WHAT DID IT COST to get Surgery in Colombia?
all right guys i just had full knee replacement surgery including two and a half months of rehabilitation and physical therapy in a foreign country where we don't speak the language now we've documented this on our youtube channel but we've had a ton of questions so we thought we would do a video where we just kind of put everything together and review the whole process from the actual medical costs incidental costs transportation costs housing costs let you know exactly what it cost to get surgery in colombia yeah and it was a really big process and for those of you who followed along you know it took several months and some people missed some parts and a lot of people wanted a consolidated version because they were maybe interested in getting surgery in another country or specific columbia and medellin so we wanted to provide the details for you guys and so here we go well first of all if you're new to our channel and you don't know who we are my name is snow this is kurt almost three years ago we sold everything we owned back in the united states including our house cars and everything moved into a van that kurt turned into our tiny house on wheels and we are on a 10-year journey around the world we've already done the united states mexico central america and this knee surgery incident came upon us here in south america in colombia so that's who we are if you don't know welcome to the channel all right so we're going to break this down into categories and as we're talking about a category we're going to use round numbers and kind of tell you what it costs you're going to want to stick around till the very end of the video because that's where we're going to add all the categories together and give you a detailed breakdown of exactly what it costs to get surgery in medellin colombia a major surgery so the first thing you have to do of course is all your pre-surgery testing now before we get to that part we need to tell you that we actually came to columbia and interviewed two different surgeons now we started in medellin where we met dr pardo and interviewed him and then we drove down to cali in southern columbia and interviewed with another doctor now ultimately we decided to go with dr pardo here in medellin we did a whole video explaining why we chose medellin over cali and why we decided to do this surgery here in columbia rather than going back home to the united states so if you want to know more about that you're going to want to watch that video and we will put it in the description of this video so it's easy for you to find so the first thing we did pre-surgery testing just like you would do for any surgery lab work ekg just make sure you're healthy something that was a little different to us here is they also send you for a dental appointment to make sure you don't have anything going on in your mouth and i think they do that to kind of help with keeping any infections from happening from your surgery so that was just your basic stuff that cost us about 95 u.s dollars when you hear us stay dollars we're talking us dollars now while i was going through that testing we did encounter a few things wrong with me i had an iron issue i had a blood pressure issue so i had to do a few other tests that is not going to be included in the grand total but if you look right here on the screen i'm kind of giving you a breakdown of what that cost it was just a few extra doctor's appointments a few extra tests and some extra medication but that's not included in the grand total so let's move on to the next topic so for the surgery these costs are all inclusive and this is what they include first of all they include the surgeon and all associated staff and there was a lot of staff involved several doctors i don't know how many it also included the operation room the anesthesia the medication while snow was in the hospital and included three nights in the hospital a private room with extra space we covered this in the surgery video so you guys could see how big and how nice the room is also it was meals for snow it included support from the international office so you guys have probably met maria and stephanie by now but they were amazing and helped us through this whole entire process we couldn't have done it without them and they were included as well now the initial quote for all of that was forty one hundred and fifty dollars and that's what it was before we were admitted into surgery now we were told that those costs could go up they could go on depending what happened at the surgery you want to tell them what kind of health yeah so what actually happened is we paid the the 41.50 in us dollars before we could even get admitted for the surgery and then you know we go in and we do the surgery and then my iron issue caught us caused us to actually stay an extra day in the hospital and we thought that was going to make us have to pay more when it was time to leave but it ended up that a few days after we went home from the hospital after being discharged um they called us up and said well we owe you money so they actually gave us 900 back which really shocked us so the grand total for the surgery was around 3 200 and that's all those things you heard kurt list now he also mentioned the international office and for you guys that have never watched one of our videos you might not know who stephanie and maria are and this is something we've kind of learned as we researched doing surgery in a foreign country is some of the hospitals definitely here in colombia and in other countries as well have an international office and they provide support to people that don't speak the language don't know how to maneuver you know the the hospital and the paperwork so we had maria