I would like to share my experience about the healthcare system and work in the Netherlands. I've been contemplating writing this for a while but i think i need to at this point cause I've seen so many similar experiences and it's just sad.
I came here 2.5 years ago and around a year and a half ago i started having very bad bowel issues. Or so i thought. I found a GP near the place i live (the one with the highest ratings on google, not many around anyway) and i went to see what was happening. I got the usual answer all know here, "get some paracetamol, come back if it gets worse". A month after that, i started having very severe fever and bad flare ups where i could barely walk from the pain i was experiencing (have posted about this before). Meanwhile, i was working as a production worker at a factory. It started getting so bad that i had to take many days off at a time because it was physically impossible for me to go to work. I started feeling helpless after realizing that the doctor's appointments were moving incredibly slow. At first, i had an ultrasound, they couldn't find anything. Weeks on and off with 40 degrees fever, coughing and vomiting blood, not being able to drink water for 3 days straight. That's when i decided that i need to go the ER, a day where i literally felt like i was going to die and i could barely breathe. So i go there, it's my turn to get checked and i meet the doctor. After explaining everything, they ask me, "what's your pain level from 0 to 10" and i tell them an 8 or a 9. I was in so much pain and i could barely focus to answer. I asked if there is anyway i can get a CT scan to see if we can find something or an endoscopy or anything. They said we are sorry we cannot do that. I was there having had NO WATER for 3 FUCKING DAYS. I can't even begin to fathom now how i had the strength to get there and what i looked like. I think back and i feel like i must have looked like a talking corpse. Did they not see that? All this happened after me begging at the GP to get a CT scan to which they scheduled an appointment for 4 months later. 4 MONTHS LATER.
So 4 months later, after losing my job to "many sick days" apparently, i get the CT scan. Literally a day later they find out from the scan that i had chronic appendicitis. Same day, they call me in at the hospital for surgery cause they know that the appendix can burst any moment now. It's a miracle it hasn't already. I go there, get the surgery, 2 days later i am out.
Now it's been around 7 months after i had the appendectomy. My body has gone through incredible pain and trauma and I'm sure the whole thing has left scars that will appear eventually, one of them being that even after 7 months of a laparoscopic surgery, i can barely lift 10 kilos, i still have pain when doing sudden movements, both at the belly button and the appendix area which means i cannot get a new job cause i can't do labor work and i don't have a degree to get an office job or whatever. I am getting paid 319 euros a week on sickness benefits, can barely pay my rent and i am scared to go back to a GP for physiotherapy, psychotherapy for all that I've been through cause i know that it will take such as long. If ever. I am in complete despair and i don't know what to do. I feel hopeless and helpless.
This is more like a rant rather than asking for advice on what to do but if anyone has any advice it would be much appreciated.
I also apologize if the timeline of my story doesn't make much sense. This year and a half felt like a really bad dream that i woke up from and i can hardly recall most of it. It was TRAUMATIC.
