Belly Button Surgery

June 2015 Ed and His Bellybutton

Navigating health care in a foreign country, especially one where you don’t really speak the language, is a real test of endurance.

Ed had long been living with a herniated belly button. He had been Leg Pressing in the gym in 1999 with 650 lbs on the bar. He wasn’t wearing weight lifting belt which resulted in a pratial hernia. Now it was a full hernia and it was really was starting to bother him, so we decided to get it done.

Just getting the surgery booked was quite the ordeal. The first step was to ask around the coconut telegraph for recommendations as to doctors and hospitals. We settled on the good ol’ Public Hospital right here on Roatan.
The surgeon (Dra. Indira Sanchez) is supposed to be great and she even gets patients sent over from the mainland for her to operate on. She came highly recommended by all our gringo friends.

So, now to figure out the Public Hospital ‘system’  Yeah right. Ha Ha. . The first thing you do is go down there (downtown Coxen Hole aka ‘Toxic Hole’). The entrance to the Hospital is off the side of a dirty alley through an unpainted plywood door stained black around the door handle from many hands. It has bars outside. Inside is utter chaos and I mean utter. Young, really young mothers like 15 or 16, many pregnant again, with screaming kids mostly – sneezy coughing runny noses, dirty floor and people shuffling around and lined up everywhere. Well, sorta lined up. Just in bunches really. No signs anywhere, and totally Spanish. Boiling hot and no breeze at all. Hmmm….what to do.

We stood in the first ‘line’ and got to the front after about 1 ½ hours. I tried in my broken Spanish to request an appointment with the surgeon, and finally somebody felt sorry for me and translated. OK, so we made the appointment for the next day.

We went home, an hour long trip down the pothole-laden road, on to the dirt road to Oakridge, then by boat to our Calabash Bight home which wasn’t a home yet as it was under construction still, so we were living on the catamaran still. And did the whole thing again bright and early the next day.

We knew the procedure from the previous day so we got in the same lineup with another group of different but equally young mothers with screaming kids. Boiling hot, again, still. When we got to the front of the line we were sent down a dark hallway with broken grimy floor tiles and chipped concrete walls painted an interesting combination of avocado and puke green. We sat on a dirty old unpainted bench and waited 3 hours. Did I mention boiling hot?

There was some entertainment though – there’s a dentist office right there. Well not an office exactly – an unpainted wooden door through which a steady stream of young people passed, going in holding their jaws, crying and coming out still holding their jaws and crying harder. We could hear the drill and the moans from our seats. That is, above the screaming and temper tantrums of the kids. (The surgeon’s office is in between the dentist and the baby doctor.)

Everywhere we went everyone looked at us in total amazement like WTF are you people doing here! – two (old) gringos in this place of poor, sick black and brown people.

We finally met with the surgeon Dra Sanchez. Wow. A nice air conditioned office. It was even clean! A real oasis in a sea of chaos.  She took a look at Ed’s belly and filled out a bunch of papers for blood tests, EKG, chest X-ray. So we spent the next 2 or 3 days running all around with Ed giving blood, getting tests and going back for results. After assembling all the relevant documents, back we went to get in line again.

This time to make an appointment for the GP Internist to evaluate Ed to make sure he was going to make it through surgery. I thought that was a good thing.

Back again 2 days later to see the internist, he gave the green light.

By this time we’re figuring out the ‘system’ pretty well. Ed helped things along by flirting with all the receptionists and nurses, and started getting moved to the front of the line all the time.

One more visit on Thurs to fill out the ‘documents’ whatever they were (all in Spanish) and then set the big date Friday to get surgery. We were told to be there at 6AM. We had no idea if Ed was going to have to spend the night. The doctor said it just depended.

So we left home (the boat) at 4:45AM. Alex (our young crew guy) drove us by boat to BJ’s in Oakridge, and then we had Miguel (a former fishing guide employee from our Mango Creek days) drive us in his taxi to Coxen Hole so we wouldn’t have to worry about what to do with the car in case we had to spend the night.

We arrived at the hospital at 6AM. Nobody was there. Nobody. Just some derelict-looking people sleeping on benches and on the floor like a homeless shelter. One young guy in green scrubs looked at us with a really surprised look like ‘what are you doing here’? We told him Ed was scheduled for surgery today. He said, wow, you are really early!

So we found an unoccupied bench and sat around and laid around like all the other people, till the lineup started at 7.

Harriet – the big black nurse that Ed flirted with – found us and walked us to the front of the line. Yay, so far so good. Nobody messes around with Harriet, believe me!

We were taken to the ‘men’s ward’ for them to prep Ed. That meant giving me a bedsheet, gown and a hat and telling me to prep Ed. Ok no problem, I made the bed up and got Ed dressed, or undressed as the case may be. There were 6 other guys in the tiny little room that could really fit about 2.

