Sojourning in Distant Lands

Medical And Health Care Differences

In The Land Of Hope

By Betty Tope

One of the prime concerns a preacher’s family faces when contemplating doing foreign work has to do with medical care. The unknowns of moving to a foreign country with it’s strange foods and differing cultures are daunting enough without adding in the medical equation. Some of the concerns are:

Will I find a doctor who speaks English, or a brand of English I can understand?
Will his/her treatments be similar to the kind of treatment I am used to?
Will the medical facilities be up to date?
Will the hospitals be hygienic?

We were fortunate in all our years of living in South Africa to have had excellent doctors and, consequently, what I consider excellent medical care. Contrary to my first fears when I went to see an Afrikaans-speaking doctor, his English was perfect. Dr. Johannes made house calls and became a trusted friend. He delivered two of our babies, removed my appendix and an ovarian cyst, performed Becky’s tonsillectomy, and stood by us through many childhood diseases and the loss of our beloved Karen. I figure we have moved about 50 times during our married life so we have had occasion to consult many physicians in many localities. In our experience, Dr. Johannes was one of the best diagnosticians of all.

Having borne seven children and suffered many surgeries, I am well acquainted with hospitals, too. American hospitals are like hotels with your own TV, telephone and often a private room. South African hospitals on the other hand were more bare boned with no TV, perhaps a communal phone in the hallway and often a many-bedded ward. Though, when Gene had some emergency surgery in Durban on one occasion, he was given a private room with a sea view. I think he was in too much pain to enjoy the view, but we visitors did! During my confinements I usually enjoyed getting to know the other patients and listening to them talk among themselves and to the staff in Afrikaans and Zulu. It always fascinated me the way South Africans could switch back and forth between English and Afrikaans when speaking. I had one ward mate who had grown up on a farm with Zulu playmates and she spoke fluent Zulu as well.

American hospitals send around a menu so the patient can circle his/her choices for the following day’s meals. South African hospitals offered no such luxuries, but I had few complaints about the food. I loved the soups, the porridges, and the tea times. We were woken up with early morning tea and biscuits (cookies), served tea following the main meals, then morning and afternoon tea and biscuits and then again before bedtime. The nursing staff was always attentive and compassionate. I soon learned the frills were not nearly as important as quality care.

During our years in the Kloof/Gillits/Cowies Hill section of Natal, our family doctor was Dr. Savage, who was Jewish and rather elderly. He had an English nurse who had a running battle with him over his equipment. Once when I was in for an EKG the nurse was muttering about the need for a new machine. I remarked that maybe he didn’t want to learn how to operate new equipment at his age. Her reply was, “Hmpf. I’m older than he is.” I was always amused when Dr. Savage took my blood pressure. He would take it with one piece of equipment, then shake it and take it again. Then switch arms and switch cuffs. He usually ended up taking it three times before he was satisfied. During the many years we consulted him, Dr. Savage never changed the appearance of his waiting rooms one iota. The chairs became aged, the linoleum worn, the paint faded. But the waiting room was always full. (I remember there was a basket of yarn in there so the women could knit squares for blankets while they were waiting.) His patients were very loyal. In fact our son-in-law’s mother and step-father continued to consult him up until a couple of days before Dr. Savage died.

Our son Scott came down with bronchial pneumonia when he was just three months old and this left him prone to allergies, wheezing and croup. He outgrew the wheezing and croup by the time he was 13, but the allergies still plagued him. When he was about 14 years old, Dr. Savage tested him for allergies and then had a special serum made up for him in Pretoria. For a while we took Scott to him five days a week for injections of that serum and gradually tapered off until he didn’t need any more. We will always be indebted to Dr. Savage for that.

While living in Gillits we lived in a house with a sunken living room accessed by three or four flagstone steps. This house had a bar tucked in the corner by the stairs. It was not unusual for homes to have bars in them for entertaining. Though we didn’t drink, I found the counter tops to be great work places for collating printed material, binding booklets, etc., and the storage underneath worked as a great place to store games and puzzles. As I was dusting off the counter top one morning while standing on the stairs, I turned around and stepped off and fell and chipped my ankle bone. I guess I just forgot where I was standing. While still in shock I was able to walk back upstairs to the kitchen and when Gene came home he took me to see Dr. Savage. Of course, by then I could not put my weight on that foot, so I hopped out to the car and then hopped in to Dr. Savage’s rooms. He sent me to the lab for X-rays, which was in another part of Pinetown and up a flight of stairs. More hopping. They could only take me a couple of hours later, so Gene brought me home to wait in my bedroom.

During the interval I hopped into the bathroom. Coming out, I felt like I couldn’t do any more hopping, so I decided to crawl back to the bed. Imagine my surprise to look up from the floor and find a houseful of people. These were estate agents who had come to look at the house prior to our putting it on the market. Needless to say, I felt rather foolish greeting them from the floor, but I was totally embarrassed when I found out Gene had told them I was “sick.” I could just imagine what kind of sickness they thought I was suffering from!

That afternoon I did have the X-rays and then went back to see Dr. Savage, who put my leg in a cast. All this happened just a few days before we were scheduled to take a vacation trip to Kruger Park in the northeast section of the country. I gamely helped pack up for the trip. Being very security conscious, we gathered all the valuables and put them in the bedroom and locked the iron security gate that separated the bedroom area from the rest of the house. We were all in the car when someone remembered something they forgot. When Gene went back to get the item, he discovered we had left the back door open in our haste to depart. So much for security. What a laugh that gave us!

