Hospital Diaries : Entry #4

Going along with the theme of struggling to provide insurance for clients, I decided to share a series of pieces on local public hospitals. This is the first one but fourth in the series, be on the look out for the other few.


Entry #4 February 15th 2010

The houses of Libertad 2 took over the community 17 de Septiembre soon after I arrived in Honduras. At its entrance, after you go through the windy walking path abundant with jutting rocks, there is a dirt mound, that appears much like an oversized ant hill, but walk-able. Apart from being anthill like, it is camelback like, after reaching the first hump, one is invited to see the child’s adobe house version of monopoly, assured that the destination is close to being reached. Spanning farther out, this hump showcases an eroded breathtaking view of the city of Tegucigalpa and the mountains that surround it, especially at sunset, right before the giant’s escape aisle is illuminated. As one stands there and watches it, they are unsure whether to stop and admire the view or keep walking to keep their wallet.

As I attempt the same decision the third time this week, I am swooned by heaven’s streaks of smashed mandarin oranges being eaten by the Gods’ over pursed and closed shadows of lips.

“Eladia is sick” swept through Libertad 2 like the dust that signatures it, bringing newly settled neighbors from the downward sloping community to her two roomed dirt floored house. They came in trickles and droves, depending on when the last church service ended. One particular group in the afternoon mustered up all of their spiritual forces and tried to exorcize her, resulting only in a few more people on the ground, and a few more people throwing up, the kind of tranquil environment she needed to heal.

Finding people actually there in the morning usually meant an incident had occurred.

“She was out going to the bathroom, and she just fell down.”

“We found her at her door, lying down, unable to wake up.”

“She got up and didn’t know where she was or what was going on.”

This time she was under another spell, and so I reached for an onion to try to wake her up. It took longer than usual, ten minutes, but her pulse kept pumping and her stomach kept rising. She woke up as she did every time, fighting for air, asking for water and complaining about her heart hurting. Concerned individuals asked if maybe she should go to the hospital again.

Full of papers and medicine, I walked beside her with her cousin as four men from the community carried her in a hammock, owned by one of the women neighbors, up to the camel’s back, and down through the windy path. A taxi was waiting on the clock where the four men readjusted to place her.

She had fainted again, causing more frequent honking, car dodging, and seemingly justified red light running. When we slide into the emergency entrance a whole new set of traffic appears for us to dodge.

“Beef dinners, Beef dinners,” one of them says.

“Taxi, taxi, taxi” demand others.

“My mom is in there, please let me in,” plead yet others.
And the willing to drop his post for a foreign face security guard parts the red sea and allows us to come in, inadvertently letting in a few stragglers.
Once we reach our long awaited destination we began round number one: find a wheel chair or a stretcher, both a rarity in this place. We dodged video cameras and two individuals with blood sticking their exposed flesh to once white sheets on stretchers, wondering if our situation was dire enough to get one, or get attendance at all.

It turned out that one of Eladia’s accompanies used to work at the hospital and was very chummy with a great deal of hospital employees, so was able to find and retrieve a wheelchair quickly. Her being in a semi-unconscious state moved us up the line probably undeservingly at least 10 places. Around us, as we walk into the “restricted” area I notice the cases that have been overlooked: close to clothes on a post that made lifting any part of her body seem a daunting request, individuals curled up on cots clutching their stomachs, blood boiling in its place and turning wounds infected. But there were always more pills and injections to kill the bacteria that the infections caused that of course were at the patient’s expense. This time we were wheeled right into the actual emergency room, not the pre-waiting room or the waiting room to the emergency room, the latter in which we were eventually attended to and dismissed to the mental health hospital the first time we came.

Eladia’s usual vitals were taken when the accidents and strokes of the day were attended to. Another request was put in for routine blood work that two times before came back normal. They stepped it up a bit and requested more extensive work. The doctors gave this stereotypical white philanthropist a prescription for blood collection tubes the third time this week. Marvin and I walk to the pharmacy across the street, once again to buy the basic materials needed to perhaps find out what was wrong with Eladia. This seemed more a daunting task than the possible cure.

Blood was filled, bills were paid, lines were waited in. There was no organization to the laboratory, where we ourselves brought up the vials of blood, we simply opened the lab door and put down the blood, hoping they would discover it. In an hour and a half they claimed our results would be ready. Around are the multitudes who were told the same. The blood lottery begins: family of the punctured all huddle around shuffling through sheets of paper under the title: Hemograma (CBC)and Heces y Orina (Stool and Urine), straining to find the lucky name. After having memorized various names others were looking for, heard the iron count of the child with leukemia and dodged the woman who was vomiting to what she had seen, we left our ad hoc community and presented the clean results to the doctor.

All vitals coming back normal, the next step was to go to the neurologist, who was due to come at lunch time and was still missing at 3pm. When her arrival finally interrupted Eladia’s fainting spells, she first attended to the older women who had trouble lifting almost all body parts, the severity of her condition had now caught the attention of medical personnel, who work on an emergency first mandate. Her inability to clearly answer questions confirmed the need for this urgency.
It was dark by the time we reached the neurologist whose kindness and proficiency simultaneously soothed and inspired confidence. She asked Eladia various questions, told her to lie down on the bed, and started putting square-like nodes on her head. Looking only at the computer with the image of Eladia’s brain in front of her, she said, “Calm down, relax, you’ll be OK.”

Which, after scanning for eleptic activity and finding nothing, became the truth.

The taxi charged $10 to take Eladia and her family this time back to her mother’s house, where the moment she was allowed to enter it and the moment she wanted to finally coincided. She stayed there for over a month where she rested and took natural medicine, which, along with some mental tweaking, for better or for worse, was cured of these symptoms. Now only to cure a myriad of new ones that were popping up due to self proclaimed interference by witch doctors.