Amazingly, in that room was an air conditioner that almost worked. But there were holes in the screens and no glass, just the wooden slats everyone around here has. So needless to say the AirCon couldn’t keep up.
A really cute little Spanish girl came in and put an IV in Ed’s hand. She spoke a little English so Ed was happy to flirt with her so that she could understand. She wrote down some stuff for me to go buy.

(You have to buy all your own stuff) – in this case it was saline for the IV drip and some kind of meds for the surgery). It was all in Spanish. I was told to go ‘across the bridge’ to the pharmacy – it was cheaper than the one ‘up the road’ So I tried to find a bridge but couldn’t. I didn’t even know there was a bridge in Coxen Hole.  I walked all over that town and found a lot of pharmacies, but none of them were open till 8AM. And I didn’t ever really see any bridges.

So I went back to the hospital (all hot and sweaty). The little nurse girl apologized and said she forgot to tell me that the pharmacies weren’t open till 8.

Duh. So back I went at 8 but had to go to 3 different pharmacies because nobody had everything I needed. And still never found that bridge.

In the meantime, Ed was supposed to be first in line for surgery. But he got bumped to last because he had drank some water at 4:30M!!!!! The doctor said no food after 10PM the night before. Just water. But I guess she meant no water after 10PM also.

Oh well. What else do we have to do. We sat in that room till 12 noon. They operated on 3 guys – out they went and back in they came.

Everyone brings their wives or daughters to help. There’s no nurses to watch over the patients, although they occasionally do make rounds. You have to check the IV drip, bath the patient, get food, change the bed, everything.

Finally at noon they came and got Ed. They walk him down the hall (no gurney yet) with his IV bag slung over his shoulder.

(He did say that the operating theater was squeaky clean and state of the art – a big difference from the rest of the place!)
2 ½ hours later they wheeled him back. I just sat here on the bed during this time, not sure what to do but wanting to be there in case there was a problem.

They wheeled him back on a gurney and the surgeon asked if Ed has asthma or any allergies – because he had a ‘bronchial spasm’ while under anesthetic, and had stopped breathing. He was pretty dopey but he slowly came around. He had to spend the night because of the breathing thing, and they put him on a nebulizer, and brought in oxygen tanks just in case.

I really had no idea whether I was supposed to stay there, or whether I was going to get kicked outta there. I was pretty hungry and hot and tired. I called Chena (our cook on the catamaran and the best ‘pit bull’ island friend I have here) to the rescue. She stopped at the catamaran, and picked up a blanket and pillow, washcloth and towel (not provided at the hospital). I already had a change of clothes for me and Ed.

There is not even any running water there to wash your hands. The toilets are filthy beyond belief – no toilet seats on them even! And low, with no grab bars so I just can’t imagine anyone who has had surgery being able to ‘hover’ over an open filthy toilet and take a crap! To ‘flush’ the toilet you take a dirty old bucket and fill it from a trough (at certain times of the day when there is power to the place and the water pumps  I guess are actually running) and pour it down the bowl.
Here we go. Chena arrives about 7PM. Ed’s asleep so we go to BoJangles for really great fried chicken and she finds me a nice flophouse to catch a few hours sleep. She sat up with Ed all night. If I knew then what I know now I would have done that too. People just find an empty bed to sleep in. I could have saved myself 30 bucks.

I woke up and it was still dark. I tried to leave the flophouse at 3AM to spell off Chena but found myself locked in the place and all the lights off. Even the hallway lights. I had made the mistake of locking my room when I left it, and when I discovered that the main exit door was chained shut, and no watchman or receptionist around I had to go along the hall and feel the room numbers on the doors to find my room again. Good thing there wasn’t a fire or the whole place would of died!

 

The watchee for the flophouse finally showed up at 7AM. Grrrr……

Meanwhile……Back at the hospital Chena was looking greasy and tired so we went to the ‘cafeteria’ for coffee and a baleada. I told her not to touch the countertop. And certainly don’t touch the counter top and then your eyes or your mouth!

Chena was excellent at getting things done and figuring out whether they were going to let Ed go home.

The doctor finally made her rounds at 9M and declared that Ed could go. Boy, he was happy.

We got him dressed, but had to wait till noon for a list of meds and instructions for tending to Ed’s incision. But finally we got outta there – by this time it was absolutely pouring buckets of rain like it can only do in the tropics. We had Miguel come in his taxi again and collected the 3 of us.

So all’s well that ends well. Dra. Sanchez did a great job on Ed.

The nicest part of the whole experience was that the bill was $20.

Cheers!

Julie