The Canadians sit around the hotel pool,basking in the sun and sipping alcohol-free fruit drinks as they recover from their treatment. These are not rich retirees jumping the medicare line; nor are they here for nose jobs, breast implants or hip replacements, long the staples of medical tourism.
They have come south, and invested $12,900 U.S. plus airfare, to spend two weeks undergoing an experimental and highly controversial treatment for multiple sclerosis. Some are young but most are approaching middle age, and include farmers, miners, teachers and homemakers as well as a game warden and a bus driver. Many rely on wheelchairs, motor scooters or canes and, to get here, some had to swallow their pride and accept charity. Others took out loans, drained their savings or sold off precious campers and boats.
But most insist they are very pleased with the results.
“My neurologist told me I'd be sitting in a chair, thumbing a remote control watching TV for the rest of my life – as long as someone put the remote in my hand,” says Carin Schooley, 49, of Hinton, Alta., who has been nearly immobile and confined to a wheelchair for 17 years.
“Well, the other day I managed to feed myself a French fry, on my own, for the first time in years. I hugged my daughter. I don't know how far it will go, or how long it will last, but it's the first positive news I've had in years.”
She is not alone. Most patients report that feeling has been restored to their extremities – their feet, for example, feel like they've thawed – and they have clearer heads and more endurance than they've had in years.
At first glance, all this seems to justify the decision made by hundreds, if not thousands, of Canadian MS patients to leave home in search of the procedure devised by Italian doctor Paolo Zamboni to improve blood flow to the brain.
But the real story may be much more complicated.
Skeptical medical experts back in Canada feel that the Zamboni procedure is untested and dangerous. They also suspect that any relief may be short-lived and as much the product of who the patients are and the fact that better cranial blood circulation isn't the only treatment they receive in San José.
As well as being of ordinary means, most of the 20 patients say they have come to Costa Rica – where Clinica Biblica has treated more than 300 Canadians since June – largely because they lost faith in the system at home.
Almost all of the patients testify that the trip south has provided them with their first pleasant medical experience in years, with attentive specialists, daily physiotherapy and doting nurses who closely monitor and encourage them.
Research tossed in garbage
In contrast, many describe the relationship with their Canadian neurologists (the lead caregivers for most MS sufferers) as hostile, especially if they're too inquisitive about the Zamboni method.
Many say their specialists don't even know they're in Costa Rica. “My neurologist threw my research in the garbage and told me to get out of her office,” says Linda, who is from London, Ont., and doesn't want her last name published because “I might not have a doctor when I get home.”
She comes from a place big enough to have a teaching hospital, but most of the others live in communities too small to offer MS patients much support. Canada's three biggest cities account for one-third of the country's population, but only two of the 20 who are here: one from Vancouver and the other from Montreal. There is no one from Toronto, but two people hail from tiny Hague, Sask.
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