and stephanie two interns working on their international degrees that were assigned to help us and they were absolutely amazing so i wanted to explain that because that might sound confusing if you don't know what that meant good point now something that wasn't included in the surgery was the post-surgery medication and obviously snow was in a tremendous amount of pain after the surgery and so these costs are going to include two weeks of strong opioids also six weeks of pain modification 30 days of blood thinner to keep her blood from clotting post surgery which was very important and lots and lots of tylenol also tylenol and the cost for the medication for that medication was around 40 yes yeah and right now guys you're hearing these numbers and they may sound pretty low to you and that's because they are forty dollars for eight weeks worth of post surgery and pain medication forty dollars all right so the next big part of this process probably the most important part of this process was the physical therapy a knee replacement surgery is pretty traumatic and intense surgery and they do a lot to your legs and muscles they don't just replace your joint they kind of affect your whole leg which i have definitely learned so physical therapy was very important we did at home physical therapy and physical therapy at the hospital so four days a week i had a private physical therapist santiago come to our apartment and do a one hour session we did that for two months so that was 32 total visits he started the second day after right after surgery he was right there with us the whole time he was amazing it was a very important part of my recovery kept my spirits high kept me moving when i didn't want to move and it's something that even though the hospital does not recommend it i write a prescription for it provide support for it is something me and kurt went out and found on our own and made our own arrangements for and we highly recommend it so i will tell you that for one at-home private physical therapy session eight dollars yeah and if you guys watch the videos you know not only was santiago very professional and very good at hitting expertise at his job but he was also super cool and super nice yeah he was amazing it was it was really worth the extra physical therapy and then the other one was the hospital the hospital physical therapy was a little bit more intense because you know we had all the the devices that come with a physical therapy set up room and we did 14 of those now my orthopedic surgeon dr pardo initially wrote for 10 physical therapy visits in their one hour sessions but we had a little extra time so i asked for a few more so we did a total of 14 twice a week was excellent facilities excellent physical therapist there were no language issues because stephanie from the international office would go with you and it was six dollars per visit and again a nice facility they had multiple rooms there and the physical therapist that we ended up with was melissa melissa was top-notch she was awesome and again extremely professional now one thing i'll say is we have gotten a lot of comments from from you folks and people who've gotten treatment back in the states and i know that this by far exceeds the normal standards you might think i only got like one treatment every two weeks or one treatment a week or something like this and the cost it's we know that back in the states when you've hit your deductible and the new calendar year runs around the physical therapy cost can be preventative i mean it can make you where you can't afford to do your physical therapy and down here that just really wasn't an issue and it was quality physical therapy for a very reasonable price so we're very fortunate and thankful for that absolutely all right so the next part of the medical stuff it's coming to an end it was just the follow-up appointments i had two follow-up appointments with my surgeon uh the first one they took out the stitches and took off the bandages and uh the second one was just where i got the all clear was told to go on our travels go see the world and once a year get an x-ray from a more from an orthopedic and make sure everything looks good that cost 100 yeah and dr pardo was extremely thorough on these visits i mean they weren't just come in and you know i mean he answered all questions yeah and snow had a lot of questions about the pain and where it hurts so he described the surgery and and where he went in and cut and why she's feeling surgery in different places and it was really a good point to kind of point this out this is a big difference that we noticed here uh in columbia versus medical at home and we've both had extensive medical stuff in the states here there's no nurses when you go see the doctor there's no uh you know helpers assistants the doctor's sitting there at a desk talking to you he does his own reports he explains everything he spends a full hour with you it's not 10 minutes in the other 40 minutes with somebody else and um you actually get on a first name basis with them sometimes it's really good it was amazing kurt went into every appointment with me and they answered all of our questions in the the bedside manner of all the doctors here was amazing so all right we're done with the medical category the next category is incidental costs and this is kind of where i just clumped everything in that didn't have a home but was very important and that is kurt you want to go through this list here well the first thing i'll cover is the ice machine and it was a tub that we got off amazon and it circulated the water through a little knee pad or a pad and so it was basically a chiller and it kept her knee iced and we could run that thing it was amazing it was really i think a