Aside from my good fortune in getting rid of prostate cancer before it could spread, there are three points to be made about my experience. One concerns the high quality of medical care I received from various specialists in the fields of anesthesiology, pathology and cardiology and from my skilled urologist, Dr. Thomas C. Sansone, and the nurses and staff at Bryn Mawr Hospital. At every step, I felt that I was in the hands of superb professionals who knew their business and cared deeply about me, their 69- year-old patient. These people truly practice tender loving care.
By the way, I suspect equally committed and qualified staffers can be found at other hospitals in Philadelphia and its suburbs. Indeed, I doubt whether many other cities anywhere in the world offer higher quality health care than can be found right here. That's how good I believe Philadelphia's medical facilities and medical practitioners are.
But the care I got was very expensive - just as it is everywhere else in the United States. And that's my second point. It's not news, of course, that American health care is costly. But even so, I was stunned by the size of the bills that came drifting in.
One day in a semi-private room in the hospital: $849. Seven days: $5,943. Use of the operating room: $5,945. Those were the two-big ticket items, but other charges were substantial. During most of my stay in the hospital I was hooked up to gizmos supplying intravenous nourishment and small amounts of morphine to ease postoperative pain. I also took other medication.
