GarryP

If you are still paying into the Social Security system via your employer, you will be covered by that scheme. If, however, you are no longer paying into that scheme, you will be covered by the universal healthcare/Gold Card/30 Baht scheme/or "whatever else it is now called". In the latter case, you will have to use the services of the government hospital/clinic tied to the district where your house registration is located. However, if they are unable to provide the medical care needed, they will refer you to another gov't hospital/clinic where the necessary medical care can be provided. I do believe that you do have to register under the scheme though before you can start using it. I'll find out when I retire at the end of this year.

Still a bargain.

This is great news. Since it was approved by the Thai FDA, it seems that more hospitals are jumping on board. Hopefully, this will create competition and bring down the price. I wonder what the standard price will be once the special offer expires. Probably still be cheaper than Bamrungrad.

I agree, but with covid, international travel was off the cards. The doctor who did the procedure on me had at the time only done 23 cases. Last time I was there for my follow up appointment 9 days ago he said he was over 50 cases. He was very clear on the point that the treatment was not appropriate for everyone and went into great detail on this. I realize it was a risk on my part, but one I was prepared to take. However, had it been a more invasive treatment such as TURP or other surgery, I would would have gone with a doctor with much more experience in the treatment. There wasn't that option for Rezum in Thailand. Maybe I was lucky but in my case my condition is improving and I am no longer on meds. Urgency and frequency is still quite high post treatment, but that is slowly improving too. I won't know the full benefit until 4 to 6 months post treatment it is only 2 days shy of 10 weeks since I had the treatment.

It was mentioned earlier in the thread. Don't know what their price is though. Bamrungrad's current price is Baht 250,000.

Yeah, I found it in Australia for approx. Baht 130,000, but with Covid there was no chance of getting in for treatment. But if you factor in airfare and accommodation, it would not have been much cheaper than Thailand. Singapore was Baht 300,000 to 350,000 so I'd already written that off. The UK was Baht 250,000 as I would have had to go private, but I was planning on that as I could visit family while there and kill two birds with one stone and was waiting for international travel to open up again. Then out of the blue it became available here and I was contacted to see if I wanted to go ahead here. I ended up paying approx. Baht 127,000 (@USD3,800) for the actual treatment here, while my office health insurance covered 73,000 (this was on the promotional package which is no longer available). Hopefully, as more Thai hospitals start to provide this treatment, the price will come down. Also, if you do have health insurance, you should check with the provider before going through with the treatment as some providers do not cover this treatment as they see it as elective and non-essential. The reason I managed to get the package was that one of those in line was advised by their insurance provider that they did not cover the treatment so I got their place. I expected to pay the package price myself, but very surprisingly, the insurance company kicked in too.

Neighbors daughter started have periods when she was 10. Her mum put it down to hormones in food and said most of her daughters' friends were the same. I can't recall how the conversation started though.

What caused that? I'm asking because I can't work out where my prejudice/discomfort comes from. I have worked with some great overweight women, but for some reason would always try to avoid spending any free time with them. Being in close proximity makes me uncomfortable.

Went for my appointment on Saturday and did the usual Uroflow and retention tests. Flow was about the same as pre-treatment levels but there was little retention. The doctor wasn't happy with the results and asked if I wanted to go back on meds for a while, but I declined. He said that he had done the treatment on more than 50 men so far who had passed the 2 month post procedure time frame. He said that all but one had greatly improved flow at 6 weeks. The one who had not was an 80 year old man whose condition greatly improved by the 8 week mark. I am still feeling burning from time to time when passing urine so there is still some inflammation. Hopefully, this will improve over the next couple of months. My next appointment is 6 weeks down the road so it is just a wait and see approach. I do think my condition is improving, but I need to stop peeing so frequently (suggestion of the doctor was to try to hold off peeing for longer). The doctor offered meds to relax the bladder muscles so it should be able to hold more without the urge to pee, but again I declined. I'll just let nature take its course for now as there are many cases that take up to 4 months or more before they see the full benefits. Fingers crossed.

The cool season in Bangkok seemed to be much longer and the temperature quite a bit lower about 35 years ago. I wonder if there has been a change in the average temperature over the years.

