Christchurch Hospital, so there we went... with my IV needle still in my arm. (Shoutout to Nurse Natalie for not subjecting me to more needle sticks, but I found out the hard way that it is terribly painful trying to tie up my ponytail with that sticking in my vein.)

Once at the hospital, I was admitted, and had to do the whole hospital gown thing. That's never been something I wanted to experience. I was in Ward 16, known as SARA or the Surgery Assessment Review Area. As ominous as that sounds, it was just where I waited in a hospital bed while getting fluids before I could see a doctor.

And I slept, which was glorious... until the pain came back and they did not give me more morphine. I honestly can't remember when they did give me something for the pain, but I feel like it was hours after I got there.

I have to say that while the vast majority of my experience at the 24-hour place and the hospital was good, my nurse (who will remain nameless even though I definitely remembered her name) in Ward 16 seemed a bit green... The amount of beeping coming from my IV machine was scary. Every time she unhooked the machine from my arm and then reattached it, it started beeping at her (I'm assuming) because it had air in the line, which is not exactly a settling feeling when you're already in a world of pain.

Later on, I met a third-year medical student who, when I said I was from Kentucky, said she had recently been to Lexington. I proudly exclaimed that that was where I went to university. She said, "They're the ones with a really good basketball team, right?" Of course, I agreed. Again I say, small world. (She also said she went to a really good donut place, which I named North Lime Coffee and Donuts and she said, "How did you know??" I think it's pretty cool that North Lime can now say they are internationally renowned.)

After she took my history, the doctor came in (and asked me the same questions she did, which is quite annoying, but at least they want to get it right) and told me that he wanted to look at my gallbladder and see if I had gall stones or something else wrong with it... Ultrasound it was.

I've seen movies and shows portraying ultrasounds before, but I had no idea what I was in for when it came to the jelly. So. Sticky. And it got everywhere.

The good news from the ultrasound technician was that she didn't see anything wrong. In fact, she said my gallbladder looked "pristine." Score.

But what now?


I was good enough to go, even if I didn't look it.
Photo by Josh

Back to the hospital room I was rolled, where we waited for what seemed like ages. Then suddenly I was moved to Ward 15... right next door. But we didn't know why. No one had come to explain anything after the ultrasound.

Finally, my doctor, Dr. Richards, came in to give us some idea of what was going on. He said that because they didn't see anything wrong with the ultrasound, they were going to assume that my pain was caused by a stomach ulcer. Dr. Richards wanted me to stay the night and then possibly scope me the following day. I politely declined.

While New Zealand has publicly funded healthcare, it doesn't apply to me right now. Which means every cost from that day, we were paying for out of pocket. It's also why I wouldn't let Josh take me to the hospital sooner than he did.

I explained this situation to Dr. Richards, who was convinced that I was covered. But he promised to look into it. A bit later, he came back and sided with me. He said a night in the hospital costs $1,000 NZD (roughly $680 USD) and understood where I was coming from. He prescribed me some medicine to help the ulcer heal faster and told me to take some generic pain medicine (something similar to aspirin) to ease the pain that was still there. (Something he explained that I'll definitely remember is that ibuprofen, which is my go-to for pain relief, is NOT good for stomach pain and possibly could have made it worse when I took some Friday evening.) Dr. Richards told me that the ulcer would take care of itself, but to come back if the pain returned or continued.

So at about 4 o'clock on Saturday afternoon, we left the hospital.

Josh, being the amazingly supportive boyfriend he is, held my hand when I needed it, chauffeured me place to place, and told me to stop worrying about the cost because, "we have to get you better."

It's been a few weeks and I'm seemingly back to normal.

As much as I want to experience everything New Zealand has to offer, I feel like once was enough for me and the hospital.