Perhaps some of our readers may have noticed the brief mention of my recent illness in one of our editor’s recent editorials. I’d be remiss if I didn’t thank him for that and I hope you won’t mind if I devote this column to my recent ordeal.

Actually I’ve found dealing with doctors and the medical establishment in Hong Kong to be something of a mixed bag. My first experience occurred in 1995, shortly after I moved here, thanks to a mishap at Causeway Bay’s fondly remembered China Jump Bar, a spot that allowed you to lie back in a barber’s chair and have them pour liquor straight down your throat. Someone accidentally knocked into me, sending me straight to the floor, and completely screwing up my ankle. I tried to limp back to my table but the bouncers were on my instantly – they thought I was drunk (what a concept in that place!) and tried to eject me from the bar.

Later that night, back home, I noticed that my ankle had swollen to the size of my head. I called an ambulance. They strapped me to the gurney, wheeled me out of my apartment, and then had to position the gurney standing up (with me still strapped to it) in the tiny elevator. They brought me to Tan Shiu Kin Hospital in Wanchai, where they confirmed that my ankle was sprained and not broken. They bandaged it up, gave me some aspirin, and told me to go home. “But I can’t walk! Can’t I at least get some crutches or a cane?” Um, no. Because at 4 AM, their physical therapy department was closed, and without a professional there to explain to me the intricacies of balancing on two sticks of wood, they were not allowed to give them to me. I had to hop 150 yards out of the hospital and hope that there would be a taxi on Oi Kwan Road at 5 in the morning. So perhaps it’s little wonder that I was less than thrilled with Hong Kong’s version of subsidized medical care.

I’ve spent the last few years working for a company that provides minimal health insurance, on the basis that the public hospitals here are so cheap. If I go to the private doctor of my choice, I’m lucky if I get reimbursed for 10% of what I spend. So a few years back when I thought I had the flu, I thought I’d try one of the insurance company’s affiliated medical centers. My doctor had more colors in her hair than Joseph’s Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. She spent all of two minutes talking to me before prescribing 8 different kinds of pills and sending me on my merry way.

Of course, as many of you are aware, the large majority of private doctors catering to foreigners have their offices in Central. That means they’re paying Central rents, and I’m sure I don’t need to tell you what that means. You go to their office and tell them, “Doctor, it hurts when I do this” and he says, “Then don’t do that. That’ll be a thousand dollars please.” Or fifteen hundred dollars if they’re in Prince’s Building. I had a doctor in Prince’s Building once. His office was lined with issues of high end audio magazines, with a couple of medical manuals buried somewhere underneath.

With all of this, you might not be surprised to find out that for the past several years, I’ve been traveling to Bangkok for a fair amount of my medical care. Thailand has been successfully promoting itself as a destination for “medical tourism” for years. So digging into my stockpile of air miles, I could fly back and forth for free, stay in a relatively cheap hotel, get the full executive physical at Bumrungrad Hospital, and the whole deal would cost me about the same as a night out in Lan Kwai Fong. I love the attitude of Thai doctors – “You’ve got XYZ wrong with you and I could prescribe some pills but perhaps you might try meditation first.” Plus there’s the added benefit of being in Bangkok. Thai food, Thai culture, Thai massage, shopping – what else do you think I would go there for?

But of course, if you have some emergency, it’s not practical to travel to Thailand to deal with it, and that’s just where I found myself towards the end of April. I had a fever that wouldn’t quit and basically anything I ate came back up five minutes later. So I went to the Mona Fong Clinic in Sai Kung. I explained my situation to the doctor, who gave me even more Panadol. “Do you have a runny nose?” “Um, no, I have a fever.” “I’ll give you some antihistamine just in case. Do you have a sore throat?” “Um, no, I have a fever.” “I’ll give you some cough syrup just in case.” The consultation and drugs cost all of $45.

As the newspapers filled up with reports of a possible swine flu pandemic, my fever still wouldn’t quit and food still wouldn’t stay down. So on a Sunday, I went to the Tseung Kwan O hospital. They took my temperature and then had me wait by myself in a special roped off area for “fever patients.” When I finally saw a doctor, he listened to me breathe and gave me more Panadol. Two days later, still the same, I went back to the Mona Fong Clinic. I had to wait 15 minutes just to get my temperature taken by a nurse. This time they gave me some antibiotics along with the Panadol. I was frustrated that I wasn’t getting any better and that the over-worked Hospital Authority doctors weren’t able to spend more than two minutes with me to find out what was going on.

I figured I’d better find a private doctor if I was going to make some progress, so I called around and got a local recommendation. I arrived at the doctor’s office and after filling out the usual forms, the nurse told me that they always like to get a urine specimen from first-time patients. It seemed a trifle fetishy to me but I played along. Then the doctor examined me, feeling carefully around my abdomen before telling me that there was blood in my urine sample, that he thinks my liver is swollen and he suspects I’ve got hepatitis. They took some blood and the next day confirmed it was Hepatitis A.

Which begs the question, why didn’t any of the three Hospital Authority doctors do this? Surely by the time I got to the third doctor and told him what had been going on for more than a week, he should have been curious to do more than stick a cold stethoscope on my back, no? I would guess that given their tremendous workload, Hospital Authority doctors are not allowed the luxury of being curious.

I won’t bore you with all the painful details of my recovery. Suffice to say that six weeks later, I’m still not quite 100% but I’m getting there. I’m at the point where I’m more concerned over the fact that I won’t be able to have a drop of alcohol for the rest of the year – not even a glass of wine with dinner. If there’s any moral to this story, it’s an old one: Trust your instincts; don’t put all your faith in just one physician; keep pushing until you get the answers and the treatment you deserve. Or perhaps it’s this: Where your health is concerned, sometimes a thousand dollars is a better deal than forty-five dollars. And my best wishes for a healthy summer to all of our readers!