Just something I would like to share, based on my real personal experience.<\/p>\n
18 Jan, Wed. Night.<\/strong>\u00a0I had severe right upper quadrant (RUQ) abdomen pain and went to Ng Teng Feng (Jurong Hospital) A&E, and was warded for 1 day. They had originally suspected me to have a gallstone attack at A&E. I was given IV painkillers (Tramadol), did some ultrasound, sent me home with painkillers (more Tramadol) and then scheduled for a follow-up about a\u00a0month later.<\/p>\n 5 Feb, Sun. Night.\u00a0<\/strong>I had a 2nd episode and did not go to the hospital. I took the painkillers (Tramadol) which was not much help.<\/p>\n 8 Feb, Wed. Afternoon.<\/strong> Went for my follow-up appoint at NTFGH. Doctor (mis-)diagnosed me as having Gastritis (“Gastric”). I even double checked with the doctor TWICE and described my pain because when symptoms were not typical of Gastritis. He said I didn’t need my OGD (gastro scope) but I insisted to have it done to confirm it is Gastritis (or not). The OGD was scheduled on 13 Feb (Monday). Pay attention to this date.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n 8 Feb, Wed. Night.<\/strong> I had another episode (my 3rd). My episodes are getting more frequent. Once again, I took the painkillers (Tramadol) but they did not help.<\/p>\n 9 Feb, Thurs. Afternoon.<\/strong> Sought private doctor opinion and was immediately diagnosed as having gallstones. Doctor said my described symptoms were obvious, but he did an ultrasound anyway to confirm.<\/p>\n 12 Feb, Sun. Night.<\/strong> Had my 4th episode, which was more severe than the first 3. Note at this point, my 2nd, 3rd, 4th episodes all occurred within a week. Checked myself into Farrer Park Hospital. Was given morphine to reduce my pain, and a surgery was arranged for the following day.<\/p>\n 13 Feb, Mon. Afternoon.<\/strong> Surgery done. Doctor said my gallbladder was already inflamed by the time I had my surgery, and was lucky to have done the surgery and not have it delayed otherwise it would have been more complicated if inflamed further.<\/p>\n Lesson learnt<\/strong><\/p>\n Go straight to a specialist.<\/strong> Thankfully I sought 2nd opinion instead of waiting for atrociously long follow ups at NTFGH. Any further delays would have lead to complications. During a short period of 3 days (9 Feb – 12 Feb) I had immediate medical attention which was necessary. If I had a more serious condition, I could\u00a0have possibly died from waiting. Realize that my surgery was done even BEFORE my scheduled appointment for the OGD at NTFGH. This is how slow\u00a0the government hospitals are.<\/p>\n Bump your insurance coverage to the max. <\/strong>I had purchased only medical insurance coverage for up to Government Hospital (Private\/Single Bed Wards) since a long time ago, when I was younger. I haven’t thought of upgrading it.\u00a0My hospital and surgery bill came up to $20k. I had to pay $8k+ cash because I didn’t have full private hospital coverage. This is not including the money I already paid to NTFGH previously.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Just something I would like to share, based on my real personal experience. 18 Jan, Wed. Night.\u00a0I had severe right upper quadrant (RUQ) abdomen pain and went to Ng Teng Feng (Jurong Hospital) A&E, and was warded for 1 day…. Continue Reading →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2611,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[535],"tags":[540,538,539,536,537],"class_list":["post-2607","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-health","tag-delay","tag-jurong-hospital","tag-misdiagnosis","tag-ng-teng-feng","tag-ntfgh"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/tzlee.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/02\/surgery.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tzlee.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2607","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tzlee.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tzlee.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tzlee.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tzlee.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2607"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/tzlee.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2607\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2609,"href":"https:\/\/tzlee.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2607\/revisions\/2609"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tzlee.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2611"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tzlee.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2607"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tzlee.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2607"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tzlee.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2607"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}