Osprey - 3-30-2015 at 09:16 AM
Hospital, General, San Jose del Cabo
The little girl woke me up to explain in her whispered Spanish that she was told to put a big plastic tube up my penis before she hooked me up with
some plastic baggies dripping liquid into my veins. I wasn’t quite sure about her words but I think she said it might hurt a little. It hurt enough
to get me full awake, to check out my surroundings and make me very concerned about what might come next. I remembered sitting in a chair in a very
busy emergency room for many excruciating hours waiting for something to happen, something to change.
Now I began to remember the clinic back in my village, the frantic ambulance ride to the San Jose General Hospital. For the wild one hour ride I
could see my wife, Lynda, in our old car through the rear window of the ambulance – she looked like a much older Danica Patrick on meth trying to stay
close to the ambulance because she had no idea where they were taking me. She only knew then that they told her at the clinic that I had pneumonia
and at my age it was a very good idea to get me to emergency care before I died from congestive heart failure.
Much later I would learn that part of the long wait in emergency was because there were no doctors in the wards and the bed space is so precious only
stable patients can be accommodated. Somebody had taken my clothes and when I had my wits about me I began to beg any passerby for a gown, those goofy
things that tie in the back leaving your butt hanging out in the breeze. All I got was silly grins and that pitiable look one sees in the U.S. south
which translates to “Bless his heart”.
Same treatment for me and Lynda for the next three days when we asked for some tissues, water, coffee, pain pills or one of those portable plastic bag
hangers which might come in handy if and when you can drag your sorry butt to the sanitation station. Lynda is a quick study and soon she learned
where she could buy or steal water and after one full day and night she found me a gown. I wore the bloody soiled rag for the next two days and
nights.
She was told she could not leave but they only had a metal chair for her beside my narrow bed. The other two beds were similarly spare and the
families of the patients were allowed to sleep beside and under the beds. The ward was old and Spartan, had an air conditioning unit that only ran
about 10% of the time so the air hung and filled the space with sweat and exhalation that became, to me, an oppressive miasma.
At different times they brought small foam cartons of food and left them on trays near the foot of each bed. I had a few bites of one of the fast food
cartons, spit it out and never tried it again --- so no food for three days. When Lynda went to a little shop near the hospital for some coffee she
learned that the hospital did not have a kitchen so the patients, doctors and staff all ate catered, delivered, packaged food.
A lot of people who work for the hospital spent a little time in the room --- I silently classified them as professional or support people. Anybody
with a clipboard, small flashlight, stethoscope must be a doctor or an almost doctor; those with mops or brooms or little paper cups with pills were
janitors or interns of some kind. One smiling chunky young girl handled or mishandled all the tubes and catheters and she was as busy as a person can
be flitting all over the ward in a flash then leaving behind the Rube Goldberg contraptions that soon began to leak all over the patients and the
beds. Call me fussy but I got pretty good at tube/catheter repair and refitting solely for self preservation while she visited all the other wards.
I don’t know what day it was but I have vague memories of being back in the same old ambulance with a driver and one attendant who helped me move
about to be tested outside the hospital at labs in San Jose. One was for X rays, another an ultra sound – Lynda handed the labs my Senior’s Discount
Card and my CURP card for identification and paid the labs in cash.
I think my visit there was nearly at the peak of the active Dengue invasion after lots of unseasonable rainfall; the very worst time to be bothering
these overused kinds of medical centers in our area. I remembered the screams and horrible coughing of the patients in the emergency room and those
same awful retching sounds from those in my ward and the others down the hall whom I would never see. I took little solace in the fact that simple
anti-bacterials could and did cure my pneumonia while the Dengue sufferers got nothing but liquids and Tylenol until the virus lost its effect.
Looking back I don’t think I was much bothered by the fluids, the catheters, the oxygen device in my nose, my condition in general but my misery was
born of the prison like room and being confined for so long without the serenity I enjoyed on my patio back in the village --- I have never taken for
granted just how calming, charmingly leafy and open the space is, so like living in a garden. Later I would measure the pain by the pleasure of living
a charmed life; this being my first and only visit to a hospital as a patient over the last 28,475 days (78 years minus a week or so plus 20 extra
leap days).
When my condition allowed and there was a need for more beds, they released me. They gave Lynda a bag full of medications to see me through the rest
of the treatment at home, a bill for all services for the three day stay. I had no insurance so the bill was their charges less my Senior Discount:
6,012 pesos (about $430 bucks at that day’s peso exchange rate).
I have never put a dollar value on my life but I’m able to write this today because they saved my life for a pittance. From repairing a rusted out
old hulk of a farm truck to saving and rehabilitating victims of lethal virus epidemics Mexico is best when they have hard work to do with little
resources – when they “Do the best they can with what they have”.
When I went back a month later to try to get the various records of the tests they could not find anything in their files to match the receipt --- so
I’m not a medical statistic nor even a footnote to my peril, their ministrations.
Rustic or not everyone in the process paid reverence to my condition and my age, treated me with care and kindness. I am continually amazed by how
they can accomplish such Herculean medical wonders with the most rudimentary necessities while keeping their heads high, their hands clean and a smile
on their face for good measure.
vandenberg - 3-30-2015 at 11:32 AM
Great post Jorge!
Barb and I have nothing but the highest respect for their medical system.
Barb had an operation because of some female problems and the cost for the
whole procedure was under $2K. This included 3 hospital days, all doctors, tests and before and after consultations.
BajaBlanca - 3-30-2015 at 01:07 PM
what a tale.
vjfamily - 3-30-2015 at 01:54 PM
Lynda is a real trooper, a metal chair for 3 days! Wow!
You are luckey in sooooo many ways, congrats on your recovery, enjoy your garden, home cooking and your wonderful wife, Joanna
Pescador - 3-30-2015 at 04:43 PM
When Lynne had a bump cut off of her forehead that the Dermatologist had frozen but it came back, she gave it to me in a small jar with tap water and
instructed me to take it to the hospital and biopsy. I speak the language and finally found the new Salvatierra hospital in La Paz but spent the next
2 1/2 hours trying to find out where the "lab" was in the hospital to give the paper and sample. Start out at admissions, wrong, so I went from the
emergency room to regular hospital admission desk. I made so many trips from desk to desk that all of the guards at important doors began to know me
by first name. After making the rounds for the 2 or 3 rd time, I ended up at a small desk behind the admissions and he was able to do the intake for
the sample, then sent me to another "raja" for payment, and then I ended up almost where I had started, which was down a long hallway where they
accept the dead bodies. When I talked to the tech, she said that was the right place, but I had to pay first. Well, after two weeks, they finally
admitted over the phone the results were done but they would only release them to us and not the doctor so it meant another trip to La Paz to get the
results.
So you are right, they do a magnificent job with what they have to work with, but they are so lacking in equipment and management. We had a lady at
Punta Chivato who broke both bones in her leg and she was able to take the ambulance and a doctor to administer morphine, to the states where she was
met by a US ambulance at San Isidro and the whole trip cost her $1500. They had her in surgery in 15 hours after the break. She could have gone to
La Paz from Santa Rosalia for the same price. I think she made a good decision.