Gallbladders, GNR, and the Portuguese Medical Adventure

SPEAKER_01 0:04

Welcome to As the Dinoson's Turn, where we chronicle the adventures of the Dinoson family, a seemingly ordinary family from Iowa who decided, hey, you only live once. So let's move to Portugal. And now your hosts, Jason and Tracy Dynason.

SPEAKER_02 0:19

Hi, welcome to another episode of As the Dinoson's Turn. Now we'll take you inside, I guess, Portuguese surgery. And you had an adventure gallbladder adventure.

SPEAKER_00 0:33

Look, it was kind of an emergency, but not it needed to be done, not uh the kind of emergency where it was uh I'm in the emergency room and I'm tired, like going septic or anything. No, I uh, you know, like what do you do on breaks as a teacher? You go and do all of your medical appointments. And turns out that they did a scan because I was having pains in my right side randomly. When people push on my stomach, I was like, Yeah, sometimes I get a pain there. Well, my gallbladder was full of stones that are like four of them were the size of dice, like three centimeter diameter. Um, and then there were some smaller ones, so that had to come out, and the surgeon was like, We should do this sooner rather than later, because you have some small stones too that are sitting in the scan right near that duct. And that's that's a message for disaster because there's literally no more room in your gallbladder. Um, so um they uh wanted to take that out. So Thursday of our Easter break, um right before Easter weekend, I went and had surgery. And I have to tell you, it was kind of a surreal experience. First of all, this is the private health system, not public. Um, public health system, yes, I could have gotten a surgery that quickly if it was an urgent, emergent type of thing. Um, because our appointment was like what Friday, Monday, Friday or Monday, and they're like, Thursday, you're gonna have surgery. And I was like, all right. Um, second of all, it is at the private hospital. It's at the hospital, it's not at like a surgery center. Every other surgery that you know Jason has had pretty much has been at a surgery center. My um, I've had one surgery that was at the hospital, but other than that, that was it. When you had your gallbladder out, that was a whole different experience. So, first of all, surgeries, my surgery was done in the late afternoon, early evening. So we didn't even go to check-in until like 3, 3:30 in the afternoon. And my surgery was scheduled for 7 p.m. Um, it was delayed because another surgery needed to move from laparoscopic to open, and that takes more time. So I didn't have surgery until 10 p.m. I had quit eating at 10 a.m. So that meant that I'd had 12 hours of no food. Um, and they started giving me fluids to make sure my blood sugar was cocaine that whole time. Like right around 7, they started giving me fluids because it was like, well, it's gonna be a while. But we've never had an afternoon surgery or appointment. It's always been like leave the house at 4 a.m. or 3:30, not 3:30 in the afternoon. So it was very different. Um, we did have a private hospital room, which in a public system that might not have happened, and there was an extra bed in the room, so they made up that bed so Jason could stay there. His stay and his breakfast cost us a good 80 euro. Yeah. And um, it was nice because I got back to the room like around 1 a.m. or so, and then we slept, and then they brought us coffee and um bread and butter, and we're talking like rolls with butter and jam. Yeah, that was breakfast. It's a traditional Portuguese breakfast. You could have had tea. I'm not a tea person, but it was okay coffee. I was looking forward to going home. Um, but yeah, the worst thing, and this is this is my one complaint. I did not get fuzzy hospital socks. I'm going to complain next time I have to have surgery and say I need fuzzy hospital socks. I might have to have Jason bring me my own. Because they did find that I have a couple of incisional hernias that need to be fixed. So they'll have to go back in and do that, but know more about that later. Um the entire stay, the meals, the private room, the anesthesiologist, the nursing, the doctor, the surgery like everything, um, our portion of it was 460 euros with our insurance, and that is the only bill. That's it. That's how much it was. So to let you know that um yeah, that was very nice because even with insurance in the states, you know, uh it surgeries are more than that. You know, because it is usually like three to five percent of something. Here it's like you pay no more than 10%, but then the minimum fee is 250 euro and the maximum fee is 500. That's it. They'll max you out. And so it's like you can't pay more than that. I was like, okay. Huge difference though. Every other time that we've had some type of surgery like this, like when you had your gallbladder out, they gave you like hydrocodone or tylenol with codeine.

SPEAKER_02 5:25

You get your three-day supply of the strong painkillers.

SPEAKER_00 5:30

Not here, man. They're like a combination of Tylenol and ibuprofen, and you can do that for three days, and the ibuprofen, and after that, you can do Tylenol as needed as you want. A thousand milligrams of Tylenol or paracetamol, that's what is prescribed. Um, so there were no painkills pills. No painkills, no pain pills. But I do have to say that the Tylenol was perfectly fine for me. I can't take an NSAID, so but I did take Tylenol for the first few days and it was good. So that was a huge difference. I've like, and your surgery, when you had gallbladder surgery out, it was completely different. Yours was at a surgery center, right?

