Even though I went to bed early that night, I kept waking up like every 2 hours or so, due to the resistance to sleeping on an unfamiliar bed, the anxiety of being 'intruded' anytime by some unknown visitors as the door was opened all the time, and also because nurses came in to get my body temperature & blood pressure every now and then in the middle of the night.
Anyway, after the long night, I just couldn't wait to wake up before 9am the next morning, hoping to get whatever necessary to be done so that I could leave as soon as possible.
This time I was taken to see Dr. J, a gynaecologist, to do the final abdominal ultrasound which confirmed Dr. X's diagnosis - there's a functional cyst of unusual size in my right ovary, which was however subsiding compared to the day before.
To my surprise, I got a prescription of some oral contraceptive pills. According to Dr. J, apparently those pills could prevent the cysts from forming again by stopping my ovulation upon next menstrual cycle (which also achieves birth control purposes).
Anyway, I was still grateful for the fact that no operation was required and happily waiting to be discharged since 1pm, but what I didn't know was that it was actually just the beginning of another unpleasant event...
Think I'd gone to the discharge department for at least 4 or 5 times to check the status of it, as nobody ever came to my room to update me anything about the discharge.
Can you believe that I was still in the hospital after SEVEN hours? Just because they still couldn't get the letter of guarantee from my insurance company for my hospitalization bill by then.
I finally stopped bugging the officer in discharge department, Mr. Whatever (besides forgetting his name, also because I really don't care!), at 6pm when he told me that the initial guarantee letter was approved by the insurance company, and I could go home in one hour once they received the final approval letter later.
So I went back to my room and patiently waited for another hour, before I realized it was actually a TRICK to stop me from bugging him anymore - the discharge department closed at exactly 7pm!
I couldn't believe the employee of such a reputable hospital would be so irresponsible to this extent, and yet, there was still nobody who came and informed me when exactly I could leave. (Or did anybody even care?)
With serious annoyance, I went down to the reception at the main entrance of the hospital and asked for my discharge status. Only then I found out I had to pay the bill myself because the insurance company had somehow rejected to pay for the bill due to the conflict between initial and final diagnoses of my condition.
I went totally SPEECHLESS when I learned the bill was almost RM1700. Just couldn't understand why did I have to stay for so long while in the end I still had to pay for myself?
Can you believe that I left the hospital around 8pm? Something was SERIOUSLY wrong with the discharge procedure in that hospital.
Think about it, througout the 7 hours waiting period, it wasn't just my time that was wasted, but also hospital resources like the ward I occupied, the nurses who came to provide meals and etc, all of these were unnecessarily abused merely due to the inefficiency of the discharge procedure.
Anyway, this was my first, and hopefully last, hospitalization experience.
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