Wednesday, November 30, 2011

Hospital

Time flies by so fast, it’s now December. I haven’t been blogging for a while, too many things going on. But generally, I feel very blessed these past few weeks.

Around three weeks ago, my younger sister was experiencing intermittent fevers. My mom, being the worrywart that she is, had a feeling that this may be another case of dengue fever (my sister was struck with dengue just last May 2011). So we had her platelet count checked over two days, and as soon as we saw the drastic drop, we decided to bring her to the ER. Another check was made there and another drop in her platelet count. So, she was confined yet again.

The dengue wasn’t that bad. A few days later, she was feeling a lot better. As the doctor says: “she is clinically well and no fever for the past 72 hours.” But before she will officially be released, the doc wanted another round of xray because the xray that was taken during her second day in the hospital showed a small sign of some liquid in her lungs (and by then, some antibiotics were being administered to her).

Surprise surprise, the second round of xray revealed that this whitish thing in the scans dramatically increased from a small block to the whole left and right lungs! The doc panicked like crazy, called up both infectious and pulmonary doctors to do some consults.

Turns out… my sister caught a very severe case of pneumonia! From then on,the doctors administered the “ultimate” antibiotic to clear up her lungs. If that didn’t work, whatever that was inside had to be drained. Administering the antibiotic had to take 10 days. We ended up staying in the hospital for three weeks. Finally yesterday, she was discharged.

We all know that getting confined in the hospital is very expensive. And in this case, it’s mostly the antibiotics that’ll kill the bill. Amidst all these though, what a blessing that it was only this year that I enrolled my sister as my dependent in the HMO in my company (my parents used to have her under blue cross but discontinued it starting last year). I just realized how important these health cards are! Although we do pay for it, but at least during these cases, we can utilize them. Subtracting philhealth and intellicare, we ended up paying just around 70k in total. Thank you Lord.

What’s important though is that my sister is safe, she’s alive and kicking, and she’s going back to school tomorrow after three weeks out! haha Good luck to her catching up on schoolwork.

And finally my mom can sleep soundly now – she was the one staying in the hospital the whole three weeks.

5 comments:

vyki said...

glad your sis is fine now ;)

onga ang bilis! kita kita naman tyo mga bruha ;p

ledabrigino said...

"it’s mostly the antibiotics that’ll kill the bill." -- how can i NOT know this! papa also had a pneumonia (malamang hospital acquired) when he had his stroke almost 2 months ago. when u look at the bill, surprisingly "medicines" talaga ung malaking breakdown (also antibiotics in his case), almost 1/3of the total bill!

anyway, yeah, ang impt, ok na sister mo. and be thankful not only because she's already fine, but also because these hospitalizations make us realize how much we should be saving and investing sa health natin diba! :)

bev said...

@Leda - yep, you're right. And I can only imagine yung sa dad mo, grabe na gastos yun! Anyway, we really really need to take care of ourselves. Exercise, eat right, and huwag mag pa stress!

sally said...

nakuu buti ok na si samantha.ang hirap pa pati pag bata ang may sakit.

i'm still contemplating pano iwowork around yung ganitong case sa budget ko. for now yung insurance palang ni mama (critical illness na insurance) ang nagawa kong first step.grabe sa mother side , sunod2 din nagkakasakit :(

bev said...

@Sally - naka file ba as HMO dependent sa iyo mga kapatid mo? That really helps.