Been here 39 years and haven't spent a winter in Europe or any country in colder climes since I was 19 so it is certainly chilly for me. But what really gets me is the lower humidity at this time of the year that leads to my skin drying out and looking bloody awful. Were I to be back in the west, I'd probably look like a leper every winter.

For most of my supplements, I usually buy via iHerb. Even with shipping they are often much cheaper than Lazada or Shoppee.

By the time we have our next office Christmas party I won't recognize anyone. The benefits of covid.

I agree with you on this. Perhaps some would prefer we say "that unwhite fellow over there" or "that fellow who is not white" rather than mentioning his actual skin color. All rather silly.

As I mentioned before, I had the Rezum treatment at Bamrungrad on 21 October. I was under full anesthetic so the treatment was painless (I have read that many doctors prefer going with full, rather than local, anesthetic because the treatment can be a bit painful and some patients find it difficult to tolerate). I had 4 steam injections of the prostate. For the first 7 days I was catheterized with a Foley catheter. As I am working from home it was not a big deal. When I had the catheter removed I continued taking tadalfil despite it not really helping (the Doc asked if I wanted to change . For the first couple of weeks there was a burning sensation and urinary urgency but the flow was getting worse. With this treatment, many clinic/hospital websites seem to indicate an improvement after two weeks, but the more reputable websites indicate that there will often be a worsening of the condition after two weeks and you do not return to pre-treatment levels until about 4 weeks after the treatment. In my case, I got much worse and ended up going in to see another doctor for medication as I was worried I would not be able to urinate at all (my doctor was not on duty that day). I was prescribed Saw Palmetto and Silodosin to help relieve my symptoms, but within 36 hours started to suffer from severe diarrhea so stopped taking the Silodosin. I battled away that week and went for my appointment a few days later. The doctor was worried that the Uroflow test was much weaker than pre-treatment so put me on 2 weeks of Xatral 10 mg (Alfuzosin). Luckily the Alfuzosin worked and I did not suffer any side effects. I have been off that drug for about 8 days now so am not taking any medication for BPH at the moment. Tomorrow I will have another appointment with my doctor at 8 weeks and 2 days post treatment and see what he says. However, I understand that it can take up to 6 months to fully benefit from the treatment. Would I got through the treatment again? I think so, but I would not be so optimistic about when I would see the results. Current situation: The biggest improvement has been in urinating at night. I still get up 2 or 3 times a night to pee, but instead of waiting forever to get started and then dribbling for 2 or 3 minutes, by which time I am fully awake, I just point Percy to the porcelain and he is off and I can go back to bed and drop off immediately. Flow with a full bladder during the day time has improved somewhat, but not to the levels of when I was on Xatral. Still it is slightly better than pre-treatment. What has not improved and in fact has got much worse, has urgency and frequency. Sometimes I feel the need to pee even though I know there is not much in my bladder, and at such times the flow is not really good. But I would rather let it go in the toilet than down my leg so I follow the urges. I can confirm that I have not suffered from retrograde ejaculation, although there was blood in it the first couple of times, which is normal. I am still confident that the treatment will work for me, but I just have to give it more time. I would also warn others that they should skip the hype and read some actual medical studies of the treatment. It is not some magic treatment that will put you in order straight away. It may take quite some time to improve. Everyone is different. Some have much larger prostates than me and would require more steam injections and the inflammatory response of each person can vary considerably. Apologies for the length of the posts, but I think it best to share all information, rather than pick and choose.

Good to see Bamrungrad has a competitor. It may bring the price down.

