It had been nearly a year since I last saw my best friend, Laura. We first met when we were assigned to be roommates freshman year of college, and have been good friends every since! We ended up living together for five years, until life took us in different directions. She's lived in Texas her whole life, but recently decided that it was time for a change. She took the plunge and moved to Argentina to teach English. Though it's still one country over, it's a lot closer than the U.S.! We both finished up our teaching duties in early December, so she decided to come over to Chile to visit me for a couple weeks before I headed back to the States for the holidays.
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She was scheduled to arrive Monday evening around 8:00. I was a little nervous because I hadn't given her my address, so I was really counting on being able to find her at the bus terminal. I went to the main bus station, but couldn't find any terminal for her bus line. I asked a guard about it, and he pointed me to a smaller bus station across the street. By the time I found my way through the crowd and made my way to the correct terminal, the bus was scheduled to arrive any minute. I waited about 15 minutes, but still no Laura. I started to get a little nervous, because buses in Chile are actually fairly good about keeping to schedules, so I went to the ticket counter to make sure I was in the right place. I was assured that I was, but the people there had no information about any buses arriving from Mendoza that day. I went back out to the terminal to wait a little longer.
By 8:30, I was really starting to get nervous, but there was really nothing I could do since I didn't have Laura's phone number (and her phone ended up not even working in Chile, anyway), so I just paced up and down, probably entertaining quite a few people in the process. I was just about to give up and see if perhaps I needed to go to yet another bus station when I heard my name called from the driveway where the buses came into the terminal--it was Laura, walking in with all her gear, no bus in sight. She was moving a bit slower than normal, but I figured that she was just tired from the trip (over a day from Buenos Aires to Santiago). I ran over to greet her, and she gave me a hug and said, "Hi, I really missed you--now can we go to the hospital?"
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It turned out that she had been having pain in her abdomen and lower back for a few days, but didn't think much of it and hoped that it would go away in time for her visit to Chile. Unfortunately, not only did her symptoms not improve, they got much worse and were aggravated by the long bus rides through the mountains. To top things off, her bus from Mendoza to Santiago had a bad habit of breaking down every hour or so. Every time it broke down, all the passengers would be told to get off the bus and get their luggage to wait for another bus to come and rescue them. Just as everyone got off and ready to board another bus, the mechanic would tell them that their current bus was good to go and they could all get back on and continue their journey. This occurred several times over the 7-hour trip. The last time it happened just a few blocks away from the bus station, so all the passengers were told to get off and just walk the rest of the way. I was actually really surprised that they were only half an hour late after all that!
Anyway, all the stopping and starting and getting on and off really didn't help with Laura's condition, so she was pretty fed up by the time she arrived in Santiago. It was too late to get in to a "regular" clinic, and I had been fortunate enough to never have had to visit a doctor in Chile, so I didn't know where there would be one that would be open so late. Luckily, Laura had made friends with her seatmate on the bus, so we asked him if he knew of any place. His relatives were life-long residents of Santiago, so they recommended that we go the the clinic associated with the Universidad Católica. They gave us directions to the 24/7 Urgent Care, and I realized that it was only a few blocks from my apartment! In fact, I pass by it regularly and never really registered what it was! I was relieved to find out that it was in a familiar place.
Unfortunately, the clinic is about half an hour away from the bus station by metro. Laura and I tried to catch up a little on the way over, but it wasn't the easiest for her to stay focused through the pain. She said that it was getting progressively worse, and that she was really worried because she had been looking at
WebMD when her symptoms first presented and had read about people going into renal failure with similar symptoms. So, first lesson: never look up your symptoms online! I can't tell you how many times the internet has told me with "complete accuracy" that I am pregnant. If everything on the internet were true, I should probably have about 47 children by now. At least.
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Anyways, we finally made it to the urgent care center around 9:30 p.m. The waiting room was pretty full of people with all sorts of ailments. I wasn't quite sure how urgent care works in Chile (and now that I mention it, I'm not really sure how it works in the U.S., either), so I went to the information desk to ask what we should do. They told us that we needed to register with a Chilean ID number before we could be put in the queue for triage. Since Laura didn't have one, they let her register with mine. They told us that the wait for triage shouldn't be too long, but that it would probably take about three hours after that before we could get in for treatment. They were right; Laura was called to the triage room about 15 minutes later. They had a little trouble with her middle name, which they pronounced "Gay", followed by a long paused, then: "-Lay." We weren't sure at first if they were actually calling her, but the man from the information counter assured us that it was our turn.
