Heat Wave and Health Care

"It is finally cooling off!" Our car measuring the outside air temperature. We saw it register as high as 106 degrees, the highest we have ever seen our 10 year old car measure outside air temp!

It has been the hottest in 100 years here this week in Budapest, so the locals say. As is true of most Hungarians, we do not have air conditioning and the nearest pool is nearly 30 minutes away. Here are some unique coping skills we have learned.

We learned the value of the “siesta,” an idea that most Americans despise or don’t understand. But when you have no air conditioning, you learn to get up early (4:30am to 5am), get the work done while it is still cool and take it easy during the heat of the day, only to re-emerge with the cool of evening.

This began as a water balloon but was left in the full sun on our deck. It melted into something consistent with blue latex paint.

Get the cool air into the house early but by 10am, close the house up, draw the curtains and keep out the heat. This worked early in the week but after 5 days of 100+ degree heat, it just wasn’t cool anymore in the mornings. I could not even sleep outside at night on our deck because the tiles on our terrace even at 2am were still radiating enough heat to make me sweat as I was out there.

The big grocery stores all pulled their frozen foods from the freezers. The freezers displaying the frozen foods could not keep the food from thawing.

I would pull a t-shirt out of my closet and it felt hot as if it had just come out of the dryer.

5 AM: The sun rises menacingly over our Hungarian village.

On another note, I had an outpatient procedure done at a local hospital here in Hungary. It was very clean, the paint was fresh and pretty, the staff smiled and were courteous, no one mocked me for my need for further testing and everything was professional. EB accompanied me and we waited for the procedure to start in a private room. That room had your standard hospital bed as well as a single normal bed next to it. Not bad for a country with socialized health care.

But wait! Before you call Michael Moore; this was a PRIVATE hospital independent of the socialized health care system of Hungary. You have heard plenty of horror stories of our experience with socialized medicine. Before you become a fan of government run health care, please come spend a week with us and we will give you a tour of contrast between private and public health care here in Hungary.

I must give a “shout-out” to this private hospital. Google “Telki Hungary hospital” and surely you will find the hospital we visited. My procedure? Well, lets just say that George W and I had a lot in common medically this past weekend. I’m fine; everything checked out okay.