my 4 months in taipei (1)

For the past 10-15 years or so, my wife and I go back to Taiwan around the Christmas-New Year time for vacation, usually for 2 or 3 weeks, one month top. 

This year--or should I say last--was different. With my wife's early retirement, she decided--and I complied--to try out a long stay there that started early November and lasted over the end of February, for a total of almost 4 months.

The following are a few memorable moments there I thought worth noting down.

My chronically aching feet started acting up again just about a week after I arrived in Taipei. In hind sight, it probably started way early in October, through my trip to Turkey, never got completely healed, before I foolhardily started my aggressive daily morning walk to a neighborhood park here.

So here I was, in the middle of the night, lying in bed with excruciating, bone gnawing pain at my left heel and ankle, trying to find any pain relieving medicine in the kitchen drawer without success. In similar situations back in the States, I either went to the ER which turned out to be no emergency care at all, or having to wait until the morning and drove myself to some local clinic when they were open. Here, I called a 24-hour drug store to ask if they had the anti-inflammation/pain relieving medicine I wanted, they didn't, but suggested I try a pharmacy store across street that might have. I did and they had. Then I called a taxi, which came to my apartment almost the moment I hung up the phone, drove me a few blocks to the pharmacy. I hopped (literally) out of the car, bought the medicine, asked for water and took a couple pills right then and there, hopped back to the street, got another cab and went home.

The next day I went to a neighborhood municipal hospital and saw a bone specialist. He took the x-ray, checked my foot, gave prescriptions, for both medicine and physical therapy for two weeks (and then two more weeks in a follow-up visit, and then another two after that), all in one morning's worth.

Then my wife broke her arm by accident over a weekend visit to a town 50 miles away from Taipei. The local hospital ER took x-ray, re-aligned the dislocated joint, put on the cast, before sending her on an ambulance back to Taipei city for a bone surgery, which took place the next day without a glitch.

The total out-of-the-pocket expenses, including the emergency services at both hospitals, the hired ambulance, the surgery, 2-night stay in the hospital, and the non-insurance-covered high-end artificial joint we opted to use for my wife: around $2600.

And I opted to do my regular colon exam here this time. Again it was just a local municipal gastroenterology specialist, who arranged to have the exam done in another bigger and better facilitated municipal hospital branch, with painless anesthesia-assisted procedure, just like those performed in the States. The nice thing about doing it here is I didn't have to drive, or have someone else drive me there. Just took a subway and walked there, and a taxi back.They did require a second person accompanying through the exam, due to the full-body anesthesia, though.