Positive experience

cdw057 wrote:

.....Drawback I do not speak Hungarian, but that is my mistake - I am too old or stupid to learn....

What makes you think you are too old or stupid?

How old are you?

I'm in my late 50s and I'm still trying to learn it.

Dear Fluffy, I am almost 60 unfortunately (probably too much smoking alcohol and dangerous genes which caused my situation). Realizing that one gets more stupid when getting older (as compared with eg 30s ) is something to accept (on the other side one get wiser), The wiser is good but I feel losing part of mind is not too good.


Being a bit older you are less useful, but then again you are often more appreciated.  (especially in Asian countries, less so in our (EU) countries. Still I feel in Hungary you are respected when being a bit older.

Hmm, not sure what to say here.
Glad your experiences with the medical system have been good.
Not exactly my experience .
Recently, don't really want to get into it too much, my husband who is 70 had a high reading with his BP.
He checks it at home often, daily.
It was a bit too high for our liking so we went to the family doctor with our national health ( my husband is Hungarian and speak fuentlythe language)
She told  him the readings were worth seeing the heart doctor about. She had no blood pressure machine in her office to double check his readings! Seems they have one shared machine between a few offices.
This is in the 7th district.
Ok made a appointment with the heart doctor, been there years before hand .it's a long wait to get in.
3 weeks wait this time.
During that time his BP went a bit too high again, went to the heart clinic to let the assistant know, she took a reading and said it wasn't bad, wait for his appointment time, had to go back one more time, same wait and come back answer.
Even walked over to the emergency office in the 7th on a Sunday, no one answered the door for awhile, the medical car was not parked outside either. Finally a guy the driver let my husband in and he woke up the doctor on call who was napping in the back room.
Took his readings said they were a bit high and he could if he wanted to go over to a hospital and wait to see the heart doctor on call at that hospital, didn't even ask if he has a way to get there or not.
It was a joke and total BS. He underdressed going there and they probably didn't see a tip coming there way because they should of driven him over. He had a 5,000 waiting for them but no go.
Seems the emergency car was parked far away so people might think they were out and just go away, let them nap.
Came home calmed down and my husband looked online at private doctors if he really decided he needed to see a pro.
3 weeks went by saw the heart doc for our district, she told him what we had expected her to do, put a BP monitor on him for 24 hours to get a good reading on is condition. What times of day etc. was his rate going up or not.
She then said come in again in one week to get the monitor because they didn't have any at that time to set him up with!
Another week, a total of one month 's time, got the monitor on didn't see the doc again just the assistant who put the machine on him.
Came home and  tried to
do normal activity to get a good reading.
The machine worked every 30 min.

After just 10 hours of readings the machine stopped, the batteries died!
We kept it on for 2 more hours just in case that was how it worked or whatever...
Took it off because it really had gone kaput.
Next day returned the machine to the heart doc's assistant, told her it had stopped working, she never said a word about it or made a follow up appointment with the doctor for us.
She just handed him the readings for 10 hours like we were on our own.
Ok, then, it's like they are praying older people just die waiting or just fade away....
No worries we now know if it is anything more serious then a scratch you are better off seeking out a private doctor.
Seriously, they don't cost much more then tipping along the way with the national health system.
Some private doctors have private clinics for treatment but many still use the national health hospitals for treatments. Some of the same private doctors also work for the national health. It is super confusing at times.

One of many odd experiences here.
In Vegas something like this happened years ago and I drove my husband to the ER.
They went insane the other way, put him into the hospital and ran tests for 2 days. Got a $32,000 bill and a bottle of xanax... Have to heal yourself sometimes, food rest, exercise and fresh water,most times the doctors are just guessing and really don't know more then you do.

cdw057 wrote:

Dear Fluffy, I am almost 60 unfortunately (probably too much smoking alcohol and dangerous genes which caused my situation). Realizing that one gets more stupid when getting older (as compared with eg 30s ) is something to accept (on the other side one get wiser), The wiser is good but I feel losing part of mind is not too good.


Being a bit older you are less useful, but then again you are often more appreciated.  (especially in Asian countries, less so in our (EU) countries. Still I feel in Hungary you are respected when being a bit older.

We're about the same age.  I don't like to think of myself as getting too old.  Nor do I think I'm more stupid than I was previously (ok, relative statement).   A lot of the time I think it's about tolerance - cannot be bothered sometimes with what I think of as crap but the younger set thinks as important. I do think I'm slower but the upside I think of myself as more considered, rational and experienced.  Not just weasel words.

My young kids  think I'm a grumpy old git who is not with it but they definitely keep one ticking over as I simply have to know about the latest teen TV show and who Katy Perry is. 

Yesterday there was incident of shrieks of hysterical laughter. I thought my daughter was having a seizure.  Turns out she was laughing at Simon Cowell when he was younger.   I have no choice but to join in.

You hit it exactly Mr Fluffy, lack of tolerance to dumb wasteful things is what seems to happen as one finally has learned their lessons in life. Some stuff just really isn't important after all.
Not easily impressed in the look at me world. Everyone wants to be the star. Better to listen more and talk less.
I honestly had every intention of learning Hungarian , at least a bit more then I know now.
After too many times of being corrected in a rude manner  I just thought to myself, forget it, these people are not worth the effort to me.
Think it is after age 12 or maybe earlier that learning a language is much harder to do.
My father was 7 when he learned English but force really in US public school.
They didn't speak English at home so he was at a disadvantage at school.
As an adult one would never know that English was not his first language.
My husband was 23 when he started to lean English in the US.
Went to night school after work, not so easy to learn after your brain is already tired from a long day of working.
Took some years but I'd say his English is pretty good although he will never lose his accent at these late date.
In English he is a average speaker understands more then one would know but in Hungarian his skills are much better and he uses more words to describe everything, very formal and proper use of the Hungarian language.Other Hungarians think he is university taught, funny.
People sometimes look at him oddly because he speaks so clear and precise in Hungarian. Does allot of word play and comes off allot more educated then he is.
He says the worst and most frustrating thing for him in English is to have the same personality. Can't be the same person in English as he is in Hungarian.
I know in Hungarian he is a very humorous person, everyone is laughing around him in English sometimes he misses his mark or can't find the right word to make his humor known.
He says he feels like half a person in English, sort of sad that i only know that half of it.
Sometimes, very often really I find even words in English escape me.

When I do ask my husband how to say this or that in Hungarian he always gives me the long form. He doesn't want to teach me the new slang version many people speak now on the streets.
He says many people who clam themselves Hungarian can't even speak proper Hungarian, that's how the language has been changing over the last few decades.
People now say very forward things to each other and do not address each other in the 3rd person as much.
Our old HU friends that we knew in the US who now live here in Hungary said the same thing.
The lady of the family was a school teacher in Hungary before she married our friend and moved to the US for 30 some years.
Her ex husband was much older then her and was a professor at a Budapest university before they divorced and she married our friend who had been her first sweetheart before he left Hungary, so complicated.
Anyways she cracked us up, she is very posh, was a very pretty thing and always super stylish, she reminds me still of a 1940's move star with her airs she puts on at times, ..
Anyways after coming home to Budapest she was out somewhere and a younger strange man addressed her with using YOU and not using the 3rd person formal as one should do to a lady, stranger and older person.
She didn't miss a beat in correcting him, She said to him,"What? Do I know you, did we raise pigs together?" Put him in his place for sure, much funnier expression in Hungarian, that's just the rough translation.

FWIIW: From my own experiences, medical services like planned surgery will usually provide a better overall experience than primary or emergency care. Mainly because the "problems" in the system are often structural. And thus "surprises", medical or otherwise, cause problems.