We got to the hospital in Chimaltenango, a 15 minute car ride away. He was having a little trouble walking because he was in so much pain, so I helped him up the ramp into the ER. When we got inside I was a little surprised by how empty it was. All the clinics that I've been to so far here have been super crowded and usually involve a several hour wait. Ad we walked in, a doctor approached us and asked what was going on. I explained why we there and he walked us over to a set on beds on one side of the room. The beds were really metal gurneys with a sheet over them. The sheets definitely aren't changed between every person and you could see obvious stains on them, but I didn't see any blood and the kid was still fully clothed, so I figured it wasn't worth making a fuss. The doctor did a quick assessment and agreed that it was probably appendicitis. An added benefit of all this was that I learned/was reminded of what to look for when you suspect appendicitis: pain in lower right abdomen, rebound tenderness, nausea and positive obturator sign (too complicated to explain, but basically involves twisting at the hips with your knees up. Man did that kid scream.)
After the doctor finished his assessment he told us that the kid would need surgery right away and whisked us into the hallway to begin surgery prep. We had been at the hospital for all of 15 minutes, I couldn't believe how efficient it was! I told the kid that if we were in the States we would have been waiting in the ER for at least three hours before anything was done, and most of that time would be waiting to hear from the doctor.
He got dressed into a gown (complete with cap and booties) and laid on another gurney. A few minutes later one of the ER nurses came to start his IV. Oh my God. This lady BUTCHERED this poor kid. She was sticking the IV in his wrist and twisting it in tons of directions trying to find the vein. When that didn't work she kept pulling it out and sticking it in the same hole over and over. She tried in three different places before finally going into his bicep (I didn't even know you could get an IV in your bicep) and that took. Every time she couldn't find the vein she would tell him it was because he wasn't breathing enough. I'm no IV expert but it seems like "breathing" is a shitty prerequisite for being able to have an IV placed. Choking victims must be shit out of luck then. I'm sure she was referring to him being too tense, but I thought he was doing remarkably well for a 16 year old in severe pain who was being stuck repeatedly.
Here he is all set for surgery:
Once she finally got the IV in she took a blood sample in the most medically horrifying way I've ever seen. She left the needle in his arm (where the IV was going to hook up to), uncapped a vial and then basically let his arm spray out blood through the needle. She held the open vial under it while blood coated the glass, splashed all over her fingers and hands (ungloved, naturally) and finally dripped all over the floor. I seriously considered asking him if he had taken his HIV medication that morning just to wake her up a little bit, but decided against it. A few minutes later I saw another nurse do the same thing with another patient so apparently it's a hospital wide problem.
Here's the wall I stared at for my time there! Notice that the sign in written in Kaqchikel, the Mayan language that a lot of folks speak in Chimal.
Once the IV was set up we waited for the surgeon. And waited. And waited. We waited through two separate shift changes, all while I stood there in the hallway since there were no seats. I started getting really nervous because three different people came to me and said that this part of Chimal was dangerous at night and I shouldn't be outside of the hospital after dark. We kept waiting and the sun kept getting lower in the sky. Then I started getting worried because the last bus back to Parramos was at 7:30. It was now 6:30 and no sign of anything changing. Finally after a little over 8 hours of waiting, the surgeon finally came and said it was time for us to go in. As we're getting pushed down the hall, an ambulance pulls up and runs a woman right into the operating room. The surgeon says we have to wait some more and leaves. I felt like a total dick leaving, but I had no choice. I told the kid I needed to catch the last bus and he said he understood. A lady had been there with her father also waiting for surgery, and she told me that she would keep an eye on him.
A view of the bodies piling up in the hallway:
The only thing of any value I had on me was my iPhone and Q3 for the bus fare. I didn't want my iPhone to get taken should I have issues in the now-dark Chimal, so I put it inside of my shoe which made me walk with a considerable limp (which actually looked convincing since I was stumbling away from the hospital). I walked up to the main road and stood by a family also waiting for the bus. After fifteen minutes of waiting there, I figured it would be safe to put my phone in my pocket now since there were a bunch of us waiting together. Two seconds after I did this, the family crossed the street and walked away. Now I was alone, in the dark with my iPhone in my pocket, EXACTLY the situation I didn't want to be in.
I looked around and saw a couple of guys hanging around smoking and figured them to be the most likely people to rob me. I brainstormed my options, then decided to hide the phone again. Luckily I was wearing a T-shirt tucked in and a super tight belt. I walked up a few feet so that their view was blocked by a tree, then pretended to scratch the back of my neck while I dropped my phone inside my T-shirt. At first I thought it fell all the way through to the ground, but then I felt it against my back. I tucked it into my waistband and felt a lot better. Let em rob me now. I have nothing on me but Q3 and my crappy Guatemala phone, no big loss there.
I waited for the bus and after convincing myself that none was going to come and I was going to be stranded in Chimal for the night, finally one came down for me. It was insanely crowded but I didn't care, I was getting out of there. Unfortunately the only place for me to stand was on the first step getting into the bus. I had to hold onto the handbars along the outside of the bus and ride with my ass swaying in the breeze. This would have been stressful enough WITHOUT having to worry about my phone slipping out of my pant leg and onto the road. I tried to maintain this position while sending a text to the clinic and to Stephanie to let them know that I was on my way home. As I was doing this I glanced at the driver who was also using this time to send text messages to his friends. I realized that we were all going to die and started laughing. To make matters worse, the dude who collects money on the bus had to try to stand behind me with only his toes on the first step. His arms were wrapped around me and he was also trying to hold onto the outside rails. All I could think was "I'm not going to let this guy die because my butt is too big for him to fit in here." I tried to squish my body in as much as possible. I had no choice but to put my head on the shoulder of a woman on the next step up from me which gave him a valuable two more inches. After a few moments I realized that it wasn't actually her shoulder that my head was on but actually her breast. I had a fleeting rush of embarrassment but then I realized that it would probably be more embarrassing to her if I drew attention to it, so I just stayed there. At the next bus stop a bunch of people left and we had room to rearrange ourselves, so it was all ok.
To help me get over my traumatic day Stephanie and Charlotte treated me to a pizza dinner in Antigua (complete with BBQ Chicken and Bacon pizza which was scrumptious!). So anyway, long story short: the ER in Chimal was terrifying and unhygienic. But hooray for new experiences! And the kid is fine, surgery went well and he's on his way to the clinic for a while.
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