Don't go to the Hospital

I’ve had a fever before, but this was different. It didn´t seem so bad because I was only about as hot as the stifling air in the room. I noticed my legs were aching a bit like when I hit my growth spurts and I couldn’t sleep; that was the point. I remember urinating that night maybe 6 times, a frequency I have not had before. Around 6 am though, my urination trip had a side excursion as well of a little diarrhea. Odd. Never really had diarrhea, which I can remember.

Thinking I might be getting a bit sick, I took the early bus to the center with Adam, a friend who is living here in Honduras with me for a few months. My thought was to purchase a little of the pink stuff and clear up this little problem of mine.

I ended up getting on the slowest bus alive however. The driver must have been only 17 or 18 and recently new to the route and probably to driving. He certainly looked new to the world. Either the bus lacked proper parts or this kid did not know how to shift into third gear. So in second we cruised from one side of Cortes to the other as if my dying had nothing to do with anything. After such a long ride I was not feeling right. Maybe a bit dizzy? No. Not that. We got off in central park and started walking to Pastor’s house. Aleyda, a friend I haven’t seen in months, ran into us and I immediately latched onto her to support me walking to the church. I was feeling a bit weak.

After apologizing for not visiting Aleyda more, she dropped me at the stairs to the pastor’s house. I climbed with the last energy I had, not realizing it at the time. Upon entering the house, I crashed on the couch face first, declaring my misery to the world. The world being pastor’s wife, sister-in-law, and mother-in-law, burst into laughter over my misery. What did I have, they asked me. I’m dying, I exaggerated. Did I have diarrhea they wanted to know… Well maybe. Then they needed to get more paper for me. More laughing.

Adam left to make some purchases of Pepto pink stuff, Gatorade, suero, Philips manganese laxative, and paper…

Pastor came into the living room to see me. Pastor thinks that any sickness of the stomach can be cured by a bottle of laxative, and a good massage of the bowels. He makes you drink the Philips as he begins to swab everything in your stomach downward. It hurts like heck, but feels strangely good at the same time. So Pastor swabbed me good. Up and down my belly until he was satisfied. He asked if I needed to go to the bathroom. I told him last time he swabbed me and I drank laxative, I still didn’t go to the bathroom for another two days.

I went to lie down in the bed when my hands went numb, like after you sleep on your arm all night and they tingle and splinter back to life. Only this time they didn’t feel like they were coming back to life but more like they were dying out. The tingling increased to pins and needles, and then started in my feet, working its way up my legs. All of a sudden, I realized I couldn’t move my legs or my arms very well. The tingling increased.

Pastor decided we should go to the clinic. I got up to follow him to the car when I collapsed under the weight of myself. Pastor and Adam caught me and pulled me up into a seated position on their arms. Like an injured soccer player who gets carried off the field, I got carried out the door and down the flight of stairs to the black bus. They threw me into the jumper seat in front and Adam scooted in with me.

By now my whole body ached with pins and needles and I had lost control of all functionality. I looked at my hands that were now painfully cramped like lobster pinchers and there was nothing I could do to open them. My feet cramped too. Painful. I was calling out everything that hurt, asking for some relief. Adam massage my feet, open my hand, something.

Why are you doing that to your hand? came the response.
Are you kidding? You think this is a joke? I could be an invalid. I would have said something like this too, but at that moment my tongue went numb and my words only dribbled like spilled grammar.

At the clinic, the doctor was away in San Pedro. Back in the car, we went to the public hospital. After another hustle like a soccer player, they laid me on the table. In came the IV, in came the antibiotic, and the needle to dribble out blood samples into open test tubes like we had in high school, held by glove less hands.

My bed was in a room of seven. I got the first bed. In the corner lay a teenager with Dengue fever, and to my left lay an old man of eighty that wore diapers to defecate himself in bed, who spent his time hacking up whatever was in his throat. When he didn’t hack, he hummed to himself, rocking back and forth. To my right was Jonathan, another teenager, with a kidney stone or something of the like. Anyway, he didn’t look too sick, and we started talking. He loaned me his black shoes every time I needed to use the restroom for the next few days.

The restroom was a sink that barely worked, next to a toilet that never was cleaned, next to a shower that was fed by a broken tube traversing the length of the closeted space at about eye level, just above the dried blood smears on the tile wall that matched the smears below my bed in the other room. The nurse gave me paper for the bathroom the first few times I used it until I realized that you were supposed to bring your own and had Adam buy some. The shower tube was leaking water all over the floor, toilet, and sink. We all used the space. Every sick person in the room. I would go in with Jonathan’s shoes and hike my pants down and then up so as not to wet them in the puddle.

