Peace Corps Medical ,,,,,while in Spain.

Well, the big decision had been made in Uruguay.  We going to go to Moldova and serve in the Peace Corps.  Then we get the bad news.  It has been just over one year since we cleared the medical screening process and we need to update our information.  This includes a follow up visit with our primary care physician, urine and blood analysis, HIV and tuberculosis tests (again since we have been in Uruguay) and a completely new dental workup.  Great!

This may sound simple but not so for us.  We were living in Uruguay when we found out, our health insurance was in Spain and they want all of this information in just a few weeks.  We have had no plans to return to the U.S. except for a couple of weeks prior to the Peace Corps staging process and are facing an expensive flight and uncovered medical expenses because it has taken the Peace Corps so long to place us.

We have to admit that the office of medical services worked with us really well.  They understood our challenges and helped us as we developed solutions.  What was our solution?  Return to Spain for 10 weeks, get our medical information mostly updated and see our daughter and our friends in Spain before returning to the U.S. for a whirlwind couple of weeks to finish our medical and dental updates, see some friends in Arizona and get ready to go to Moldova for two years.

We found an English speaking physician in our insurance network in Granada and after a little bit of discussion, she understood that we needed a very basic physical examination which she performed.  She ordered the labwork (gave us a prescription basically) and agreed to provide the documentation necessary for the Peace Corps.  In fact she worked with us to translate the documents from Spanish.

We went to the lab and had a very humorous few moments as we learned a new word in Spanish; orina.  Expecting to only get blood drawn we were absolutely flummoxed when this came up and of course, as is normal in Spain, there was no English speakers in site to assist us.  And we thought our Spanish was pretty good.

As you can probably guess by now, the work means urine and apparently our doctor had ordered a urinalysis as well.  This was Thursday and we were told the results would be available the following Monday.  Wonderful. 

Next step, acquire the “certificate of good health” reporting form that the doctor needs.  These can be obtained at the nearest “estanco” or tobacco store; go figure.  Two weeks and four euros poorer we returned to the doctor’s office where she wrote up our results (lab-work delivered by us of course), gave us a little common sense advice (stay hydrated, drink in moderation, etc.) and sent us on our way.  The doctor visits and the lab work cost us a total of 24 euro for the copays.  You just can’t beat that.

We decided that the dental workup requirements were complicated enough that we would never be able to explain it to a Spanish dentist so we would wait until we returned to the States to get that done.  Besides, we didn’t have dental coverage in Spain either.

Sure enough, two weeks before we returned to the States Mike developed an abscess around a tooth he had been fighting for years.  After two days of increasing swelling and pain while unsuccessfully trying to catch one of the dentists in the Albaycin in their offices we went to a local pharmacy and explained the problem.  After a few questions the pharmacist gave Mike some anti-inflammatories, post-inflammation pain relievers and put him on a course of antibiotics.  This would all have to have been done prior to the dentist working on the tooth anyway. 

What an incredibly efficient way for health care to work!  The tooth improved of course and we decided to wait until we returned to the States to have the tooth removed as a part of our dental workup update.  The office of medical services understood and approved the fact that our dental work would be submitted less than two weeks before we would arrive in Philadelphia for staging.

The final pieces we’d have to put together would be the HIV and tuberculosis tests that had to be done in the U.S.  We found a company People’s Choice Labs in Phoenix that allowed you to order your own lab work for very reasonable prices, were able to schedule appointments for the TB test and HIV blood draw right after we returned and were assured results within just a few days.  The nurse in charge of our files was wonderful (Thank you Nancy!) as we finally ground to the end of what was, for us, a long, long (almost 2 years) application process.