I’ll be the first to say that the medical system and especially medical insurance in the USA has problems.  I could go on and on for hours passionately about our medical insurance woes.  Something that happens in the US, unlike here, is you can get medical treatment without prepaying.  When one is a car accident in the US and an ambulance is called, one doesn’t have to pull out the cash on the spot to pay the EMT’s before they load the patient onto the stretcher and take that person to the hospital.  The bill that comes later will be huge, however, the treatment was given first.  Here that’s not the case.  I’ve blogged about this before.  Over the weekend Sophie called us and said her daughter-in-law needed emergency surgery for her pregnancy due to a hemorrhage while trying to deliver v-back.  She was frantic on the phone asking for money.  The amount she was asking for was equivalent to two months of her salary.  When we gave the money to her she was relieved to be able to pay for the life saving surgery.  When David and I were talking afterwards we discussed how hard it is for us to wrap our minds around allowing someone to die because of non-payment.  It’s a glaring example of how people from different cultures think differently about things.  David and I were raised in a culture that when it comes to medical things everything is exhausted to save a life.  I think of tiny premies who are born before 30 weeks, stay for months in NICU and all the intervention used to save their tiny, precious lives.  It’s not something I can fathom or even want to try to understand to turn away someone bleeding to death because she only had a fraction of the payment for the procedure.

I’m happy to be able to share that her daughter-in-law and new granddaughter are recovering in the hospital.  Her daughter-in-law is weak and in pain, but alive.  Her granddaughter is doing okay.  The baby has some respiratory issues, jaundice and is having a hard time nursing, but alive.