Alyssa gets hospitalized in Peru, part 1 of…let’s go for 1.

Well, the title, in context with the last entry, is pretty self-explanatory. The Tuesday after writing that entry, I realized that my skin infection was getting nowhere near better, and caved in and went to Piura. My dermatologist appointment was at 11 a.m., so I’d only had time to go to breakfast and the post office before it, which I thought was fine, since I was pretty sure the doctor was just going to hand me some antibiotic cream and send me on my way. Imagine my surprise when he looks at the wound, and just keeps repeating how incredibly “feo” (ugly) it is, and announces that I’m going to be “internada” for a couple days. I did not take this news well. I’ve never been hospitalized overnight before (that I can remember), and certainly not ever in a developing non-English-speaking country without any friends or family present. So I get checked into a nice room, and with instructions from the PC doctor to think of it as a vacation, I spend the next four nights in that room.

When I get the news, I call Andrew (who is in Chiclayo, half an hour before leaving to go back to his site), and though I attempt to make a joke about it, I immediately burst into tears and ask him to come up and stay with me (“Haha, I win the prize! First Peru 8 hospitalized...bblbblblbblb.” That’s how I’ve decided panicked sobs are spelled.). This is somewhat complicated, as he is in a different department, but I straightforwardly call Dr. Jorge and ask permission, who straightforwardly calls the country director, who says yes. This is stellar news. I will hereby be saved from four days of soul-crushing boredom.

I was on IV antibiotics for three days. The doctor cut off the blisters with a scalpel without any sort of anesthetic, which was absurdly painful. The hospital food was comically bad and I never actually ate a complete meal there (that was where Andrew came in with empanadas and salads). The doctor spoke fluent English, as he lived in Washington D.C. for ten years ten years ago, but only let on to this fact when I was sobbing hysterically during surgery. This seemed at the time like an absurd thing to not let me in on, but I guess I can imagine being in the U.S. ten years after living in Peru, talking to someone whose first language is Spanish but who speaks reasonably fluent English, and omitting from the conversation the fact that I speak their first language. Either way, someone’s got to have the conversation not in their native language, and it’s usually a home field advantage type situation. The only time he showed any difficulty with English connotations was when he tried to say “You’re a big baby” as an affectionate thing cooed during surgery. He didn’t have any trouble understanding, though, when I told him to shut up a second later. We had pretty good rapport by the time the four days were over.

The process of acquiring drugs is also pretty comical in this Peruvian hospital. On the first day, I announced that I was simply not going to allow my wound to be cut apart with a scalpel without any sort of sedative, to which the doctor looked at me curiously, and said, “Xanax?” “Xanax?” I repeated. Is that really what’s prescribed for a one-time surgery here? “Te traigo Xanax,” he decided. I was pleasantly subdued for a day or two.

There also don’t seem to be any sort of privacy laws or anything crazy like that here. I had random doctors and nurses wandering into my room almost every day just to ask, “Hey, whatcha got there?” I was kind of a big deal. Except they all just thought I was a stupid gringa who stayed out too long at the beach and got a second degree sunburn. Which was fair, the wound was literally undistinguishable from a blistered burn at that point, but if they asked me that, I nearly shouted at them that, no, it’s in fact a skin infection from a bug bite because I live in sierra with the llulles (I’ve since learned it’s actually spelled “yulle”) whose urine burns like acid. I told one nurse where I lived, and she made a face and said, “Ugh, I would NOT go up there by myself.” I’ve decided not to tell Santo Domingo this for fear of trashing their tourism dreams. Interestingly, all the nurses used the formal “usted” and all the doctors used the informal “tú.” The nurses were polite but distant initially, but curiosity got the better of them by the third day and they asked all sorts of questions, mostly about Andrew. They asked how many years we’d been dating and when I told them we’d just met in Lima this September (true enough), they squealed, “¡Qué romántico!” This, coupled with Andrew’s host family’s insinuations one he got back to site that he was very nearly widowed by the yulle, was very funny. Dr. Jorge, after eventually seeing pictures of the wound three days into its hospital recovery, told me I absolutely would have been sent to a Lima hospital if they’d seen it from the beginning. While this might have insured me better medical care, I was quite fine with the arrangement as it was, as I’m pretty sure I couldn’t have gotten Andrew to come all the way to Lima (15 hours by bus from Piura) and the constant company was seriously all that kept me sane.

I got out Saturday because I declared I was bored. Seriously. I told the doctor that I was in no particular hurry to get back to my mountain, as I wanted to be absolutely sure I was healed by then, but on Saturday after Andrew left and “Scrubs” for once wasn’t on and I was left to choose between subtitled “Kindergarten Cop” and dubbed-over “Back to the Future,” I told the doctor I was bored and he thought that was reasonable, so I went home. I’m going back to site tomorrow, somewhat against his wishes, as he wants me to stay until Friday, maybe even Monday, but it’s healed enough for me and 9 days out of site is plenty.

What I realized through this experience is how exactly Volunteers end up describing their horrible maladies with ironic detachment. You just kind of figure out early on that you’re not going home, that you’re tough and you’re not going anywhere and it will get better because that’s what things are destined to do, and then it’s just a matter of watching the absurd theater that is life in a developing country unfold. You take yourself out of things and narrate because there’s no other way, because if you will drive yourself insane if you take things too personally. My friend Brian lives somewhere where women, to give birth, are wrapped like mummies and go out into field completely by themselves, squat, and cut the umbilical cord with a rock. I don’t mean to compare anything I’ve experienced at my site to that, but it gives him context when we decided together on the phone that “a tongue-in-cheek blog entry heals all wounds,” including infected yulle bites. I’m sure this doesn’t always work, but I suppose I’m new enough at this that this strategy suits me just fine.

Obviously.