Nothing comes with the hospital. If you want to stay, you provide everything, sheets, pillow, blanket, water, food, toilet paper, everything. I stayed in the bed that did not come with sheets, but which my neighbors from Palermo covered and blanketed. I had three fevers that night, so bad that I was convulsing. The second fever was so bad that the Dengue fever boy loaned me his blanket to keep me warm. But my body came back to life, and in the morning I felt a bit better. I watched the old man cough and hack and defecate and then hum, and watched the Fever kid be visited by the most beautiful girls in the room, and watched Jonathan talk with his parents. About half way through or I don’t know when, they brought in a large woman either with cancer or something wrong with her heart. I could tell you accurately but information second hand in Honduras never is consistent. I watched as they strapped her with oxygen and drew a curtain around her that left enough space to see her terrified eyes. Six hours later, I woke to the sobs of her mother as she caressed her dead daughter. It took six men to lift her onto the metal rack to take her down to refrigeration. I began to cry as I watched the torment in the mother’s eyes. And when they lifted the body over my head, I heard my neighbor say that I was upset. She looked at me and told me not to worry, I was not her. I will be fine. I could not have been more misunderstood as I was not thinking of myself, but was feeling the pain of the mother who screamed all the way down the hall.

The next day, after overcoming the fevers, the nurses, and the bloody bathroom, I left the hospital to go home. I felt no pain in my stomach, but felt a bit weak. The diarrhea had stopped. I got home and slept. The next morning, I thought that I would walk up to Karen’s house ten minutes away to say goodbye to her grandmother who was leaving. I made it 4 minutes and turned back. My head spinning like a top. I slept some more, unable to move. I couldn’t focus.

Alba called and said she wanted to take me to a doctor in San Pedro, her specialist. I told her I was fine; I just needed to sleep. She came anyway and hour later and put me in the back of a borrowed car. Her doctor told me I was very sick with a gastronomical infection and severe dehydration on top of that. He suggested a stay in a hospital for the night and maybe the next few days. Five liters of saline I should drink through my veins before I would be considered able to leave.

We drove to Siguantepeque in the borrowed car, Alba, me, her mother, and her cousin. I collapsed after unsuccessfully trying to pee on the side of the highway and passed out in the car. We made it to Taulabe, which is right before Siguantepeque and rushed into a clinic there to connect my veins to the clear juice, an emergency attempt to revive me. The doctor reluctantly connected me, but said I had to leave the clinic after my first bag of saline. I was a gringo with different wiring than Latinos and he was afraid to treat me. Ten minutes later I had sucked down a bag and we were back in the car.

Soon after, Goldon, the cousin, was carrying me into a new hospital, a very nice hospital. It was white. It was clean, and it was cold. The twenty year old nurses brought me blankets. They wore little white skirts, with matching white stockings, little white nurse caps, and blue cardigan sweaters. One took my temp, while one took my pulse, while one worked on the IV, and the other asked how I felt. I felt like I was in heaven all of a sudden. Not good I said. I am dying. They all babied me and Alba rolled her eyes.

Alba booked us the private room with two beds, a private bath, and a TV, so she could stay the night and watch over me. The nurse brought us towels, soaps, and tooth brush kits so we could clean up. After Alba’s mother left, and Alba rolled off to sleep in the other bed, I flipped on my personal reading light and read till two. During the night, the nurse, Noami, would sneak into my room in the dark, afraid that she might disrupt me, and would politely ask if she could take my blood pressure. Then after working to save my life, she would apologize for the inconvenience and sneak out.

In the morning, my nurses quietly shuffled in and went to work on me. They ran all tests of blood, urine, stool, and took my temp, blood pressure, and order for lunch. I spent most of the time reading and sleeping, but feeling much better. I took a shower with a bag over the IV in my arm. Hot water! Where was I and what was this place? Lunch came and I ate veggie soup with rice, and a piece of baked chicken breast. The fresh watermelon juice washed it down, and sliced melon followed for desert. It was delicious and I asked for more. Ten minutes later I had another tray full of the same to enjoy, and I finished off that one as well. I had three more hours before I finally got to go home.

I liked the hospital. Better than any hospital I had been in, in the states and I think I will go there first, the next time I am sick.

I got better, and made it to Alba’s sister’s house for two more days of IV connection and TV. I finally took the bus back home to Cortes this morning after a week of infirmary. I got back to my lovely apartment, my big bed, and all the emails from friends. I am still sleepy…

Brian