Lockdown is over for the moment. On and off for over a month. The number of COVID cases are dropping but so are the number of tests performed. It is all a shell game. They have started a push to vaccinate the over 60s. They are using the Russian vaccine. I don't trust any of the vaccines, let alone the Russian or Chinese ones. So no vaccination for me until I see what the current global trials throw up.
Had an interesting few days starting on the last day of lockdown, Poson Poya. They had opened things up for 3 days and then closed down again for Poson Poya, the second most important poya day of the year. My friend Lesley had not been well and on that day she called me to see if I could find her a hospital that would do a CT scan on a poya/lockdown day. I did find one; the newest private hospital in Kandy, Asiri. She got a friend to take her there and next thing I know, she is calling me to come as she needs someone with her.
To make a long story short, I ended up staying with her for 3 nights in hospital. We started at Asiri in the emergency room. They did a pretty good job: took a CT scan and tried to manage her pain. She was in agony and the drugs they were giving her did not even touch it. Turned out she had a massive fungal infection in her left sinus. They ended up admitting her which meant that I also had to be admitted as the attending person. It is not a good idea to leave people alone in a Sri Lankan hospital unless they are on an open ward. All private rooms are equipped with two beds so that the attendant has somewhere to sleep. My admission meant that I had to have an antigen test which was negative.
After quite a bit of pushing on my part, they finally gave her morphine which helped marginally with the pain but only for about 5 hours. They are reluctant to give morphine in under 7 hour intervals, but again after pointing out to the ward doctor that you have stay ahead of pain not behind it, she started to give the shots at 5 hour intervals.
The hospital is more like a hotel. All private rooms of various grades. Even the corridors look like a hotel. Big screen TV, state of the art bathroom, passable food. In fact, the food service is just like room service in a hotel. All show though. They have all the modern equipment like the pulse, oxygen absorption, blood pressure machines, etc. It takes 5 minutes for the machine to take your blood pressure. You could die in that time.
Apart from the emergency room, really the first doctor we saw, the care was marginal. They kept lying to us about when her admitting doctor was showing up. They said he was coming around 1900 the night she was admitted. I was sceptical and as it turned out, he wasn't even in Kandy. He showed up early the next morning and promptly set about organising surgery.
In the end, the fancy new and very expensive hospital did not have the necessary equipment to do the endoscopic surgery she needed, so they transferred her down to road to another private hospital, Suwa Sevana. I use the term transferred loosely as they did not organise an ambulance and left it to her husband to get her moved. But only after they presented him with a bill for LKR.72,000 for the 27 hours she spent there.
I was worried about Suwa Sevana as the only time I have been there; to consult the same ENT doctor, there had been spent needles lying around on the ledge in his consulting room. However, when I got there, I was pleasantly surprised. The place is run down and is using furniture and equipment that look like they date back to WWI, but the place was spotless and the medical care was much better than at Asiri. Here they used an old fashioned BP meter which takes under a minute to take your blood pressure. They also had no reluctance in giving her the morphine every 5 hours as long as she needed it.
The food was crap and the beds were horrible. You needed a magnifying glass to see the TV which was only Sri Lankan channels. However, they performed the operation in short order and after 2 nights she got to go home. The cost of the 2 days in Suwa Sevana, including the surgery with anesthesiologist cost the same as 27 hours at Asiri.
I was certainly happy to get back to my own bed. Now I am on the hunt for health insurance. Medical care is cheap as compared to other countries, but still pretty expensive.
Vineetha has been back for about 10 days now. During lockdown, the young couple in the annex were helping me.
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| This is Sujatha, the young woman from the annex. She was doing the flower arrangements that day. |
Meanwhile her husband had been doing some light cleaning if she wasn't there and painting, etc.
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| Here he had to do some concrete work on my patio to stop the leakage in their kitchen. He repainted the wall and cleaned the patio tiles with wonderful effect. |
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| My small fish bowl with some lovely water plants |
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| Large fish bowl |
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| The fish pond. I have only one carp left. He is getting quite big as he only has to compete with the guppies for food. |
We are into passion fruit season, so my vine is full of flowers and fruit is starting.
My lockdown projects are almost complete. I will finish reupholstering the armchairs by the weekend. We are resuming mahjong on Saturday, so I want to finish them before then.
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| Before |
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| After |
I have also finished the embroidery for the carpet repair. Now I just have to sew the patches into the carpet. Never a dull moment.
No pictures of my furry babies this time, but all are fine. Still feeding 7.
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