We were taken to a small room just behind the waiting room, where a nurse asked some questions to determine how to initially diagnose Laura. She tried to speak in English, but Laura insisted on Spanish so that she could practice. It ended up being a mixture of Spanglish and excellent miming, but we managed to get the point across. The nurse told us that it sounded like an urinary tract infection, but it was possible that it might be a kidney stone or something like that as well. She put Laura's information in the system, fitted her with a hospital bracelet, and sent us back out to the waiting room to wait for the doctor.
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By now it was past 10:00, and we were both pretty hungry. Laura hadn't really eaten a "real" meal since she left Buenos Aires more than 24 hours before. I offered to go out in search of food while she stayed in the waiting room, just in case things moved faster than expected. Even though Santiago is the biggest city in Chile, it does slow down quite a bit at night so there weren't a whole bunch of options available at that time. Luckily, Laura requested something with fish (apparently seafood prices are through the roof in Buenos Aires--surprising, given that it's right on the coast), and the first place I came to was a sushi restaurant. I never know what to order at sushi restaurants, so I just asked for the 2-person special. I only had large bills and the cashier didn't have enough change, so while they prepared my order I went to the convenience store across the street to get some. I tried to look for pineapple juice, because Laura had read that that might help with a UTI. The store didn't have any, so I settled for orange.
The sushi place was surprisingly really quick, and had my order ready to go by the time I returned with the correct change. The 2-person meal looked more like a 4- or 5-person meal, but I was glad for the extra food because I was starving! We'd planned to go out to a big dinner with Raul as soon as Laura arrived, so I hadn't eaten much earlier in the day in preparation for that. When I got back to the clinic with the food, we decided to sit outside and eat, just in case there might be some undesirable pathogens hanging around the waiting room. There were some undesirable
flaites hanging around outside, but they just gave us weird looks as we sat on the steps and enjoyed our take-out sushi and orange juice straight from the container. We made it about halfway through before we were starting to get full. We packed it up and headed back inside.
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We'd lost our original seats, so we had to shuffle to the back of the room to find two open next to each other. As we sat down, I checked my watch: 11:10 p.m. According to the information we'd been given upon checking in, we still had over two hours to wait until getting called to see a doctor. We settled in and tried to watch the tv across the room while we waited our turn. We weren't really paying attention to the names being called, but only a few minutes later the man from the information station came over to us and told us that they had been calling us and we should hurry to the back before they gave our spot to someone else. We were astonished that we were going in so quickly; as you've probably noticed from my other posts, most aspects of life in Chile are decidedly slower than what we're used to in the U.S.
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We headed towards the back of the building again, where we were met by a nurse who escorted us to a small room with 5 beds separated by curtains. We were shown to the bed in the corner. It was a little awkward, because the only way to access it was by walking through the curtained-off areas of two other patients. But at least we got some good privacy! The nurse had Laura get comfortable on the bed, and asked her to rate her pain on a scale from 1-10. Laura estimated she was around 8, so the nurse offered to give her some intravenous pain medication. Laura agreed before the offer was even fully out of the nurses mouth! The nurse laughed and went off to find someone to run the line.
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We had to wait a bit for someone to come, so we took the opportunity to catch up a little and try to get Laura's mind off the pain. Of course, we had to gossip! Laura told me all about her life in Argentina, and told me that (apart from being in excruciating pain at the moment), her life was pretty awesome. She even had a new sexy boyfriend from Colombia! She told me that he's a pretty good cook, and that she had become addicted to a Colombian delicacy called "arepas." I don't think that I've ever had one, but after Laura's raving description of them, I definitely want to try! Apparently, they are kind of like pancakes, except that they are made out of a special sweet corn flour, harina de choclo dulce. She told me that food in general is in short supply in Argentina, but that finding the flour for arepas was pretty much impossible. She hoped to find some in Chile, but I didn't remember seeing any at any of the places that I normally shopped. I promised to take her to some of the big import stores to check, anyways.
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Just about the time Laura had convinced me that arepas are the food of the gods and nothing else is worth eating, another nurse came in to run the IV line for the pain medication. We heard her coming from a mile away, because she was pushing a huge cart with all her supplies, and had to navigate it through the narrow corridors and between all the beds to reach us in the back of the room. She finally made it and settled down next to Laura on her left side to insert the needle. By now, Laura's pain had worsened significantly and she was shaking. I was a little worried, but she told me that it seemed to be her body's way of dealing with pain because it happens quite regularly when she gets hurt. Of course, it didn't make things any easier for the nurse, although I must say that Laura made a heroic effort to keep still while she was working to find a vein. Laura's veins apparently weren't really up to being found that night, because the nurse tried four different spots on her left arm and didn't manage to get the needle in any of them. Frustrated, she left without saying much.
