Hospital

I went to the hospital yesterday. 

It cost $88 and took three hours, most of that time spent waiting and I came away knowing I don’t have pneumonia -yet- but if I’m not healing properly by Monday I need to go back and start antibiotic treatment. Peachy.

There are no private practice doctors in town.  In Uruguay medicine like education is free to all and as you can see in this town the hospital though small is as clean and modern as you could wish. 

They got a bit confused when presented with an actual paying customer but they took my passport and had a consultation and I paid by credit card at the cashier’s window and that was that.  The staff, including the doctor looked to be in their 20s and 30s while the customers appeared to be more our age.

While we sat waiting one older man sat down a few seats away watching something on his phone. Layne was reading our paper copy of The Lonely Planet and I was reading a Longmire mystery on my phone and from time to time we would exchange a remark in English of course, usually about some attraction she had located.

And each time he turned up the volume on his game show, and I mean LOUD. At first I thought he was deaf but it eventually occurred to me we were staining the purity of the Uruguayan ambience. Weird.  It was a relief when they released his wife and they tottered out of the hospital with him throwing a glowering glance at me as he passed. We could mutter again. Being foreign is not always sexy  in case you were wondering. But there again Colonia Valdense is a small farming town where not many travelers are seen. Most people are cheerfully curious, or shy and withdrawn, but some find us rubbing at their inner insecurities. 

She spoke Spanish with us but the doctor was cheerful and efficient telling me she is seeing a lot of patients with my symptoms of heavy coughing, mucus and what I can best describe as malaise. However my blood pressure was spot on 130/70 my lungs are clear and I have no physical pain in my rib cage or back so she was happy about that.

Obviously you can’t photograph people in these environments but my wife did kindly catch me taking 40 winks as I waited. Everyone else was dressed for central heat but I was so cold I was dressed for an Arctic expedition. I really was forced to conclude I am not well. I got pills and stuff on a prescription which required a brief stop at the pharmacy on our way home.

For those in the medical profession the pills taken three times a day are a tongue twister.

Anyway by Monday either I will be ready to drive to Montevideo or back to the hospital for increasingly fierce medicine. If I get atypical (“walking”) pneumonia I’m going to write someone a pretty severe note. Fate needs to back off. I slept much better last night with much less coughing but I am growing weary of feeling better one day and feeling like crap for the next two so I’m reserving judgement.

All this to say if you get sick on the road, you get treated you move on no big deal. I am annoyed at myself for still being stuck here, but at this point GANNET2 has been under the knife, Rusty nearly died, Layne has been in bed with this searing miserable cough so I guess it’s just my turn.  

I need Celia to come caroling and singing “On the road again… “as I’ve almost forgotten what it is to be a nomad. Then I need to get Layne to bring the invalid a nice cup of tea and to fluff his pillows. There’s nothing more heart wrenching, or needy, than a grown man at death’s door.