My experience with medical tourism

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Because of the high cost of insurance, many people, such as myself, have looked to their options for surgery abroad. Oftentimes buying a plane ticket, living frugally abroad for a week or two and paying the medical coverage is cheaper than staying at home in the U.S. These factors have contributed to an exponential growth in the popularity of medical tourism.

Foreign countries seem to be catching the drift. Tourism companies are jumping at the chance to capitalize on the opportunity. India, with their Apollo Hospital Group, is the leader in medical tourism, even referring to it as “medical outsourcing.” The Apollo Hospital Group has 50 hospitals in the business, and provides services for its clients such as flight and accommodation arrangement.

My experience with surgery abroad was anything but conventional. I was less a medical tourist and more of, what I’d like to call, a “medical traveler.” I didn’t stay in a hotel, hospital or recovery center but rather in the home of Maria Eneida Gomez, a 71-year-old abuela living in Medellin, Colombia.

According to Maria Eneida’s niece, Maria Eugenia Hernandez, the hospital in Medellin, Hospital Universitario San Vicente de Paul, pioneered transplant services in Colombia and much of South America. It was the first to offer heart, kidney and as of recently, trachea transplants. It is also the destination for many seeking cosmetic surgery.

Although wisdom tooth-extraction is a fairly common procedure, it is an expensive one, and I had to use my college funds to do it. In the U.S. wisdom tooth-extraction can cost between $150 and $350 each. If there are complications they can cost up to $600.

In Colombia, I paid the equivalent of about two hundred fifty American dollars for the entire procedure. Plus the cost of the round-trip, that comes to just over $1,000 for getting four wisdom teeth extracted and a trip to Central America. Living with María Eneida, the cost of living was free.

I happened to book my trip during the annual weeklong celebration of the Ferria de Las Flores. Along with the usual parade of cars, concerts and weeklong-free entry into museums and parks, the people celebrated the election of their new president, Juan Manuel Santos. Famous for their flowers, Medellin culminates the week’s festivities with the Desfile de los Semaforos.

Historically, Semaforos were traditional flower-vendors who carried their harvest to the market on their backs in wooden baskets. Soon they began creating murals with the flowers, works of art to carry on their backs for display. This developed into today’s customary two-hour parade, which comprised of Semaforos young and old, displays traditional, picturesque and even commercial arrangements for paying sponsors.

Finally, the day I was dreading arrived. Unlike most that get driven to their wisdom tooth-extraction, I took two buses and a taxi to my appointment, with about ten minutes of walking in-between each vehicle. I’m talking extreme bus rides through the city, with drivers who think they own the road, alternate pumping the gas and the brakes, and drive with the door open. I wondered how I’d feel doing it on the way home, with a swollen face and loopy from pain killers.

That day, however, I would not be finding out. My appointment turned out to be nothing more than a pre-op, as the doctor informed me that he needed an x-ray, which I hadn’t come equipped with. He was confident he could do it without one, but if any complications arose, he would be questioned why he did not have one. I was both relieved and disappointed by not being able to get it over with, but I knew he was an honest doctor who would do a good job.

The x-ray only cost 25,000 pesos, or just under $14. But the medications he’d prescribed for me which included Amoxil (a strain of penicillin), Scaflam (anti-inflammatory) and Dolex (for pain), cost more than I’d expected. In total, the three cost an equivalent of just over $100.

The surgery went well, as far I could tell after an hour flying on laughing gas. While I waited, a young attendant sat in my room with me monitoring the gas, and the doctor came in and out to administer the anesthesia. The young woman who was attending me was very nice, and wanted to know what were pretty American names. Her name was Alejandra.

The extraction itself only took about twenty minutes, after which I was given a face wrap that had cheek-pockets for ice-bags, and worked quite well. We took a taxi home, to my relief, and I watched Salt on my laptop, which I’d bought on the street for less than a dollar the day before. I couldn’t talk for hours because my tongue was still numb, so when I needed to I, not only wrote to Eneida, but did so in Spanish.

Not many people, when asked how their tooth extraction went, can say it was a culturally-rich experience. However, it looks as if more and more will be able to do so. For me, medical tourism offered an array of sensory treasures–sights of city built high into mountains, and smells of rain, exhaust and grilling meat. Not to mention tastes of arepas (Colombian corn tortillas), chusos (kebabs of carne asada made and sold on the street), guanabana juice and fried plantains.

What with all the flowers and celebration I witnessed, the kindness and generosity I received, and the sights, smells and flavors I indulged in, it was certainly the price I would have paid for a surgery without the excitement of travel and the unknown.

Contact CU Independent Staff Writer Ana McIntosh at Anna.mcintosh@colorado.edu.