Flew over from a country with nationalised healthcare to see a friend in California and go hiking through a few national parks and forests a couple of years ago. Just before flying out I had finger surgery, and they advised that I visit an ER in the US to have the stitches removed since I was over there about a month. Suffice to say I just did it myself after getting back from hiking with a scalpel, tweezers and shitloads of hydrogen peroxide in her bathroom. I do not have a steady hand. It sucked.

At one point we thought it might be infected but didn't want to pay for healthcare so looked up over-the-counter antibiotics, which turns out are only animal antibiotics. Fish antibiotics have similar composition but aren't regulated, so after more digging we found that bovine antibiotics are similar and are also under FDA regulation. Luckily it wasn't infected in the end so no bovine antibiotics were enjoyed, but I still got to play some roulette with her dad's pain meds.

Had an amazing time, but as soon as the plane touched down back home all I could feel was relief that a hospital was an actual option for things that weren't immediately killing me.