Martin Gumucio

Here is a nice one:

I normally start my posts with some kind of illustration and well.. if you search google images for “hernia” there is no shortage of pictures, but perhaps not so suprising none of them looked like an appealing intro for a blog post.

The symptoms began late fall in 2010, and I first went to the doctors early december. I didn’t take until mid january however that i got to visit the surgery ward for the pre-surgery exam. Thats when i first got the fear that this would not be fixed until my work started in march. And sure enough, it took until mid-April until i got under the knife. Months of agonizing waiting, this particular illness is very tough to combine with small kids. The thing is that public healthcare is facing massive cutbacks in funding, thanks to our current right-wing goverment. One of the biggest polyclinics in Uppsala, Samariterhemmet had to close operations and send all their clients to another town. In Uppsala we still have Akademiska Sjukhuset, but they normally don’t bother with routine stuff like this procedure is. So off to Enköping for me.

The third week of march i had still heard nothing from the hospitals of when or where my surgery would take place. The normal swedish way is just to sit still in the boat and wait, but I had the feeling that approach would serve me badly in this case. And sure enough, when i finally managed to get hold of the right person on their 30 minute telephone-time (not kidding), the answer was very alarming: “Enköping is swarmed with patients, call them and book an appointment, but don’t call them this week. They have still not sorted their shit out, so it would be pointless to call them this week.”

Yikes!

When I did call them the message was very depressing “yeah so we can recieve you in May.. perhaps.. maye in june.” The thing is with swedish taxes is that while they may be one of the highest in the world, they also bring a lot of neat stuff that we swedes have been taking for granted. One of those things is the “care guarantee” that provides a guarantee for you that you will be taken care of within 3 months of your first visit to the doctor. So giving me a an appointment in june was really really out of line.

So how did I get myself fixed on the 12 of april and not in june? I am sad to report that I had to call the “care guarantee unit”, can you call it the police of this stuff? And after THEY called the hospital to pull some strings a slot magically opened up. Very depressing that this is how stuff is working now in the swedish health system.

Anyway, after a short procedure that was much like removing an appendix I have spent a lovely couple of days in recovery. Mother in law Anita is here to help with the kids and the effort she is putting in is staggering. We will have to send her away on vacation after.

Now wish me luck for tomorrow, when I call the doctors to try to get a certificate to not have to work because … yeah you guessed it. I am supposed to go to work on tuesday (one week after operation). Just going to the bathroom is still a grand adventure at this point!

Junto con la hermanita Isabel estamos planeando grabar un disco con música para niños. Mas precisamente canciones en castellano, para el mercado Sueco. Hay muchos papas y mamas aqui que no tienen buen aceso a musica en la lengua latina. Asi que queriamos hacer una que invita a niños y parientes a cantar junto con el disco.

Pero necesitamos un poco de ayuda, cual canciones deberíamos incluir? Estamos muy interesados en saber cuales eran los canciones que eran significantes para ti o para tus niños.

Cual es tu canción de niños favorito?