huge different a difference maker for the inflammation which was necessary to move on with the physical report now the one we got we were kind of bragging about it or excited about it but it actually kind of at the end at the end it died i wore it out but guys it served its purpose it made it through the surgery and the rehab so it did yeah she also got a fancy leg prop pillow so she could elevate her leg which again was important yeah compression brace her blue walker that's gator her cane the heating pad which we're still having the van and are using today yeah so those are all devices and the last one we kind of stumbled upon at the end so the international office provides the girls to help translate but that's only monday to friday and my surgery was planned for a friday which meant i was going to be you know in the hospital without a translator on saturday and sunday and honestly that scared us so we hired a private translator and it worked out really really well i think if you don't speak the language if you're thinking about doing a surgery in another country and you don't know the language i think this is one of probably the most critical things you need to do that nobody's going to tell you to do and the reason is is when you come out and you're in pain or you have questions uh you're nervous again you can't explain it's hard enough when you don't have those circumstances so a translator is is essential it made me and curt feel more comfortable it also made the staff the nurses that come in and check on you every 30 minutes or whatever it is they felt intimidated because they couldn't speak to us and when they saw we had an interpreter there they were very thankful and it made the process very easy it was not the cheapest item on our list it was a pricey endeavor but if you don't very fluently speak the language wherever you're going to have an international surgery this is something you should do right so for all those devices we described and the translighter translator the incidental cost total was around 730.
yep all right the next thing we got housing all right so we drove in in our van we live in a van yeah but with going through a major knee surgery we couldn't just park in the van somewhere and sleep in it because it's just too small and we needed to be comfortable so we decided um you know that we needed to rent a place now the rehab for a major surgery like this takes three months we would like for it to not take that long but it takes a little bit longer than you would expect and you can't fly in get the surgery in a few weeks fly home because there is a major risk of blood clots with a knee replacement surgery and they're not going to let you fly for 60 to 90 days so if you're gonna if you're in the united states and you're like i'm gonna go to columbia and get knee surgery you need to plan on staying here for at least three months i would think so i mean anything less than that we've heard stories of people getting up a couple weeks later but most most people but you still got the blood clot issue you still got the blood clot and most people are on track with snow's progress or even slower so three months is definitely something you should plan on now we rented a middle of the road i would call it an upper middle class level apartment um we wanted two bedrooms and two bathrooms because we didn't know if i was going to need to sleep in a bed by myself if curt was going to need a whole room so we chose two bedroom two bath and we picked a neighborhood called loralis because it was flat so you know there's a lot of things that went into what our apartment cost you could get cheaper you could definitely get more expensive but ours was let's see what did it cost so for three and a third months our apartment and we went through airbnb and that came with a comfort level of if something went wrong we didn't have to worry about it no maintenance issues and all that type of stuff but there are fees associated with it but housing for three and a third months 4300 us dollars by far one of the biggest items on the list yeah it was expensive but i will tell you this you know we spent three months in medellin i feel very confident in recommending loralis is a neighborhood to stay in there are also other ones that we kind of covered in our videos but if you're going to medellin for surgery you'll definitely want to check some of those areas out but it's important to be in a comfortable space i believe for recovery yeah all right that category is over we've done incidentals we've done medical we have done housing so the last one is transportation uh it's a big city so you're not gonna have a car you're gonna depend on taxis or uber or private driver our first few doctors appointments we did with uber and while we were doing that we met fabian who was an extremely safe driver which we learned was unusual and he was very kind so we decided to work out a deal with him and use him as our private driver for all the appointments that happened after surgery and the reason we did that is he was able to be a little bit more patient he helped me get in and out of the car he would pull right up to the entrance and he went above and beyond rather than an uber driver who needs to hustle to make more money so that's what we chose to do it did increase the price of transportation uh do you have anything to add on this yeah i do i mean you could uh take a cab uh and it would have been cheaper but i will tell you about the cabs in medellin is they're small and so right out of surgery snow couldn't bend her knee very much and i can even tell you fabian had a bit bigger car with more leg room in the front it was still hard it was still cramped and a lot of the drivers here are just absolutely crazy like turbo race