A day lost in the Kuwaiti hospital system

So it's my second day in Kuwait and already I've already managed a trip to the hospital.  I am visiting my friend Hanna and she works in an animal shelter called KS Path, where she is shelter manager.


Long story short. She got bitten by a feral cat and she was in a lot of pain, in fact her whole hand was swelling. So right after work we go to the hospital to get her tetanus shot, where she was told she may need to return tommorrow to get a rabies one too.


The next day, her hand had ballooned even further. Puss was coming out of her hand. OMG YUM. I love puss. We return to the original hospital and wait 30 minutes to be advised that she will need to go to the emergency room at another hospital. Already we don't know where the hospital is, so the doctor draws us a map. So off we go to emergency. 


Hanna's brother, Mattias is driving because she can't change gears and he doesn't know where he is going either, so he is following her lead. But then again, neither does Hanna. So it's the blind leading the blind. And to make things easier, there was not one single sign to the hospital. Go figure. 


2 long hours later we finally find the hospital because we decided to ask a fellow driver in the parallel lane where it was. But when we get there, there is traffic inside the hospital compound. Like an actual grid lock. OMG seriously? My friend was being sent to emergency, I would hate to think if she was in a real emergency, even though she kind of really was. 


So we make it through the doors and go to reception to get Hanna attended to. Nobody is there. Hanna's first assumption is, they must be on a tea break. "What? All at the same time? Not even in shifts? You have got to be kidding me right?" She responds "Probably, Kuwaitis love their tea breaks". 


A couple of minutes pass, then two ladies appear but already it seems very difficult to get their attention. Other patients start pushing in. 15 gruelling minutes later we are finally attended to and we are told to go to emergency which is in the next building.


We go to the other building and make it to reception and the lady is busily texting away, she takes one glance at Hanna and continues to text. "Ahem... excuse me... help?". I got nada, nothing, no sale. So we wait until she is done texting and she tells us where to go. We head to that room, and another lady tells us, "Where you need to go is,  down the corridor through the second door to the right". 


Ok. So off we trot, clippity-clop, tra-lah-lah-lah-lah, which brings us right back to the texting lady. SIGH.  Texting lady decides to ask her colleague where we are supposed to go. And she gives us, what we suspect are the right directions. We think...


These direction take us to another building. We arrive at the reception of that building and already I am greeted with a baby in a critical condition and a guy bandaged in a wheelchair in the reception area. Yep we definitely found the emergency section alright. Yippie!!


We make our way past the baby and speak to the gentlemen at reception and he is already hassling Hanna for being Kuwaiti and not speaking Arabic. He finally decides to drop it and tell us where to go, where we are to take a ticket and wait in line for the next available doctor.


We walk into the waiting room and I quickly notice something a bit left of centre.

Colour Code for Patient Identification

15 or so minutes later, our ticket number pops up and we go and into the doctor's office. He says we actually need to go to another hospital, a fever hospital. You have got to be kidding right?  We were lost for 2 hours looking for the hospital and lost for another looking for you. 


Even though it kills us (Hanna more so) we ask him to draw us a map to the other hospital. Oh and he also hassles Hanna for not speaking Arabic too and asks her "Where did you get her from?" and yes he was referring to me.

We eventually make it to the fever hospital, and surprisingly enough, this hospital was a much easier find. And no traffic either.  We walk straight in, took our ticket and saw the nurses. She took her rabies shot which didn't hurt. Funnily enough. Hanna had just one to go. It was funny because I thought this would be like the first one, painless. I politely looked away for her second injection which was going to happen on her butt. I thought it was over and I just happen to glance at it as it was coming out of her lady hump and I swear to god, I nearly fell flat on my face and yelped. The needle was the size of my forearm. 

Welcome to Kuwait and to the public health system.