On Wednesday, my wife's mother had a near death experience. As a mater of fact, she might have died for a few seconds, sending us all into an emotional whirpool.
Everything started at home early at night and ended in this seemingly attractive building. The Hospital Universitario Antonio Patricio de Alcalá, the main health center in Cumaná, the capital of the State of Sucre (a-506-year-old city).
Inside this building, things changed as if you were submerged in a horror movie, one where you do not know which characters will come out alive and which ones will just not.
Nurses Station
(every object here looks af it they were 506 years old)
Four Hours Before
After dinner, my mother-in-law had what might have been an alergic reaction to canned tuna. With her history of alergies and respiratory problems, anything might happen.
She went over her routine to deal with the shortness of breath (antialergic, nebulization, inhaler). After a while, she started to get desperate (her anxiety and depression problems do not help in these cases). We knew it was going to be a long night.
In today's Venezuela, you cannot afford to get sick at night (in fact, you cannot afford to get sick. Period). You have to order your body that in the event of a physiological emergency, it must call for help during office hours!
There used to be a time (as it is still in most countries) where we could just get on our family car or call a friend who had a car and go wherever we needed to go (you could choose an Ambulatorio (outpatient hospital), the hospital, or a private clinic). If no friend was available, you could just take a taxi. There were taxis 24/6 (Sundays were a different story).
Now, with less vehicles in the streets and with a dramatic gasoline crisis, finding a car, even for a medical emergency, is very hard for the average person.
So here we were, almost midnight, and all the contacts my wife tried were either unavailable or their cars had no gas. My mother-in-law was beside herself. She wanted us to try every neighbor's door either to get some other medication (since hers did not work) or get a ride to a medical center. My wife tried several doors while I held her mother, who was now having a serious panic attack. She started to yell that she was going to die. She begged us not to let her die like that. It was a very hard moment. It is so frustrating not to be able to provide something as simple as transportation for a medical emergency.
Finally, one of our friends offered to help and now my mother-in-law somehow owes Rodrigo her life.
He took my wife to the nearest ambulatorio, but that one was closed. Just like that. Closed at night. The most obvious solution was to go the central hospital.
I stayed home with 
We got that medication and by the time we arrived my mother-in-law's condition had worsened.
She was not coherent, not talking; she was very restless and they were having a hard time trying to insert an IV. There were two male doctors and one nurse, but the doctors were busy filling up forms and the nurse was not enough to control the patient. My wife and another lady whose son was a patient next bed, were strugling to contain my mother-in--law. I tried to help, but a few minutes later, she was having a stroke.
She was going purple and at some point my wife yelled. "She died!"
It was a horrible moment. The doctors reacted and started CPR.
They got her back, but she was not the same. She struggled to breathe and her body looked as it it was twisting; she had lost control of her limbs and eyes.
They said they had to intubate, but they did not have gloves. I had to run get them. There was an open drugstore across the hospital. I went ahead, got the gloves, and ran back. They had moved her to the 8th floor.
Nurses station
We saw same issue with the understaff ER, but more shockingly, the indifference on the part of the nurse. My wife and I were desperately trying to hold our patient while the nurse debated whether she should keep trying to insert the IV and the two male doctors kept filling paperwork (all by hand, on recicled paper--which here means paper that has something written on one side and they use the other side because the government "can't afford" stationery).
There was another patient in the room. A man diagnosed with malaria and dengue. His wife was sitting on a chair next to his bed. She ended up being another angel in this story.
There was the usual religious image (recently beatified doctor, José Gregorio Hernández).
I looked out of the south window across the hall from the room. It was very dark, just a few lights from an apartment complex. Our patience was running thin. My wife started to argue with the nurse, who had just left the room waiting for the patient to be willing to "collaborate."
It was an ugly argument I joined in because they acted as if we, the relatives, had the responsibility of making their work easier or giving them some sense of motivation to do what they had freely chosen as a profession. They were not being professional. At least this nurse was not. She said something about another patient of her having just died next room. As if that somehow would serve as consolation for us, make us sympathize with her, or put our crisis in perspective.
Fortunatelly, there was a change of shift and another nurse took over. This one knew how to deal with patients and relatives.
The IV was in and the patient miraculously started to improve. So much so that they cancelled the intubation.
We spent most of the night walking back and forth keeping an eye on her. The other patient's wife offered the chair she was sitting on to us, which was a great gesture. That chair, though, would be violently removed from the room some hours later when the morning nurses arrived.
Aparently, this is the only hospital in the world where visitors are not allowed to sit. They expect you to just stand up all day long for as long as the hospitalization lasts.
I started to explore every corner of the floor. There was not a single waiting room, not a chair or something resembling it for anyone to sit. Some people were actually sitting on the stairs or the floor on the hall (That was also forbidden).
This elevator was out of order.
There were rooms like this. There were supposed to be bathrooms. but there was nothing there. In fact, the bathrooms available for all patients and visitors to use were so filthy my wife was unable to enter. She was blown away by the stench.
This sink was in the room, but the most dramatic thing is that there is no water in the whole hospital. Every patient or their relatives have to bring their water.
The walls show significant damage caused by humidity as well as high probablity of mold or some other kind of fungus.
It was a very long day. My feet and back were killing me. My kidneys were complaining and sending distress signals that I had to ignore.
Our patient was getting better. She was herself again, after some hours of incoherence and erratic behavior.
The new day brought lots of noise and light, more patients and more nurses, some more deaths, and the hope that we would leave this mad house to tell the tale.
I can understand people's faith in saints and gods under these circumnstances. They see their deliverance as a miraculous intervention of some benign force amid so much adversity.
The morning doctors came. They ordered some tests, which had to be done in private labs because they hospital lab can only run a limited number of them.
I started to run errands, back and forth around the hospital and across the street to the most expensive lab in town, but being the closer to the hospital, that was the only option for me.
When I came back after the first errand, they had finally given my mother-in-law a different bed, one with a matress. Not exactly a clean one, by the way.
My wife still had to go home and get some sheets and pillows.
I guess if someone offers you a mattress like this one, you'd rather sleep on the floor. But, when you have been submerged under so much crap, you end up thanking them kindly. Someone else got this one, I guess.
Some of the times I ran to the lab I had to go down and upstairs (8 floors) because the only functional elevator was too crowded. The lines were just too much for someone who had to be quick about the errand.
At least the view is good. So much potential in a country like mine. So much holding us down. Most of it, our own making.
It looks nice from the outside, but what happens inside ain't pretty (and this represents the whole health system across the country).
To be continued...
