Me being me it was going to happen eventually: I was going to wind up in an A&E department and have the opportunity to learn about the Chilean health system first hand. But before anyone panics, nothing serious has happened.
On Friday morning I noticed I had some insect bites on my arm. Nothing out of the ordinary there, as I seem to be a pretty tasty dish of foreign cuisine to the local nippers. The great thing about Chile though is that there are very few animal-related things that can harm you, especially without you realising it. As far as unidentified bites and stings go, there is no malaria or similar mosquito-carried diseases, no poisonous snakes and no deadly scorpions. All there is, are two poisonous spiders, and only one of these lives in the city.
The city spider is the araña de rincon or brown recluse. Fortunately for us humans, it's not aggressive and doesn't go biting humans willy-nilly. It hunts at night and has a habit of running away if it gets startled, usually into the nearest nook, frequently a pile of clothes or bedsheets. Herein lies the danger, the spider only bites if it gets attacked - i.e. squashed - so if you roll onto it or put your shoes on without shaking them first you might be in trouble.
Back to my story, over Friday and Saturday, around the place where I had two bites close together, a red patch had begun growing outwards in a circle and was becoming more and more swollen and itchy. Now, I've had bites similar to this before, which a very well-travelled friend of mine had believed to be spider bites. Knowing what I know about the rincon, I was more than a little concerned.
So on late Saturday afternoon, after a call to the insurance company and some rather grisly research on the internet (sometimes I wish we didn't have the internet and all the gruesome pictures and tales it provides - not that I'm being much better myself here) I decided I'd better take myself off to Clinica Alemana.
Still a little confused about how you actually access medical care, from what I can gather, there are a number of super-clinics, which provide A&E, hospital treatment and general GP appointments. Clinica Alemena is one of the three most super-duper of these super clinics and recommended for gringos as they advertise that they speak English (among other languages).
Nonetheless, I took my trusty translator with me, and thank goodness I did. While I managed to see a doctor who spoke English, the receptionists did not, and were rather less than pleased when we deigned to ask them whether they might. Medical receptionists seem to be the same wherever you go then... (sorry medical receptionists, I'm sure it's only a small minority but I do seem to pick them at times).
I was seen very swiftly - not even time to sit down in the waiting room - and was ushered into a very clean and modern treatment area. A couple of preliminary heart rate and blood pressure checks (although oddly no medical history questions) and then a short wait until the doctor breezed in, took one look at my arm and told me it wasn't a spider (phew all round) and just a nasty allergic reaction. All that was needed was a mega-dose of antihistamines and anti-inflammatories and I was off again.
Overall, I think I was in the hospital maybe an hour and a half at most. A far cry from the usual four hours in A&E you can expect to spend in the UK. Although I was paying for the privilege. The building was new, fresh, light and modern, very clean and set in lovely grounds. It had a calm atmosphere and the staff were in general very courteous and nice. The one odd aspect being the branding was very similar to that of Sainsbury's - red, orange and purple banners, the same font and white writing on windows. I was a little confused at one point whether I was actually in a Sainsbury's cafe or a hospital.
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