Hi All,
Back on October 2015 I said my farewell to LL community explaining why I didn't wanted to participate anymore. And since then I had never came back to this forum until one of my friends interested in LL, who knows my case and to whom I recommended Dr. Monegal, got worried by all the fuss driven around here by someone called LLuser1. Today I've quickly glanced through this discussion (no time nor desire to read through all the crap) and felt some urge to add my five cents.
As a patient of Dr. Monegal I am very well familiar about all the flaws of doing LL in Barcelona. In fact I had some issues up to the point I was really disappointed by Dr. Monegal. And if the readers of this thread are really interested in what kind of problems they could encounter and be prepared for in Spain, I can even count them:
- I've received only invoices which were charged by the hospital. Unfortunately, I never received any invoice for the part that I paid in cash to Dr. Monegal even-though he had been promising to deliver such an invoice till last day. I believe not only Dr. Monegal himself, but generally in Spain they underestimate how important it is to have a proper documentation for all the financial expenses in some other jurisdictions. It was not cool.
- Dr. Monegal somehow didn't return the external device that was installed on one of my legs which he had to take off to operate me. I paid the full cost of that device to another doctor in another country and wanted to utilize it by my own discretion. Unfortunately, they were "cleaning" the device the whole week while I was there and the last day Dr. Monegal was "too busy" to come and finally give the device back to me.
- I paid the hospital charges in full in advance. Otherwise they simply won't take you in. However, early in the morning one hour before my flight off Barcelona someone in the hospital tried to charge me with additional fees, that never were mentioned by Dr.Monegal. I am polite, but tough person when necessary, so I used really strong language and took off without paying those phony charges.
- I expected Dr. Monegal to contact me sooner about the missing invoice, missing device and that dishonest attempt to rob me in the hospital, however it took him about two months to finally contact me. So this is also big minus for Dr. Monegal as aftercare is no less and even more important than everyday friendly visits while you are in Spain.
As you can see I am far from idolizing Dr. Monegal, so that is why I hope even those who had been victims of LLuser1 can trust my words and turn their attention to the following facts.
Yes, from my perspective things in Spain are little bit disorganized, however еverything is comprehended in comparison and believe me: things in another country where unfortunately I had my initial LL operation are much more fked up. You've all read or can read all those LL horror stories in number of developing countries; you can't deny that Spain in comparison to them is a European country with much higher standards and practices in modern medicine. And as described in http://www.limblengtheningforum.com/index.php?topic=2723.msg43509#msg43509 I am highly satisfied with the quality of services there.
Problems I mentioned above are purely of logistical nature; I am pretty sure all them had been done by mistake, for some kind of mentality nuances and prioritizing things differently than you would expect in your own cultural environment. What is important to know and what you will feel for sure if you go there, people in Barcelona, the hospital staff are really welcoming, warm and very much empathic. And I am absolutely sure there was no shortsightedness on purpose by Dr. Monegal himself. When Dr. Monegal finally contacted me I conducted to him all my criticism, he offered his explanations and expressed his readiness to address each of the issues. The fact that there are some issues of organizational character just means there is some room for improvements for Dr. Monegal as a LL destination point.
As for the medical professionalism of Dr. Monegal I will remain thankful throughout my life he saved my left leg from strong misalignment and valgus. Thanks to Dr. Monegal I am able to walk completely normally today. In fact, after long LL period I decided to reward myself with a touristic trip and going hike a lot soon. My subjective judgement about medical expertise of Dr. Monegal is based not only on my case, but also on number of other successful LL cases in Spain I am aware of.
Quote from: musicmaker on January 08, 2016, 02:23:32 PMFor another thing, I am tired of all these accusations of being a fake. Many, many users in this forum have met me in person, not only PatientZero. You can ask Paco1, Krp1, Xavi, Crinsomtide, Cooper, Nomad, Bohemia, Glenn... and many others whose names I can’t include here because I don’t know if they want that fact to be public. Are all these people hallucinating? I don’t think so. If I didn’t care about my privacy, I would upload a recent pic of Dr Monegal and me. We are two different people, sure, and many people can testify that’s true. The level of paranoia reached in this forum is beyond description.
I do confirm I visited MIC, talked to several patients of Dr. Monegal, talked to Musicmaker and I do confirm she is a real person as well as all other patient she listed and not just another registered account of Dr. Monegal as some ill-minded persons here suggest. And there is no secret about Musicmaker's case, she told me all the unfortunate things happened to her and my impression was that if she was not confident in Dr. Monegal she wouldn't still be in the guest house, she is still there recuperating and there is no reason for others to exaggerate and bring up her case every time, especially when she asked to leave her alone. As every other doctor surely Dr. Monegal had and will have complicated cases. So what?! Go and spend twice more money with other LL doctors in US, Germany or France, nobody is making everyone to stick with Dr. Monegal. At the same time it is really ugly to punish him with this kind of persecution only because as an open-minded person he decided to stay closer and available to the community. Moderators here must've done their job with better diligence. Freedom of speech is not the same as slandering like this on purpose.
As you can see I can freely express myself as I want and I don't have fear that I would somehow be revenged by Dr. Monegal. I've listed all the real issues and not imaginary ones there despite I still have an internal rod in my left leg, which I need to take out with Dr. Monegal in couple years. I wouldn't dare to criticize him openly if he was so evil person as LLuser1 tries to picture him. Not only I am criticizing him for the flows in Spain, but also have recommended him to one of my friends who wants to go through the same procedure.
So LLooser1 and all the over paranoiac people, stop your crap about Dr. Monegal and let other sane part of LL community to decide by themselves.
I am more than confident Dr. Monegal is one of the best LL specialist in the world and his popularity will keep rising despite all the dirty efforts organized here by anonymous persons for who knows for which purposes.
I won't break my promise again and won't ever come back here. In fact I am going to change my password for some jibberish string now and forget this place for good. Peace to everyone and don't be fools in hands of manipulators like LLooser1!