A few minutes later, we heard more clanging as a different nurse pushed her cart through the obstacle course to arrive in our corner. She tried the left arm one more time but still didn't manage to find a vein. She maneuvered herself and her cart over to the right side to try again. Another three tries, and still nothing. She got pretty aggressive, too, moving the needle back and forth vigorously inside of Laura's arm. Laura was talking to me and not watching, but I couldn't help but stare at the nurse's wild efforts to insert the needle. I'm not generally a queasy person, but her technique almost made me sick! A few more stabs and she gave up on the right arm, too. She left, and it looked like Laura wasn't going to get any pain medication after all. But the nurse came back a few minutes later with a smaller needle and gave it one more try. Finally, she managed to find the vein and get the IV going, but by this time Laura looked like a drug user, with track marks and bruises all up and down both of her arms!
It was worth it, though, because the medicine started to work almost immediately and Laura could relax a little more while we waited for the doctor. When he came in, he started to explain things to her and asked if she would prefer that he speak English. She said no, and he seemed pretty relieved about that. He said that he had studied in the U.S. for a year, but that he didn't get much practice in Chile, so our Spanish was probably better than his English. He made the effort to speak slowly and clearly, but Laura was still having some trouble understanding him, and he must have noticed this because he asked again if she would like to speak English. She responded, "no, but could you speak in Argentinian? I don't really understand the Chilean accent." He laughed, but actually made a (very good) effort to speak in an Argentinian accent. He must have done a good job, because Laura understood much better after that!
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He explained that the tests they had run revealed that she had a urinary tract infection (a relief to us, after having convinced ourselves that it was a kidney infection). However, the tests would not be able to tell what kind of infection it was for another 48 hours. This was a bit of a problem because we were scheduled to leave for the south of Chile the next day! We asked the doctor about that, and he said we should be clear to go if she felt better by that time. He told us he would prescribe her with an antibiotic, but that we had to be sure to check the online system while we were in the south to make sure that she didn't have a drug-resistant infection. If she did, we would have to find a doctor there who could prescribe stronger antibiotics. After the doctor explained all this in Spanish, he told us that he was legally obligated to explain it to us in our native language, so he reiterated it all in English. He got stuck on a few of the medical terms, but somehow I managed to help him with all of them. I have no idea how I got such a great medical terminology vocabulary, but I suspect that some of it may be due to being the daughter of a doctor. Thanks, Dad!
The doctor wrote a prescription for an antibiotic and two medications to help with the pain, and released us to the billing department. Once again, I had to sign all the papers since I was the one with a national ID. It turned out to be quite the expensive night--about $300USD for the consultation and lab tests. And we still hadn't even picked up the prescriptions! It was now about 2:00 a.m., and there wasn't a pharmacy associated with the clinic, so we though we might have to wait until morning to pick up the prescriptions. Laura was not too happy about that, because the pain medication had begun to wear off and she was starting to get uncomfortable again. Luckily, we found out that there was a 24/7 pharmacy just a few blocks away.
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Unfortunately, it was in the other direction from my house, in an area that is not known to be the best, especially at night. We hurried past a group of unsavory-looking youth and made it to our destination without much incident. We did get yelled at by a cab driver waiting across the street, warning us not to walk in that area because it was dangerous at night. We didn't have much of a choice, so we just moved as quickly as we could and tried to look alert (probably a bit easier for me than Laura, who hadn't slept in two days and was starting to feel the pain full-force again). We hoped that her debit card wouldn't get rejected at the pharmacy for so many expensive purchases in a foreign country over such a short time, but it turned out that all three medications cost less than $12USD. One good thing about going to a pharmacy at 2:30 a.m. is that there really isn't much of a line, so we were in and out in only a few minutes. We hurried back home, eager to finally get in bed.
We had to take a quick stop in the lobby to say hello to the concierges, but managed to get up to the room and ready for bed by around 3:00 a.m. I'd been contacting my landlord about borrowing sheets for the pull-out bed for about three days, but still hadn't been able to track any down, so we just laid some extra blankets on top for the time being. Laura was so exhausted that she didn't really mind at that point. She took her medicine and we both headed off to bed. We didn't get much rest right away, because around 4:30 a.m. she started having horrible pains again, and we were worried that she might be getting worse because it should have been too soon for the pain medication to wear off already. We actually even called my Dad to see if we needed to go back to the clinic, but he told us that she should be ok and would just have to ride out the pain. After some deduction, we realized that she had actually only taken half the prescribed dosage of medicine, so she took some more and tried to go back to sleep.
Finally her pain began to subside and I was felt less worried, and we both fell asleep. It was about 6:00 a.m. Luckily, we didn't have any set plans for the next day!
