Innocent’s day

The 28th of December is day of the Innocent Saints, as a commemoration of the death of innocent babies under the order given by Herode to kill the newly born son of god on earth. Centuries have passed, and this lethargic day in the middle between Christmas and New Years, is an excuse to show bloopers and the"funny" side of the news in the Colombian media.

Getting sick is always a physical proof that one is made up of flesh and that flesh hurts. It is to acknowledge that if the coachwork is not working, the pilot behind the wheel feels the effects. When the body weakens and the companies are scarce, the situation can be really pitiful.

In the past, in Villanueva, a town in the Colombian department of La Guajira, I got sick. Fever, bone ache and the imminent need of antibiotics. When the informal visits to the druggist were useless, I had to visit the local hospital. Under a stifling atmosphere at noon, I waited in a dark and boiling room until they called me and made me go into a room with a stretcher. On the pillow of the stretcher, lied a long and thick hair. I felt like that hair, far away from its scalp and reduced to the sad world of human hospitals. For obvious reasons, I never lied down on that stretcher and even more on the pillow. After a quick routine exam, I got a prescription for antibiotics and got better.

Now, in the recent past, I got sick again. A body used to live in the mountains of the tropic, was forced to face the harsh winter of the Northern hemisphere. A cold that never gave up despite the surprise that brings the freezing and white landscape. The counter medicines were unable to help me avoid the health system in order to heal the sinus pressure attacking my face. Lucky me, now I had family company with me.

And it is there, around the health system where the Empire of the north can come to a collapse. Its population is not precisely characterized by healthy diets or practices. In the middle of the lashes of winter, it is possible to understand how convenient and needed are the drive thrus. Sedentary people, subjected to a hostile weather and to the incongruence’s of the system. And that is also why it is possible to understand the success of football, long TV transmissions interrupted by a carnival of commercials filled up with fast food.

A middle class couple who has worked their whole life and are now retired, has to 1300 dollars a month for their health insurance. This only includes visits to the hospital, so every visit to the doctor is around 100 dollars. That is why people accumulate ailments and sorrows, because the health system is for the rich or for the poor. That is also why the health reform is such a sensitive issue. Even if it can mean the access to a more kindhearted health system to the middle class, others warn that it can become more taxes to support those that cannot do it by themselves.

We wait for three hours. I guess that all the waiting rooms in the world breathe the same nostalgic atmosphere of those who wait without wanting to wait. A small TV with the warning “Do not change the channel”, displays Doctor Oz’s show, a skinny doctor who conducts some kind of talk and contest show, and who gives health lessons. By watching his program I learned that is good to exercise to avoid testicle’s diseases and to have a regular colonoscopy, after seeing a healthy colon next to a not so healthy one, being rumpled by Oz and a volunteer from the audience. It is not very nice to watch this show when you are waiting for your medical checkout. I guess it is not nice to watch it under any circumstance.

Finally a nurse calls and asks me the regular questions. A new wait, and I observe the room and read the warning sitting on the garbage can “do not manipulate, contains contaminated material.” I guess that more than one patient, while waiting and getting just a little bit desperate, has started to distract himself with infected syringes and material. A doctor with Mohandas as a last name and apparently from India, who after a five minutes check, gives me what my body already knew it needed: antibiotics. Now we only have to hope that the visit to the drugstore doesn’t take that long, because getting sick is a fast affaire, but healing is a whole odyssey making and in between lines. Even in the so called land of freedom.

Happy New Year, filled up with smiles and health!