Medical Care in Holland

Everyone I know here has complained about the standard of care they get from the medical system here. Now I've found the worst example yet of this. A colleague recently became ill and took herself to the hospital. She was showing all the classic symptoms of meningitis. They placed her into a room with other patients while they ran their tests. They did not tell her what they were suspecting or ruling out, even though it was clear they knew. When we went to the hospital, not many people there could speak useful english. In a country where even the janitors speak fluent english, how can medical professionals not? We asked if she was contagious. The nurse said yes. We asked a few more times and she said yes. So we asked if we would get sick, she said no she wasn't contagious. The nurse didn't really understand the word contagious. It turns out my colleague did have meningitis, but the viral kind not the more severe bacterial kind. Still, I would have expected them to take precautions (such as keeping her away from people) and treat it like the more severe form until they knew for sure what it was. When it came time to discharge her, they didn't tell her what she had. Instead, they called it "brain flesh infection" and sent her home without any explanation of what to do to get better, or even when it would be safe to go back to work. She called her personal doctor to ask more about the disease, and her doctor refused to believe she actually had meningitis, even though her medical papers clearly said it. I really don't know what I would do here if I got sick and needed urgent attention. I certainly don't trust that I would get quality treatment here.

Botanical Gardens

This weekend I went with a couple friends to the Botanical Gardens in DC to take pictures. For my equipment, the conditions were not ideal, but I tried to use it as a chance to work on longer focal length shots. I'm not sure that worked out so well. Most of the good shots ended up being macros, I think.






The rest of the pics can be found here.

Colorado Springs

Well, my whirlwind tour of the US is over. El Paso, Carlsbad, DC, Hunstville, Colorado Springs and Williamsburg over the span of two weeks. Not to mention that I started the trip off from Rome, immediately following on the Normandy trip. Let's just say I'm travelled out for the moment. But, it was great to be back in the west. I miss the desert and the mountains. I need to find an excuse to go there more. Vastness of space and only one of stores and roads and things is much more to a scale I can handle.

While in Colorado Springs, I got to do some siteseeing. First was Pikes Peak, which my rental car easily climbed (passing several SUVs that were poking along). You can find better views and more scenic places, but there's something about being able to drive up to 14,000ft on a whim.


After that was Garden of the Gods. Some people I know have been somewhat disparaging towards the place, but I think it's really cool. It's close to town and the colors and curves of the rocks make for great pictures. How uninteresting is this?


Also did some light hiking out in what really felt like countryside that really felt like it belonged to bears more than it did to me.


There were also some driving excursions. One of which involved driving out to meet the first snow of the year on some very unpaved, very back roads. Another was a quick scenic drive after work that lasted most of the evening and resulted in finding a really nice restaurant in the middle of nowhere.

The pics are here.