The Rezum treatment was approved by the Thai FDA earlier this year. Around September I believe and Bamrungrad is the only hospital providing this treatment in Thailand at the moment. As pointed out by another poster, the price for the treatment is Baht 250,000, but you need to be prepared for additional costs for testing and consultation to determine whether the treatment is appropriate for you (I was lucky that I managed to get a promotional package and my office insurance also covered some of the costs - but that package is no longer available). The cost also does not include follow up visits and medication you may need. While the hospital is trying to get most of their urologists provide this treatment, the doctor who first qualified and who has provided the Rezum procedure the most is Dr. Teerapol Amornvesukit. At the time I had the treatment, 21 October 2021, I was about his 23rd case. First a bit of history. My BPH started to get noticeable when I was around 50 but was tolerable. After a few years I needed to do something but did not want to go on meds, so with a bit of research and exchanges with Xylophone, I started taking Beta Sitosterol, which after a few months started to improve my condition. I continued to take it for a year or more but after a while my condition seemed to return to where it was before. I then started taking pygeum which was suggested by Xylophone as another alternative which had research backing it up. I took this for a year or more, but eventually that seemed to stop working. During this time I had also been researching alternative treatments as I did not want to be on BPH medications for the rest of my life ( I tend to suffer side effects to many medicines and my father suffered terribly from BPH meds - like father like son), my wife is much younger than me so retaining sexual function was also a factor, and avoidance of retrograde ejaculation. I had decided on the Rezum treatment (it is approved and provided by the UK NHS) as I thought it met most of my needs so then started looking for where I should get the treatment. As I was going to be a self-payer, cost was also important. The cheapest I could find in Singapore was about Baht 300,00, but there were a few places in Australia providing the treatment for around Baht 130,000. However, I opted for the UK as I could also use the opportunity to visit my father. The treatment would have been about Baht 250,000 (I would not qualify for NHS unless I stayed there for 6 months). But then the $hit hit the fan when covid struck and international travel was off the cards. So it was off to the doctor to get a prescription for Cialis, which only helped for the first 6 months or so I took it. Then out of the blue I got a call from a friend at Bamrungrad, who knew I was interested in this treatment, who asked if I would like to be booked into the promotion package. I jumped at the chance even though I knew I would be one of the doctor's first cases. And after going through certain tests, the doctor confirmed that the treatment was appropriate for me. My prostate was only 37 gms and the treatment is normally targeted at men with prostate size of between 30 and 80 gms (although increasingly it is being used for larger prostates which requires more steam injections and takes much longer to heal). I will provide more details on my experience another time as I must sign off here today.

My son was born in 1989 prior to the change in the law. As a result his birth certificate said that he was English, even though he was born in Thailand and his mother was Thai. We started the process of trying to get him Thai citizenship and were interviewed by the police in Ubolrathchathani as his mother's house registration was based in Ubol. Fortunately, while we were running about here and there to get him sorted, the law changed and he was automatically qualified as a Thai citizen so the law was retroactive. If I recall correctly, the change in the law was introduced when Anand Panyarachun was Prime Minister in 1992, but perhaps it did not become effective until 1993. They did not issue a new birth certificate though, they just crossed out the part that had changed, wrote in by hand "Thai" and typed some stuff on the back of the certificate. I must admit that the District Office handled it quite well though and were helpful to me, despite it probably being strange to them that this foreigner came to get it sorted instead of the child's Thai mother.

You are doing great for your daughter. I envy people like you who are able to invest so much of their time on their children's development. If I have another child (my wife wants a child but we are not sure it is going to happen because of age), I will try to spend much more time with him/her, which may be possible as I will be retired by then. I didn't give my 32 year old son (different mother) as much personal help as I should have. I did instill him with a love for reading and a hardworking attitude though, so not a total failure.

Nephew was offered 1,500 to return. That is the highest amount I've heard of. Most seem to have been about 500.

My father in-law stopped transplanting rice seedlings a number of years ago and went with broadcasting dry seed by hand. While the results are not quite as good, there is a great cost saving, as he does not need to hire anyone to help with transplanting.

I will be moving to a provincial town that has only one hospital. It is a government one so in my case it makes sense to take the pension and go with the Gold Card. If there was a better hospital in the town that was in the SS Scheme, then I would probably give it some more thought, but there isn't. On the other hand, if I remained in BKK after retirement, I would probably forego the pension and continue paying for health coverage as the hospital I am with here is quite good.

Yes. If you keep paying in to social security for healthcare, you will not get your pension. But once you retire, if you stop paying in to social security, you will get the pension (assuming you have paid in for the minimum number of years to qualify). At that time, you will qualify for the Gold Card.

Because there is so little difference between social security and gold card healthcare coverage, I'm going to take my wonderful pension when I retire. All 5,xxx Baht per month. Where I am retiring to, the local gov't hospital, which will be my provider under the gold card, is less than 500 metres from my house.

It is my understanding that if you are already in the Social Security scheme, you do not qualify for the Gold Card.