Going to the doctor – in Playa Del Ingles

Somehow I almost forgot to tell you about going to the doctor in Playa Del Ingles.

Since the middle of May my back has been hurting in periods for then to become better again. I didn’t really give it that much thought, as all people have back problems at one point or the other in their lives. When I was in Norway between England and going to Playa Del Ingles my back was fairly well so I forgot about how it had been kind of bad in the middle of May.

Going to Playa Del Ingles, it turned out, was not something my back appreciated. Already on the second day there the pains were returning, and after a week they had become so excruciating that I was in pain standing up, lying down, sitting, walking, everything. It says something about the level of pain I think when on the evening of Tuesday the 5th I couldn’t drink alcohol because I was in so much pain!

So on Wednesday the 6th when I got up in the morning after a very bad night I decided that I had no other choice but go to the doctors. One of our friends at Dunes & Tunes had suggested the Centro de Salud in Maspalomas, which is the main public doctor/hospital in the area. I had of course brought my European Health card so I could’ve gone there, but I thought that since I had paid quite a lot for my travel insurance, I wanted to get something out of that, and I thought going to a place with Scandinavian doctors might be a good idea. Not because I necessarily think they’re better doctors than the Spanish one, simply because, as I’ve stated before, I don’t speak Spanish, and then it seemed easier to explain my problems to someone who speak Scandinavian.

I called the Clinica Scandinavica and they said I should just come in to the clinic, which was a three minute taxi ride away.

What I found out when I got there and presented my travel insurance was that they wouldn’t accept it. And here I was, naïve enough obviously, thinking that when you’ve got travel insurance, well, you’ve got travel insurance. What they told me was that they had no contract with my insurance company so they would not accept it, and that I would have to pay for the doctor myself and then claim the money back from the insurance company when I got back to Norway. This wasn’t a problem financially this time, of course, the meeting with the doctor cost me 72 Euros, but what if I had been really badly injured and had to be hospitalized and the costs would’ve been several thousand Euros – would they still be saying “no, you need to pay for this now and claim the money from you insurance company when you get home”? I guess I would’ve worried more about this if I was going to keep having this insurance in the future, but I won’t. It’s a one year thing. When I went to England last autumn, I bought something called ANSA (ANSA = Association of Norwegian Students Abroad) Insurance which means that I’m insured through a Norwegian company called NEMI. The reason why I changed my insurance was that they could offer me a complete solution with home insurance, travel insurance, theft insurance, really all the kinds of insurances you might need when living abroad for a year. Regular travel insurance just won’t cover that.

Anyway, back to the doctor. As it turned out, I didn’t get to see a Scandinavian doctor, I saw a Spanish one, but a Swedish nurse came with me and did the translation so I got to describe fairly well where the pain was and how it felt. The doctor made me turn one way and then another, then she put a finger on my back and found the exact point where the pain was and pressed at that (which made want to turn around and hit her because it hurt so much, I didn’t of course, I’m pretty much your non-violent type). Then she told me that this very often happened to people coming to warm countries on vacation, it was a nerve that was caught in a place where it shouldn’t be, and this had probably happened when I was going from lying very warm in the sun and then jumping into a slightly colder pool and the muscles would retract. I wasn’t really convinced that this was the reason, since the pain had been there on and off since May, still, I thought that if she would just give me some medication, I would get through the rest of the vacation.

Then the doctor said that she needed to give me a shot, and I’m sure both her and the nurse could see my face go visibly pale. I’ll admit it, I hate shots, I’m a total baby when it comes to these things. Fortunately I was allowed to lie down on the bench, and then the doctor gave me a shot in the behind! It didn’t really hurt that much either.

I don’t know what was in that shot, I probably should’ve asked, but honestly, as much pain as I was in, I was prepared to accept anything that would ease the pain – and it did. About five minutes after I walked out of that doctor’s office the pain in my back was gone! I am of course aware that this might not only be the shot, but also my mind playing tricks on me, being so relieved that I had finally done something to sort this out. I also got a prescription for a couple of kinds of pills and a cream to put on my back, and they all worked fine. For the rest of the vacation I could still at time vaguely feel that my back was not as it was supposed to be, but not really any pain at all.

First thing last Thursday when I’d come home to Norway I went to see my own doctor here in Norway, and was told that we should just wait and see for now how this develops, and that I should keep using the same medication that I was given in Playa Del Ingles.

So, now I’ve tried going to the doctor in another country – AND I’ve learned something new, and worrying, about travel insurance.