It has been over a year now, but I thought I would pass along my experience spending a night in a hospital in Brazil. My wife and I flew through Miami to Rio de Janeiro to start a Trafalgar tour of Brazil. To make a long story short I got up during the overnight flight and fainted about 4 hours out from Rio. I knew I had a mild heart problem, but I had no chest pains and was pretty sure I was not having a heart attack. My blood pressure dropped causing the fainting, and I stayed very low. In addition, my hands were tingling. As I think I have piece it together over the last year, a combination of sleeping on the plane and one of my heart medications (atenolol) caused me to faint. Hitting my head on the deck of the plane probably cause the tingling in my hands from the pressure on my spinal cord. Anyway, for about 3 hours, I was able to convince the medical passengers on the plane of that I was not going to die, but when you are lying on the deck with defibulator pads on your chest you are not in a strong position to argue. An hour out of Rio I must have passed out again as one of the medical passengers said I need to get down fast, and they put the 757 down in Belo Horizonte. The scariest part for me was being carried down the stairs tied to a stretcher. The scariest part for Linda was hearing the call “is there a doctor on the plane” and not seeing me in the seat beside her. After we landed, the airport doctor took one look at me and said I was not dying.

The plane had to stay in the middle of the tarmac and I was taken by ambulance to the airport clinic. Delta told us we were on our own from there, but they left us with a Portuguese speaking flight attendant. That was until about an hour later when the captain called to the airport clinic to say he could not leave without the flight attendant. We had thought the plane had left long ago. The flight attendant wanted to stay to help but we sent her back to the plane with the hope we would be okay. Belo Horizonte has a good sized airport, but that type of plane had never landed there before, and Delta has no operations there. The doctor at the airport clinic spoke excellent English, but he was not sure about the hospital staff. I was feeling much better, but I was pretty banged up from the fall.

After a bumpy ride to Mater Dei Hospital, I spent the next 4 hours getting EKGs and X-rays of my hands and neck. As it turned out, the cardiologist spoke English quite well and a few of the other doctors spoke some English. The orthopedic doctor spoke no English, so the cardiologist was the interpreter. The X-ray person only knew one word, “stop” which he used frequently as I kept positioning my hands and neck for him. Except for one nurse who liked to practice his English with us, no one else spoke any English. But we got by fine.

The doctors all seemed to work well together. They could not find anything wrong with me, but they had me spend the night at the hospital just in case. That worked out well as we had no place else to go. Linda was able to spend the night in my room on a couch. We had a little Brazilian Reals that we brought from the States which she used for buying food. The hospital had no ATM. They bandaged up both of my hands and told me to be careful for the next week or so. My face was badly bruised so I was told to stay out of the sun as much as possible to prevent permanent scaring. I looked like I had just lost a fight. Staying out of the sun is not what you want to hear on the way to Copacabana Beach, but I did my best to enjoy the beach and stay out of the sun.

The next morning we paid our bills ($2,100) by credit card, a reasonable amount for the services I received. My wife’s credit card was rejected, so I had to go to the hospital office and use my credit card. I had warned both credit card companies that we would be in Brazil during that time, but it did not help with one card. I mention that to them when I got back tot he States and they told me I should have called them. Easier said then done when you are all bandaged up in a Brazilian hospital. Then the staff arranged a taxi to the airport, and told me what to pay the driver. We did not have enough Reals to pay the driver so he got a good tip in the 20-dollar bill I used for the rest of fare. All in all, the hospital staff was great to us. At the airport we walked up to the counter of one of the airlines going to Rio de Janeiro

We had travel insurance with Berkelycare, but we had to apply through our health insurance company first and they (Blue Cross/Blue Shield) paid all of the hospital costs. The travel insurance company paid us for the extra taxi fares, the air fare from Belo Horizonte to Rio de Janeiro and the cost of the one night we missed on our trip. We had booked two extra days in Rio prior to the tour starting so we did not miss our Trafalgar tour. Of course I was somewhat limited in what I could do, but that is another report.

I still have some neck problems from the fall, but after 3 MRIs, the neurologist does not want to see me any more unless I get worse. The swelling in my spinal cord has gone down enough to let me get back to near normal activities. I have no complaints regarding Delta. It was not their fault that I fainted and we made it on our way without too many problems. They did not take our check bags off the plane in Belo Horizonte but that was just as well since I could not carry them. The only thing I missed was my spare pair of glasses, because mine broke when I fell. But our Trafalgar tour guide got our bags to our room in Rio.