Our first night’s stop was at a little town called Ermelo. We stayed at a Holiday Inn, which for some reason could not supply any hot water that day. By then my leg was hurting so much I couldn’t even go down to supper. I was convinced something was terribly wrong. The next day we made it to a little Afrikaans farming town just outside Kruger Park. By that time I had persuaded Gene to take me to a doctor. We found a little doctor’s surgery just off the main road, but he had gone home for lunch. The receptionist very kindly phoned him at home and he came back early to see this “American lady.” I was taken to a small room at the back (I think this was a home that had been converted to a physician’s suite) and told to hop up on the examining table.

While I was waiting for the doctor, I was able to look around the room and view all the Old Dutch Remedies that were stored there. These usually were very cheap and much in demand by the poorer people. When we first came to Johannesburg, I was having trouble with nosebleeds and a dear sister gave me an Old Dutch Remedy called Staal Druppels, guaranteed to cure the nose bleed. They burned so much I was in agony, but they did cauterize the nasal passages and stopped the nose bleed! Needless to say, I was very wary of taking anything called an Old Dutch Remedy for ever after! So I was a little apprehensive to see such a vast assortment of these remedies. Meanwhile an African woman had come in with a sick baby and I could hear the poor thing crying. The nurse came back and yanked the rubber sheet from under me, explaining that she needed it for the baby. I just shook my head.

The doctor eventually came in with this buzz saw and proceeded to cut open the cast. I was terrified he was going to cut my leg. But his self-confidence was justified and he had the cast off in no time and my leg was still intact. Much to my chagrin, the leg was fine and the cast was not the cause of the pain. So now I was instructed to hop down off the table, hop down the step into the back yard and over to a stool the nurse had placed under a huge tree. She brought a basin of water, the plaster of Paris, etc. for the doctor to put on a new cast. All the while I was perched on this stool and the doctor was casting my leg, there was an audience of Africans watching the whole procedure. I’m sure they found the process very entertaining and I could only laugh to myself at the ludicrousness of it all. I don’t know if the cleaning lady was off sick or what, but either the doctor or the nurse or both of them didn’t want that mess inside.

I had no further problem with my leg healing, other than the normal discomforts and inconveniences of a broken leg. When I got back to Dr. Savage and reported my experiences, we both had a good laugh.

When we lived in Zululand in the relatively small town of Richards Bay, it became necessary for me to have varicose vein surgery. The most recommended surgeon in the area worked out of the hospital in the neighboring town of Empangeni. He was the picture of the quintessential bush doctor. He had long white hair and wore colorful Hawaiian type shirts. He was a sight as he came striding down the halls of the hospital, white hair flying, shirt tails flapping. The day of the surgery I was put on a Gurney and left in a waiting area next to a very frightened young girl of about five years old. Finally, my turn came and I was wheeled down the corridor and then suddenly halted. I was instructed to hop down off the Gurney and walk into the room where the surgeon was waiting, which I obediently did in my bare feet, trying to hold the hospital gown closed. Then I was instructed to step up on a stool, where the surgeon (I believe his name was Henderson) proceeded to mark my legs where the incisions were to be made. I can only suppose this was done to save his back! After this I padded back out to the Gurney and was taken to the operating theater laughing internally all the while.

Being in the subtropics, several of my incisions went septic and I was on an antibiotic for several months before they cleared up. Then I suffered a bout of respiratory infection and was put on another antibiotic. This was too much for my immune system and it appeared I just never got over that episode of flu. At the time our family doctor was a young Afrikaans woman 29 years old - Dr. Karin Uys. She was a very compassionate, caring doctor and we were sorry when she and her husband emigrated to Canada. Karin knew immediately what my problem was, but it was necessary to first make the rounds of specialists to rule out other possibilities. After a few months, it was official . . . I had developed Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Acute Myofacial Pain Syndrome and Fibromyalgia. The pain was all-encompassing. The fatigue so severe I could not even hold a book to read. I was so fortunate to get an early diagnosis, especially when I have since learned of many Fibro sufferers who have gone for years from doctor to doctor before getting a diagnosis.

After Dr. Uys left the country I found Dr. Lance Giles, a homeopath with offices in Empangeni and Richards Bay. Over several months Dr. Giles was able to put my pain and fatigue in remission. I was able to get off all pain and sleep medication. He remains a friend to this day. Unfortunately, when we moved to Virginia I overdid things and reactivated the Fibro and have not found anyone in the U. S. with his knowledge and skill.

When we finally moved back to the States at the end of the year 2000, I arrived at our daughter’s home in Ohio very ill. It took a couple of days before I realized I was suffering from Tick Bite Fever. After all those years of living in South Africa, camping in the game parks, traipsing through the veldt, etc., and never succumbing to this common malady, I managed to get it just before leaving the country. Susan took us to a local doctor who was very alarmed when I told her my suspicion. She made a couple of phone calls and finally decided she couldn’t deal with this illness and sent me to the emergency room at the Akron General Hospital. After several doctors and interns had come to have a look-see, they finally found an infectious disease specialist who had heard of the African variety of Tick Bite Fever and was able to prescribe the correct medication. They asked my permission and took pictures of my back, where the bite was, for their medical books. That was definitely not the way I imagined starring in pictures!

So dear friend, put your fears aside. Other cultures may be different, sometimes even bizarre, but we can learn much from them if we keep an open mind, a sense of humor, and trust in our heavenly Father.

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