The number of people flying abroad to have surgery is higher than ever, but are the risks too high?
I was on hold to the doctor when I watched an Instagram video where a travel influencer with pink hair documented, “One of the greatest things we’ve ever done”, which turned out to be a “three-day comprehensive medical checkup” in Turkey. It was mesmerising, with the uplifting plinky music and girlish voice that sounds as if it’s sharing fabulous gossip when, in this case, it was detailing the cranial MRI, ultrasound, colonoscopy, neurology and urology appointments her boyfriend underwent on their romantic minibreak. And it did look romantic. We watch him being wheeled between luxury offices with an expression of wonder. A thorax CT scan! A colon biopsy! More, his eyes implore, I love you, more! The influencer has had so much interest in this post, she’s organising group trips, “so we can all go and get checked out together!”
To get a doctor’s appointment at my GP, I guess it’s the same for you, you have to phone at 8am precisely. If you phone at 7.59am, you’ve screwed it. If you phone at 8.01am, you’re dead. At 8am, somehow, I was already third in the queue. I’d recently had a hospital appointment letter that asked me to arrive at 9.45am, but to prepare for a wait of up to three hours. The waiting, this waiting for health and attention, feels like walking through deep mud, with splashes of guilt and fury. And watching the glamorous video, with its montage of our influencer biting into watermelon on the beach, I was seduced, I was, for a minute, by the medical-tourism dream.
