"It Ain´t No Gas Bubble"

... or so i tried to explain to Argentina´s answer to Doogie Howser, the 12-year-old looking doctor who was tending to me in El Calafate municipal hospital´s emergency room.  We´d arrived in El Calafate a few days before, and i hadn´t been feeling well since our arrival.  Amy and I assumed that it might be a 2-day flu... after all, we´d been pushing our bodies pretty much non-stop without a real rest day for 5 weeks.  But after 3 days, we decided to head to the hospital on sunday morning to get me checked out.  The symptoms:  3 consecutive nights of fever, and crushing stomach pain in my upper chest and lower right abdomen, especially whenever i ate anything. 

This hospital visit was in fact the continuation of what´s become something of a tradition for Amy and I... to conduct firsthand research into the public health infrastructure of countries we visit during our travels.  In Iceland, Amy´s hands had blown up like two giant puffer fish and itched like the dickens, prompting our first such study... so now it was my turn.  (By the way, we think we solved the mystery of Amy´s alergic reaction -- a small bottle of Mountain Suds bio-degradable soap... it´s biodegradable, so you´d think it would be pretty tame... but in all fairness, it was also at least 8 years old). 


You haven't really visited a place until you've checked
out the public health infrastructure firsthand...

So, all of a sudden, I´m in a hospital gown, hooked up to an IV to receive fluids.  My money was on the gallbladder, given the position of my abdomen pains.  After an ultrasound, a chest x-ray, and some blood labs, Señor Doogie came back and joked that there would be no need to operate.  He must have liked that joke, because he started four conversations with me this way. 

He said everything looked normal, and i had probably eaten something that disagreed with me, maybe some pork.  That didn´t seem to make too much sense to us, for a number of reason.  First of all, those of you who know me well know that after a kosher childhood, I´ve gone over to the dark side of Judaism, and now I´ve never met a pork product that disagreed with me.  Second, all those stomache aches that Amy had attributed to my campaign against the sheep of patagonia, we were now reinterpreting in light of this more serious escalation of symptoms... and those stomache pains started several weeks ago and had been getting worse.  And finally, there were the three consecutive nights of fever... which signal the presence of an infection... but which Señor Doogie wanted to attribute to a coincidence of simultaneous flu.  No, I wasn´t buying the ´gas bubble´ diagnosis. 



All Dave had eaten for 3 days
before being put on the 'starvation
treatment' in the hospital...



As for treatment... wasn´t really thrilled about that either.  They would keep me overnight in the hospital, attached to an IV for fluids, and prevent me from eating or drinking anything.  No food, no water, no ice chips... nada, nunca, nadie.  This was already pretty much the diet I´d been on the 3 previous days... so I wasn´t too optimistic that it would have too much impact, except to make me even more miserable than I was.

 
Several hours later, Amy and I were thrilled when my fever returned... because the night nurse didn´t hesitate to put me on anti-biotics immediately.  And who doesn´t love a good anti-biotic cocktail?  And let´s take this opportunity to give a shout-out to all the nurses out there!  Marci, Carole, Dony... and any other nurses out there among our readers.

In the morning, after another round of tests and labs, Señor Doogie was back to repeat his same diagnosis (boo!) but tell me he was going to let me eat (hooray!) and release me... and who cares what his diagnosis is if I´ve got my antibiotics... leading to our favorite exchange, in which Señor Doogie told me repeatedly that I wasn´t on any antibiotics... until he finally went to check, read my chart, and realized that in fact I was.  And, on cue, as the doctor left, the nurse was on her way announcing my next injection of antibiotics.

So an embarassed Señor Doogie passed me off to the clinic doctor, whom we immediately liked much better.  He was actually troubled by my fever and other symptoms.  And he let me eat.  But he wanted me to stay for another night.  He also said my spleen was a bit larger than it should be.  Apparently, the average spleen is 12 cm... well ladies, mine is 17 cm.  And you know what they say about guys with big spleens. 



My hospital roommate, Elisio: 
the happiest (and most flexible)
85-year old man in Argentina

 The extra day did provide us with the opportunity to bond with my roommate, Elisio -- the happiest 85-year old Argentine man you´ve ever met, with a great big belly laugh -- the kind of guy who can just as easily charm a 6-year old girl, a 26-year old nurse, a 60-year old fellow patient... and yes, a 31-year old American bride on her honeymoon in Patagonia.  When he saw Amy stretching after she´d finished a run, he challenged her to a flexibility contest... and won!  He also taught us how to play ´Quince´... an Argentine card game... in which we were totally convinced he was cheating and changing the rules on us.  I will remeber fondly our long conversations in which he would philosophize on the meaning of life... in which I would nod enthusiastically, laugh when it seemed appropriate, and understand about 3% of what was being said... but that wouldn´t slow him down at all.

Anyway, after 2 days of antibiotics, I was feeling about 92% better... my doctor still wasn´t entirely sure what was wrong with me, but my fever was under control, I was on antibiotics, and there wasn´t much more to be done but send me on my way with an ultrasound picture of my spleen as a souvenir.  Given that we wouldn´t be trekking any more, the doctor was advising follow-up examination in the states, and we´re headed to New Zealand a few days after we get back to the US, we decided to head home a few days early... having had a wonderfully full 6 weeks in Patagonia.