That Time I Spent an Evening in an Ecuadorian Hospital

The Wednesday before Thanksgiving I headed out on my nightly walk to the town center. This walk is usually one of the highlights of my day: the sun is setting behind the mountains, the temperature drops (a bit) and I am able to talk to all of my favorite neighbors and shop owners since every one is out at this time of day. On this particular day I decided to take my camera, and I was snapping pictures of the church, the central park/plaza, and the hospital. I am convinced that the pictures of the hospital are what precipitated future events. Before heading home, around 6:30, I stopped to buy some bread and some folders for the office, and then I headed back home, crossing through the central plaza.

The central plaza is not lit during the night, I assume due to our power shortage and power cuts. So, I’m walking through the park, thinking what a good evening I have had, and suddenly my left leg has fallen into some sort of hole up to my knee. I look down to see that my leg has slipped through a sewer grate. Before you accuse me of being clumsy, I must point out that this sewer runs across the entire pathway, so there is no way of walking around it. Anyways, my first thought is, “Wow, this is embarrassing” as there were three teenage boys sitting on the steps of the church laughing at me. My second thought was, “I broke my favorite pair of shoes”. My third thought was “I’ll have to wash my leg well when I get home”. I knew I had scraped my leg up (I did fall through a metal sewer) but at that point did not know to what extent. It wasn’t until I was examining my shoe again that I noticed my leg was literally gushing blood. I looked again and freaked out when I saw my shinbone. It was certainly one of those moments where I thought, “Shoot, I am in Ecuador, I don’t have a cell phone, Spanish is not my primary language, and that hospital is not a hospital I want to go to”.

I really had no idea what to do, and decided I would walk the 10 minutes home and ask my neighbors for help. That plan changed about 30 seconds later, when in a lot of pain and definitely not very composed, I decided to stop at the pharmacy and ask the pharmacist there what he thought I should do. I have gotten to know this pharmacist pretty well, as he has helped pick ticks of my body, has greeted me daily as I pass his store, and has also warned me that I may be kidnapped since I am the most beautiful girl in Archidona (quite an odd compliment if you ask me). I walked in the store, and he immediately asked “Laurita, qué pasó?” At this point I was a bit overwhelmed, and this simple question sent me into tears as I struggled to explain that I fell into a metal sewer grate (this is a difficult task when there is no word for sewer in Spanish). He immediately pulled me into a back room filled with needles and bandages and medicines and sat me down on the bed. Knowing that I did not want this man giving me any serious medical treatment, I asked him what he was doing, and he replied that he was merely cleaning off the wound. A few seconds later, he looks up and says, “You need to go to the hospital, RIGHT NOW”.

I hurried my way across the street to the hospital, all the while thinking how crazy this was, and then struggled to enter the hospital, as it was already closed. I wandered around for a while until I found a man with keys that unlocked the door but did not lead me in any direction. Eventually, I found a nurse and explained the situation, and then I sat in the hallway until someone came and let me into the operating room. I walked in, quickly surveying the room, and couldn’t believe what I saw. There was blood on the floor and the stepstool, there was no sheet on the bed (a plastic vinyl bed) the walls were crumbling, and there were dirty dressings all over. After this crude introduction, the nurse started asking me dozens of questions, fixating on the fact that I was not married, single, and living alone. Exasperated, she finally asked, “Is there anyone you know here that I can use as a contact?” During this time I started feeling as if I was about to pass out, and having fainted many times before, I knew it was coming. I tried to communicate this and my need for something to drink, but lacking the word for faint all I could come up with was, “I feel very sick, I feel like I am going to fall asleep, I need something to drink”. The nurse did not seem to care, and told me to just take deep breaths. I continued to feel worse and worse, until I remembered that before falling in a sewer I had bought a meringue when I bought my bread. I immediately reached for my purse and began rummaging around until I came up with my crushed meringue and started stuffing my face. It was at this point that the doctor came in, and I repeated “I feel” and he adds, “Like you are going to die” and I said “No, I feel very sick and like I am going to fall asleep, I need something to drink”. He came back with a shot glass full of water, and I quickly downed it before laying down on what I am sure was a very contaminated bed.

I am convinced the doctor as well as the nurses think I am totally insane, as I insisted on a play-by-play of everything that they were doing. I did not want the doctor cutting, injecting, or sewing anything before I knew it was happening. I would be this way even in the U.S., but after seeing that the liquid he was using to clean my leg came out of a Gatorade bottle, I was even more convinced that I needed to know what was happening. While some of you may think I am blowing all of this out of proportion, I will say that a hole that goes to your bone in the U.S. is one thing, but it is a totally different situation when you are in a developing country, alone, speaking in another language.

The problem was that it was a very deep cut (as I said, to my bone) but there really wasn’t any skin to cover it up with. The doctor ended up cutting off what little skin remained before cleaning and then anesthetizing the leg (directly in the cut, multiple times). I think this is the moment the nurses (I use nurses because I am relatively sure I was the only American girl ever to step foot in the hospital, and for this reason EVERY nurse in the hospital stopped by) determined I was crazy. I took one look at the huge needle (at least six inches long) that he was going to stick into my cut, and said “And WHAT are you going to do with that?” and quickly turned my head away. The nurses started laughing hysterically, and after I explained that I can’t look at needles or any of that kind of stuff, the doctor switched to a much smaller needle. After that, he sewed me up with three very tight stitches (when I went to get them removed the other doctors were commenting on them). I used this time to practice my Spanish, and so further solidified my status as the crazy American girl as I lay on the dirty bed while the doctor worked on my leg, chewing away at my meringue while talking about anything and everything. I like to think I kept the doctor and the nurses entertained that evening. Knowing that the entire hospital would be referring to me as “La Loca Gringa” (the Crazy American) anyway, I seized the opportunity to take a few pictures of the hospital, which of course prompted more laughter. So after many shots, many perplexed looks, three stitches, and a stack of prescriptions, I was ready to go. I had to pay a whopping $7.50 for my medical services (perhaps this explains the blood all over, they can’t afford to hire a janitor), and was instructed to go back to the pharmacist to get my pain medication, antibiotic and tetanus shot.

Probably laughing at something I said.

Notice the Gatorade bottle.

This is when things got even more interesting. Apparently, a very large soccer game was going on in Ecuador, and as TVs are limited here in Archidona, the pharmacist had 6 of his closest male friends crowded into the pharmacy, all happily drinking, smoking and cheering. They all parted to let me by, and I told the pharmacist what I needed as I tried my best not to block the screen. I was given my first two prescriptions without a problem, but the pharmacist insisted that he give me the shot there, and that the flask was too big to take to the hospital. I, not wanting a man who had been drinking to give me a shot, tried my best to convince him to let me take the shot to the hospital, but was ultimately unsuccessful. Thus, in front of 6 Ecuadorian men, I dropped my underpants and hiked up my dress to get my tetanus shot in the butt. I can guarantee no one was watching the game at this point. And with that shot, so ended my Medical Adventure in Ecuador, or so I thought…