SPEAKER_02 6:09

Mm-hmm. Yeah, what was like I don't even really remember it though.

SPEAKER_00 6:15

So you know, the surgery centers, they take you back, they put your stuff in a locker, then they get you ready, then it they'll you back and do surgery, and then they put you in a reclining chair and put warm towels over the top of you, and you'll get some um sugar water or a pop or something like that, and some crackers while you wake up, and then they'll get you to stand up. It took the nurse and I to get you into the car, and they sent you home. He went right home. So I think that in total you were at the surgery center like three and a half, four hours. Um, whereas I waited a good seven ahead of time before mine, and we were there for you know, we left at like what, eight o'clock in the morning, something like that. So it was a very different experience. You definitely got pain pills. Yeah. And he slept like in our bed after pain pills for days. And I think that really there's a difference in philosophy in some respects because um I think that when if I remember correctly, when you had your gallbladder out, they're like, give him pain pills, let him sleep for a couple of days. So they're trying to keep you off your feet. I wasn't allowed to get up in the middle of the night. I wasn't allowed to get up until the morning. Then I could get up, I could do that with help and all of those things, and then it was okay to move around, but before that I wasn't allowed to, not move until I'd eaten and had something to drink, and they're like, after your coffee or tea and your breakfast, then you could see about getting up. And then it was like, okay, just don't lift anything heavy, go take your child and all and keep moving around. It's really good for you. Don't lay down or sleep too much, just you know, do your thing. So I took a couple of naps, but I did not like entomb myself in the bedroom for days on end. So very different.

SPEAKER_02 8:08

Very different.

SPEAKER_00 8:09

I highly recommend. Yeah, highly recommend. It was a good experience. And I like the idea of having surgery in the late afternoon and the early evening, and then staying overnight someplace just in case. Like they want to just make sure everything's okay. The surgeon came and saw us in the morning and said, Hey, you did great, but we're gonna do another surgery again soon. I'll see you at your two-week checkup, and we'll get those stitches out and that appointments tomorrow. So I feel great. I don't know. It's good.

SPEAKER_02 8:40

It's good. Well we that was our adventure in the Portuguese medical system. We've had some other we don't do a good job documenting things like we should.

SPEAKER_00 8:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 8:52

Because you know, the name as the dinoson's turn is really accurate, but I don't know that it always comes across that way when we do our podcasts. Um we had our adventure recently of getting pulled over by the Portuguese version of the state patrol, basically.

SPEAKER_00 9:12

The Guardia Nacional de Republica. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 9:16

Not because we were speeding or they don't pull people over for speeding and stuff. That's all automated. But apparently what we were supposed to have an inspection done on our car.

SPEAKER_00 9:29

Had no idea.

SPEAKER_02 9:30

And we hadn't.

SPEAKER_00 9:32

Had no like zero idea, zero idea that that needed to be done. Because I haven't had a car, had a car inspected since I lived in like Texas in like the early 2000s. So it was like, oh, you we have to do what? And so that was a 250 euro fine. We paid it, and then we went immediately to uh go and get that taken care of. And then we learned you need new tires, you don't pass your inspections. So we had to buy new tires on top. Like it is always just if it can become more and more and more complicated, that's the way it rolls, right? So I think that, yeah, we'll we've got some video and pieces of those things. We'll uh pull all of that together so you can see it. Tomorrow morning, we will go and do our final checkup, we hope, and see if we find it.

SPEAKER_02 10:24

See if we pass inspections.

SPEAKER_00 10:26

So I don't know. It's a never, never ending, never ending. And I really wish I could tell you. When it came to like the power outage, it was like, oh well, it's just one more thing. Whatever. Hopefully it will come on. Because that's easy to deal with. Everybody's dealing with the same things. But when it's like, oh my god, I'm being pulled over by the GMR, oh my god, what am I gonna do? I think I'm gonna throw up. I think I'm gonna throw, you know, it was not good. But we got it all taken care of, and everybody's lovely. That's the other piece. You can say, Oh, I'm so sorry for taking up your day and doing this. I appreciate this as a foreigner. This was not something uh it's a whole spiel, let me tell you. I've got this down. So, but wow. Always something. It's always something, babe.

SPEAKER_02 11:10

I guess that's that could be our next podcast episode is Did we pass the inspection and talk more about how that worked? There you go.

SPEAKER_00 11:19

Inspection follow-up part two. I expect us to fail again and then find something else. I'm just telling you, that's the way we have it. So yeah, stay tuned. I have no idea how this will work, but we'll tell you how it goes next time.

SPEAKER_01 11:34

You've been listening to As the Dinastons Turn, a podcast presented by Dinaston Media Ventures. Don't forget to like and subscribe and catch us again next time for another episode.