car drivers again something you don't want to be you know dealing with when you're recovering from an extremely painful event so and in the grand scheme of things it was relatively cheap it was 265 dollars for our transportation and mind you rio negro where the hospital was where the surgery was performed is an hour outside of medellin and so some of those trips were the longer trips most of them were to the local san vicente hospital in medellin itself which was only about 15 minutes from the apartment yeah so that's what we spent on having private transportation it is something we recommend uh so would we recommend someone do what we did yeah yeah for sure yeah for sure 100 the medical care was absolutely outstanding yeah i would say for my top two reasons are number one obviously the cost the cost was amazing and you know america has some amazing doctors in technology and all that stuff we felt like we got top-notch coverage here cover here so we haven't gotten any better medical care anywhere in the world so for those two reasons for price and quality yeah it's a no-brainer now what i've done is you know we have a youtube travel channel and we stopped here in medellin for the surgery so in each one of our videos over the past two or three months there are little segments that kind of document how this process went along to make it easy for anyone that just wants to pop onto our channel and learn about getting surgery in colombia i have created a surgery playlist on our youtube channel so you can just go there and click right on that playlist and watch everything from the beginning till the end and not have to dive into all of our other videos or search around and look for them and i thought that would make it easier because there was a lot of unknowns when we made this decision so if we can help someone else make the decision i wanted to do that so if you're interested in that just go check out that playlist one more thing is if you have surgery in a foreign country likely your circle of support is not going to be there meaning your family friends people might come in and look at you cook a meal for you help you out maybe drop you off at whatever obviously we didn't have that and so the burden fell on me and i can tell you it was it was a lot of work but it was also rewarding work knowing that snow is recovering it was tough work but just know that that if you do have if you are planning to come to another country and you don't have a significant other or somebody else to give you that support then you would probably also want to try to find somebody who can help you for you because there's no way i can see after that surgery at least for the first maybe week or so yeah getting along you would need someone full time for the first week i think at a minimum to just be there in your house with you cooking for you taking care of you completely like kurt did for me and then you could probably have someone pop in once a day prep some meals keep everything clean for you and check on you but the hospital international office could probably direct you to that so if you're going to come down here solo by yourself for surgery very good point kurt i think you could probably get somebody like that for twenty dollars a day or less to support you so just to kind of give you an idea uh it might be tricky to find something yeah but yeah there you go all right okay so let's do a little recap all right so i'm gonna actually put we i told you at the end of this video we would add everything up for you and put it on the screen so i'm just scrolling through right now and showing you the actual spreadsheet i created to to come up with the the total cost for you guys so you're looking at the medical details right now and you see everything in colombian pesos as well as us dollars you see the quantity of how many next to the physical therapy appointments and that type of thing so then you're going to see my incidentals keep in mind most of those things were delivered via amazon to columbia so there's a the increase in price because of the delivery fees down here some of that stuff you might be able to bring with you as well yeah the smaller the shipping yeah the smaller things i would definitely figure out how to bring with you if you fly in and then the housing that's a simple one uh the transportation you see how it's broke down by each appointment and so the grand total the absolute grand total for our knee replacement surgery here in medellin 9018 including incidentals transportation and housing just legit medical costs three thousand six hundred and ninety five dollars yeah so yeah it's a bit astounding at how affordable it is one more thing i'll say before we close this video out because i know i'm going to get asked about it is ah yes we have international health insurance it works differently than the insurance you would have in the united states and possibly some other countries around the world but we will submit all these costs we do have a deductible but we do expect to be reimbursed for maybe about half of this but of course we have to go through the hassle of the insurance company stuff but with that guys we will see you in a few days right back here on this channel but in our van and starting our traveling around the world again thanks for all the poor support for those of you who watch the process of the surgery and the recovery and all the coping and all that stuff we really appreciate you guys comments see you guys on the next one cheers cheers if you like this video be sure to subscribe to our channel and hit that notification bell so you guys know when we put out new videos and don't forget you can always follow us over on instagram to see what's going on in between videos cheers guys
2022-03-04 18:23
