So we are all sick right now. Which has been a bummer, but has also been interesting in a “living with the people” kind of way. Tara had to go to the hospital yesterday (with Hermana Margarita’s urging) which turned out to be a real lesson in how people here really live. Or at least what they have to cope with from time to time. But let me start by saying what you are about to read is not very pretty and if you have a beating heart, will probably make you sad and angry like it made me. I went over after letting my class out early (due to bathroom issues), and spent the next two hours running around trying to get my tests figured out, buy what Tara needed from the pharmacy and track down nurses.
When you are checked into the Chulucanas hospital you are given a bed in a room full of other people with maybe one partition between the five of you for some privacy. You get a sheet on the bed that is questionable, to be kind, and you have to wait for the one nurse to make rounds to all of the patients; there is no buzzer, there is no intercom, you just have to wait your turn. Did I mention this is the emergency observation room? Oh, well yes, it is. This is where they take you after seeing you primarily in the hospital’s emergency ROOM, which is ONE room with ONE examination table.
So once you have made it out of the emergency room and into the emergency observation room, you are treated. Well, you are treated if you have the money to go to the pharmacy, which is located at the entrance of the hospital a few rooms away, to buy what the nurse tells you she needs. And I don’t mean, like, pills for later, I mean you need to buy the needle for the IV, the tube that connects it to IV fluid, a needle to extract the air from the tube, and whatever IV liquids you need (ciprofloxacin, for bacteria, and suero, for rehydration, in our case). Oh, and you also have to have someone there to buy it for you. I imagine the nurse would if need be, but I am sure it would take a very long time seeing as she has to attend in the ER AND monitor 5 patients in the observation room.
At the point in which you have a bed and your medicine, you wait, largely unattended, unless you are white and you have another white friend (me) running around the hospital (surely in places where Peruvians are NOT allowed to come and go freely) making the nurse come back when your cipro, or suero runs out.
Our hospital visit was not bad, or not as bad as we had anticipated based upon when we had heard about the hospital, but I am pretty sure that is because we are white, and had enough money to pay for whatever the doctors prescribed. Our bill (for both Tara’s ER visit and stay and my tests) was a mere 60 soles – so $20– which a lot of Peruvians can’t afford.
But the money really isn’t the only factor working against Peruvians that have to come to the hospital. In addition to the difficulty of arriving to the hospital with money and someone to help purchase what is needed, you need someone to bring you food too. There is no food service at the hospital. That’s right, a lot of sick people and no food. You can get vouchers from the Red Cross, which is a moto ride away (as in, 1sol) but a lot of people (especially those not from Chulu) don’t know about this or don’t have someone with them to go get the vouchers. So if you come alone and manage to make it to the ER observation room, and find a way to get the medicine you need from the pharmacy so you can be treated, you could go without food your entire stay at the hospital. A lot of people from the campo (farm lands) come to the hospital in Chulu because it is closer than Piura (the big city with the nice hospital) and they often come alone because it’s a long journey and it’s expensive.
And here is the kicker (oh yes, there is a kicker)…in the whole hospital, there is ONE bathroom for patients. Yup, one bathroom. Two stalls and one shower for men and two stalls and one shower for women. For a whole hospital. And let me tell you, it is gross. I am not squeamish when it comes to bathrooms (traveling to Asia really cures you of that), but that bathroom was terrible. Stuff on the seats, stuff on the floor, people washing their cloths in the sink because all they brought with them were the clothes on their backs…the last place you want to find a dirty bathroom, is in a hospital. It’s pretty unsettling.
As you can see, the hospital is not somewhere you want to end up (not that anyone wakes up really WISHING they get to go to the hospital anywhere…), but that is the reality for people here. And what more, the poverty here breeds a lot of illness due to malnutrition (especially diabetes), so that adds to the number of people likely to end up in the Chulucanas hospital.
I am not sorry I had to experience it. I am sorry it exists, but I am not sorry I had to poop in a cup in that dirty, gross bathroom. It affirms for me the reason I came here in the first place. That there is change that needs to happen and hopefully I can be a part of it. And if not, then at least maybe I can be more sensitized to another part of the world’s reality. Or even to just hold a crying man who struggles with realities of HIV as we go to the hospital together (I probably should have started blogging when that happened – Antonio comes and goes from the diocesan health office where I work). Guess I will just have to wait and see where God’s plan takes me.
PS: I promise my posts wont all be this long.
No comments:
Post a Comment