About a week ago, Tim got pneumonia. And so I have had my first exposure to a Mexican general hospital. This was not the Social Security hospital, nor one run by the Catholic Church. The care they offered was about as basic as you can get. Tim was in a four-bed room, and other than the bed, dismal food, a bathroom and the tests and Xrays he needed, nothing else was provided. So his friends got together and started filling in the gaps.
Today my friend Kris and I took him a towel, washcloth, a supply of Dr. Bronner's peppermint soap, a toothbrush and toothpaste and some melon. He hadn't had a bath or brushed his teeth in five days, and was very grateful to feel clean again. We were only allowed to see him one at a time, so when I had my turn I talked with him about his novel, and it seemed to take his mind off his pain. When I asked if I could bring him books he said the room was too dim to read in, but when we hit on the idea of recorded books, his eyes lit up. "If I had that to look forward to," he said, "I could get through this."
The hospital is fairly clean, no trash on the floors, but depressingly dingy and shabby. Window tinting film is peeling off the windows, the floor tiles are in patches and the walls are in need of fresh paint. But Tim's bill for the five days was $3000 pesos, less than $300 US. Today he was moved by ambulance to Hermosillo's general hospital, where he can see a thoractic surgeon, since the doctors here are convinced he has lung cancer.
Tim has no wife, no family, only his AA and Al-Anon friends. Someone with some nursing training, was able to use her excellent Spanish to communicate with the doctors. She had to ask them to drain his lungs; otherwise he would have probably died a couple of nights ago. Someone else sat with him hour after hour and others brought him things he needed, arranged to get a phone card for him so we could keep in touch, and followed the ambulance to Hermosillo to help him get settled in. Someone took in his dog, someone else is feeding his cat. After Sunday night's AA meeting a visiting schedule will be drawn up so he won't have to spend a single day alone in Hermosillo. In pairs we'll make the two-hour drive so there'll always be at least two people looking after him.
Without his support team, Tim might not have lived through the past week. This situation is taking proactive medicine to a whole new level; it's not just a matter of wanting to have a say in one's treatment, but a matter of survival. I don't even want to think about how it would have been if he were completely alone, as he might have been in the years before he became part of AA. Buena suerte, Timoteo.
