My Experience in a London Hospital

by Paul Pakusch

It was near the end of July 2018 when Stacey and I were on a month-long trip to Europe. We had been to Germany, a cruise on the North Sea, Paris, and London was our last stop.

We woke up early in Paris to catch the Chunnel train to London. I was feeling slightly nauseous, but that wasn't unusual for me at that time in the morning so I didn't think too much of it. Once we got on the train, the ride was exciting, fast, but without any problems. When we arrived at the London train station, as soon as I stood up, I felt an aching pain in the center of my chest. I’d had a full workup of heart tests recently, so I knew it probably didn't have anything to do with my heart. The symptoms were like acid reflux, which is what I thought it was. We sat in the London train station for a while, and I hoped the pain would go away. I took some Tums to see if that would work. It did not get any better. I finally reached the point where I felt that we could get in the cab and get to the Airbnb that we were staying at.

After a few hours of resting at the Airbnb and hoping the pain will go away, I decided to call the British version of 911. They said no ambulances were available for a couple of hours, but that they would send a medic out. The medic arrived on a motorcycle. He quickly determined that I needed to go to the hospital. In London, if an ambulance is not available and a patient is capable of walking to a cab, they will have a cab take you to the hospital. And that's what the medic arranged. It didn't cost me anything up front. Normally a cab ride for a medical purpose like that would be covered under the British medical system. But I was an American, so ultimately I was going to end up paying for this.

I arrived at the emergency room of St Thomas Hospital, which is on the other end of the bridge from Big Ben. The majority of my Hospital stay was very comparable to a hospital stay in the United States. The only difference was, the payment system. In the ER, I was triaged along with other patients and had to wait about an hour and 15 minutes before someone took me back to an examining room. Over the rest of the evening, tests and x-rays determined I had a gallstone blockage. It was a Friday evening, and the next available time for an endoscopy to remove the blockage would be Monday afternoon. At that point, I knew the rest of my trip to London was shot.

On Saturday, the painkillers kept me asleep most of the time. Stacey went out and did some sightseeing on her own. A lot of people have complimented her on being able to do that in a foreign country by herself. She handled it very well. She figured out enough of the London bus system to get around, she took a hop-on hop-off bus tour, and anytime she needed help finding the hospital, she just asked people where Big Ben was. Once she found Big Ben, all she had to do was walk across the bridge and she was at the hospital.

I was moved to a private room on the 12th floor of St. Thomas Hospital with a magnificent view of London. The Eye was a couple blocks away and I could see Parliament across the river from there. With no hope of seeing anything else in London, this was everything I had for the next four nights.

By Sunday I wasn't in quite as much pain, but I had no appetite whatsoever. The hospital was feeding me a liquid diet, and I couldn't even eat most of that. Stacey took turns visiting me at the hospital, and doing some sightseeing on her own.

The doctors told me my gallbladder needed to come out, but they did not want to do that and then send me a 7-hour flight home. So the goal was to get me well enough to fly home, and then contact my own doctor when I got home.

On Monday, I was the last patient of the day to go in for the endoscopy. As I looked around the waiting and recovery room for the procedure, I imagined that a lot of these people had been waiting for a long time to get theirs done. But mine was considered urgent and they needed to get it done as soon as possible. Once I was in the procedure room, as they prepped me, it felt strange being in a foreign country where everyone was speaking with an accent. As Stacey and I have often said since then, at least we were in a country that spoke English. The anesthesia took hold quickly, and the next thing I knew I was in the recovery room slowly coming out of a haze.

We had been in Europe for just about a month, and understandably, Stacey wanted to get home. One of her cats had died while we were gone, and she was homesick. The medical team told me I would need to stay at least one day longer than our original flight home. So we made arrangements for Stacey to fly on her own and get a flight from Toronto to Rochester since our car was parked at Toronto Airport. Once again she was on her own. For the most part, she did very well. Somehow she missed the announcements for her flight and ended up at the wrong gate, but once that was straightened out, she was on her way.

I needed a couple days of recovery before they okayed me for flying home. The biggest problem I had with that hospital was that it wasn't air-conditioned the way Americans are used to air conditioning. London was as hot as hell that summer, and the heat reached up to the 12th floor, where my room was. I had a tremendous view from up there, but I really wanted to get home. Once they said I was ready enough to fly home, the doctor herself actually sat down and wrote out directions to help me find the train station so I could make my way to Heathrow Airport. As I was leaving the hospital, with my suitcase dragging behind me, I heard someone call my name. It was one of the nurses who had cared for me. He was just getting off of his shift and was headed in the same direction as me towards the train station. He walked with me the rest of the way, and even carried my suitcase up a flight of stairs. By the time I sat down on the train, I was starting to feel very wiped out. I had not eaten much for the past 5 days, and I could tell I had already lost some weight.

Once I get to Heathrow Airport, I made my way to Air Canada. At the check-in desk, I asked them if they had any upgrades to business class available. I said I had just had surgery and I just wanted to be able to lie down on the flight. They told me five hundred pounds, which translates to approximately 750 US dollars. Once on the plane, I could relax, lie down, and I slept a lot on the flight home. I did manage to eat a little bit. Back in Toronto, I got my mini-van and had an uneventful drive home.

St Thomas Hospital had told me that since I was an American, they would send me a bill for their services. I did finally receive a bill, I paid it, and then ultimately my medical insurance reimbursed me. Travel insurance took care of the rest. It paid for my portion of the Airbnb, it paid for a hotel night that I missed because of being sick, it paid for the upgrade to business class so I could lie down, and it paid for Stacey's flight from Toronto to Rochester. I am a huge advocate of trip insurance, especially on cruises and foreign trips. The hospital staff had told me another American had been there a few months earlier, and he did not have trip insurance. Due to the condition that he was in when he left the hospital, he needed special transportation to get back home to the United States, and it cost him $70,000. My trip insurance and medical insurance covered everything.

Back home, I ultimately ended up in the hospital again and finally had my gall bladder removed. Anytime I meet a medical professional who is aware that I spent some time in a London Hospital, they are always curious to know how it went for me.