Hysterectomy is a procedure in which the uterus is removed through an incision made in the abdomen or in the vagina. Due to skyrocketing costs of surgical procedures in US, lots of women choose to go abroad for hysterectomy surgery.
Melisa from phoenix Arizona is one such woman who had her hysterectomy surgery in San Jose, Costa Rica.
Check out the video where she talks about her experience with the doctor and hospital in Costa Rica and also how medical tourism company assisted in her medical trip.
Video Narration
“I am Melisa. I am from phoenix Arizona and I am a mother of two girls. So I had a myomectomy done at San Jose, Costa Rica. The communication was very good from the beginning I made an informal general enquiry and they responded easily within a day by email and I believe I got a phone as well which was impressive and the reason why I stuck with them in the first place.
I had done research on few medical tourism groups at the same time and we were necessarily looking for specific country and I was looking for that procedure in particular. The fact that they were very quick to respond to my general inquiries is the reason why I chose them.
One thing that was very helpful was, after I decided to go to that particular hospital in San Jose, it turns out the additional testing done here and with the communication with it being in different language and having to deal with faxing and getting medical authorization and getting a doctor’s know from the hospital in Costa Rica, it would have been incredibly complicated if not impossible if I would have tried to do that of my own but because I use medical tourism, they took care of everything and everything was done from beginning to end within a week.
They took care of all the communication, all the faxing, all the phone calls and everything and I was so grateful for that process. I am sure it would have taken me a lot longer to have made that happen.
We didn’t have people discourage us but there was people who also hadn’t had any experience travelling outside of US so it wasn’t successful. They weren’t successful in the reasons they gave for the discouragement, so the discouragement was more leaving the country to have surgery done and all the unknowns that could potentially come with that.
I had a surgery 4 months ago and the surgery ended up with was not the one I initially went for. Actually it was lot more complicated and I ended up with hysterectomy instead of myomectomy. But the recovery process has been great,. They required that I stay in the country for 10 days post-surgery. But other than that, after the first two weeks the recovery went very well.
One of the things I want to mention about the hospital is that I think at one point having hesitation for me going in is that I don’t trust doctors immediately just because they are doctors so even doctors I work with in the states it takes me while to actually have a point of trust and confidence. So that was my real hesitation about leaving the country to have a serious operation done.
But what I would say is upon meeting the gentleman who end up doing my surgery, I met him a day before the surgery for the first time, I immediately liked him and I immediately trusted him and he was a wonderful doctor to work with. I think one advantage to being there that would not have happened in states that even after the surgery he gave me his personal cell phone number and offered to come and visit me where I was doing my rest of the recovery after I leave that hospital.
He also offered for me to call him while he was on vacation on what was going to happen a weed later. He was incredibly thoughtful and I completely trusted him that was the wonderful thing and I think I ended up with a better situation with a surgeon there and a true ……. better than that I would have ended up with in States if I had the same surgery.”
Large number of healthcare tourists coming from different western countries like UK, US and Canada are responsible for growing medical tourism in Costa Rica.
Low cost of surgical procedures is one of the major factors which encourage patients to come to the country for quality healthcare or surgical treatment at affordable price.
