Adventures in Health Care
In March 2020 I had a long-awaited surgery to repair a left inguinal hernia. The hernia had been a bother since the Autumn of the previous year so finally getting it done was a relief. The surgery itself was rather straightforward; I was given anesthesia and while I was out the surgery was performed via a laparoscope. After a requisite few hours to recover from the anesthesia I was given a fistful of opioids for the post-surgery pain and two days later, I was back to my regular routine save for yoga stretches and resistance training that I needed to wait for a few weeks before I could resume. My out-of-pocket expense for the surgery was about $200 and my employer-provided health insurance covered the remaining $7000 cost of the surgery. From diagnosis to surgery took approximately 3 months. Fast forward to the late summer of 2022. We had been in Japan for about 6 weeks when I noticed symptoms not unlike my previous hernia but this time on the right side. I had just received my kokumin ...