Knee Doctor

 Tuesday February 10. Today it was raining and the forecast was for rain all day. 

Grandma is ready suffering with her knee. She limps along and it’s taking twice as long to get places so we decided to try to get her a cortisone shot this week. Arriving at work I called the mission home to see about setting up an appointment. They asked if I wanted to schedule with an orthopedist or go to urgent care. I got an address for urgent care and then checking our work schedule prepared to go today. No time like the present. I hate doing things I have never done before and especially things I don’t know how to talk about. I got one of the ladies in the office to help me write down the words for orthopedist, injection, and cortisone. Then another helped me figure out how to get an uber ride to the location. There are a lot of hospitals here in São Paulo. This is also where you go for urgent care. Right off I felt overwhelmed. Grandma had no identification papers except her Idaho drivers license. So my I D my picture on the camera she wanted to know why we were here instead of making an appointment with a specialist. I whipped out my paper with the words on it and she took it and made a call. We have to wear this sticker on our shirt with tracking on it and mine was a print out from my I D and photo, but for grandma she grabs a larger sticker and writes patient needs an injection of cortisone. We get sent down 3 floors to where patients arrive for check in. From now on this is an amazing story. The girl we stopped at listened to my poor explanation and wanted insurance cards and passport. Our insurance card was not accepted there and we were going to need to come back after making an appointment. I asked if I couldn’t just pay out of pocket when we came back and she then read the sticker on grandma and made a call saying she needed to see an orthopedist and again walked us downstairs to a man who took my payment of just under $200.00, and then we were taken to another desk where they had us sit down to wait to see a doctor. By now I am feeling so incompetent, and we talked and decided we wouldn’t be able to just show up back home without i d or insurance and no appointment and get the results we wanted. Sure enough soon we were in to see an orthopedic surgeon. When he asked me why we were there he said all he could do was give her treatment for pain and we needed an appointment. Grandma didn’t want pain medication so back out with the sick people in the waiting room to get our paperwork settle the bill and try to schedule an appointment. A couple minutes later here comes the young doctor back and in we go. Soon an old doctor (76) comes in examined the knee told me she needed knee replacement surgery. When I said we were here serving for 18 months and that wasn’t an option he said she could wait but needed an injection. He told us the young doctor how to take care of it and was so kind. The young doctor left to get what he needed,  but soon returned and here comes the knee specialist again and a nurse. The old doctor said he had 5 minutes between surgery so he was going to help. They gave grandma a shot to block the pain then a minute later stuck a rather large needle in and sucked out a lot of fluid. The whole time the doctor is explaining to the young doctor what they are doing.  Next thing you know we are done, the doctor gives me his card so we can contact him if we need him again and we are escorted to the elevator to go pay the bill. I am expecting it to cost between 1 and 2 thousand dollars. So imagine my surprise to find out there is no extra charge all this for under $200.00. All this attention because the first receptionist wrote a sticker saying she was sent to get a shot. Everyone was so patient, kind, and helpful. Missionaries really are blessed. We next caught an uber back to work. So I didn’t get any pictures today, but we had a great day. We knocked off an hour early and went to the mall to get grandma’s prescription filled. She sat on the bench while I bought a few groceries.

Drew mentioned that we seem to always be shopping, and I agree. But when everything you buy gets carried home on your back .7 miles you don’t want to buy a whole cart full. 20 pounds is the limit. We walked slowly home and grandma got her knee on ice. What a relief. What a great day. Love to all.

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