CRISIS IN MALDONADO HOSPITAL. URUGUAY

 CRISIS IN MALDONADO HOSPITAL. URUGUAY.

    Yesterday had dawned with a torrential rain, I thought that at that hour of the dawn there would be few patients in Hospital de Maldonado. But no, there were groups of mourners who waited in Emergency for the call through an almost mute speaker.

   I went to mourn the friendly Cardiologist who was doing the echocardiography and I explained that I was short of air when walking half a block and that I was Type II Diabetic. Without taking pity on me she sent me to take turns in emergency because she had to leave quickly for a wedding or birthday in the rain, the latest fashion in the middle class.

  I told her that I knew what I had and that in emergency - after waiting several hours- I lowered the blood glucose and they would give me some medicine for the heart that I already suspected in the pharmacy did not exist.

  First she sent me to one of the windows that was like the 17th or the 5th, each one of the girls sent you to the next, to tell you that if I did not have a General Medicine pass or the Diebetologist or the Cardiologist could not do nothing.

  I looked at the number of poorly paid bureaucrats - even those who were sheltered under the glass, to the right of the Hospital entrance and who gossiped amusingly without attending to any complaint.

  I went to the Laboratory and a young patient, arriving a little late for the rain, did not want to be attended. The woman in a fit of rage tore the indications of analysis in front of everyone. That was a scandal but the other mourners did not say anything. And there was the rubbish of the papers until the cleaning assistants-eye, be careful how you refer to these poor poor women-as indirect indicators of the mistreatment suffered by the poor patients.

   To pass through the hall of the Laboratory there were about 3 Segurities that asked where one was going, they were satisfied with the word of destiny without checking if one had a molotov cocktail hidden under the clothes and was going to explode inside the Nosocomium.

  There are so many women behind the windows, plus others who are behind them, which I think surpass the medical and paramedical staff.There is an excess of insane bureaucratism. They enter to work for cronyism or contest. I dont know.

  The psychiatrists seem to have been expelled to the periphery as San Carlos and Vigía. They do not have, some of the mentally ill, nor tickets for transportation. Some of the mild psychiatric illnesses already merit being admitted to the Vilardebó because of how much they suffer on those trips.

  There was a gray-haired psychiatrist, without combing his hair and looking lost, old man, who must have been quietly retired and ruminating and remembering all the nightmares that caused him to give so much electroshock to his patients. I thought he was a one escaped from Vilardebó, but I kept giving consultation and repeating medicines to the poor people who suffered the most. The poor Doctor must have already removed him. Patients with "moderate fear of the world" syndrome ran away from the doctor's office when they saw the old man half a block away where they were already cured of fear, that was the best therapy.

  Another Internal Medicine Doctor with retirement age to whom one explained a correct anamnesis of one condition He, without looking at the computer, said in a sour voice: What medications do you need? And One was paralyzed by this response.

  The nurses seem well taught and treat patients with love in healing and emergency, but the doctors look like bad students practicing medicine and know almost nothing. Only serve the most traumatized and that before big wounds and a lot of blood, they lose consciousness.

   The pharmacy ladies are kind to tell you that certain medications of chronic and impressible use are not in existence. So diabetics, epileptics and cancers stay for weeks until the mother laboratory provides them and they disappear immediately from the pharmacy at the request of the people.

  That's why they send you to window No. 7 for the girl to ask you if she chooses a cremation or a normal funeral. And the elderly, resigned, go home to wait for God to take them if the medicine does not arrive at the hospital before.

  There is a pharmaceutical woman who seems to put on makeup before going to work to eat a piece of fresh pork so that her lips are iridescent as God intended and she is one of the oldest in the Pharmacy, treats patients with the dryness they deserve, those old people who can not with their soul and without a medicine that is missing.

  The one with the bloody lips as they dry off and the disguise is removed puts her in a bad mood because she shows her true soul. I'm terrified of her, because I'm afraid she will break the crystal and devour my face like a cannibal so that her lips will recover the deep red color.

    But the worst thing is the bureaucracy that they practice in the glass windows where the old people are sent disoriented from one to the other, sometimes making endless queues. To tell them that they missed the window, which is 2 or 5 or 10, and finally the elderly end up banging on the bathroom door to see if someone attend it or if there is someone seminconsciente of constinpation to treat it correctly.

  I know that administrative staff is badly paid and that is reflected in their faces of frustrated women. They had to grab another job because in Health they must have a special sensitivity to treat patients, who do not go for fun, but in search of help. Except when the companion of the mourner is dressed as a wealthy woman, then their voices soften and attend well or give a sweet explanation to the family member.

  I have already written a story about the Diabetologist, which is good or bad, depending on whether her depression is rising or falling or that her husband is keeping her from time to time. I writing a story about her, of course without her name, entitled "The Harpy with White dress"

  We have to help Maldonado Hospital to make up for its shortcomings, especially respect for the patient's dignity. I do not know if the Director knows about these things or knows them and can not do anything, and above all, give a decent pay to its large bureaucracy and its friendly nurses.