Wednesday, March 14, 2012

Once again I am getting to explore the Spanish medical system. My knee pain has not diminished significantly, although it has diminished. I find myself limping in a more artful fashion. Yesterday I decided to go to the outpatient department at Hospital Quirón to see what they could discover. We ran into difficulty getting pre-authorization from our insurance company and in spite of several phone calls the only thing they did was to open a case file, which means that we will be submitting bills for reimbursement. The lack of pre-authorization caused a delay in my being seen and finally one of the receptionists told me that she would have me seen by one of the doctors and that if the authorization came in there would be no charge. If it didn’t we would have to pay ourselves.

After another half hour of waiting I was seen by one of the emergency room doctors who had me go down to radiology. The x-ray showed a problem with the meniscus and they made an appointment for me with a traumatologist and prescribed an anti-inflammatory for me that should help reduce the swelling. This morning’s visit with the traumatologist resulted in his requesting an MRI to see precisely what the problem is. I have an appointment at 2:30 today to have the MRI. I will have to schedule another appointment with the traumatologist to see what course of action he recommends.

Rachel arrived in Valencia at noon on Monday after a rather grueling journey. She flew from San Francisco to New York, New York to Paris and, finally, Paris to Valencia. Brian drove us to the airport to pick her up. I managed to schlep my way through the terminal and after meeting up with Rachel we piled in the car and headed back home. Rachel crashed as soon as we got home and we walk her up after a two and a half hour nap. She and Susan did some shopping in the late afternoon to insure that there would be a sufficient supply of food on hand that she could eat.

Tuesday morning Rachel and Susan headed for the beach in order to toivel the pots and pans that we had bought for her so that they could be considered kosher. The pots and pans are submerged in a natural water source while the appropriate prayers are said. They also took advantage of their morning excursion to shoot some photos at the beach. We finally sat down to dinner around 9:00 and I headed for bed a little after 10:30. I am afraid that I am going to have to enjoy the events of this year’s Fallas vicariously through others. That’s just the way it goes sometimes.