Since arriving in Mexico in mid-February, neither Steven nor I had experienced any sort of food-related sickness – and trust me when I say we have eaten more than our fair share of street tacos. Steven’s digestive system actually seems to function better down here, something he’s referred to more than once as Montezuma’s benevolence.
All that changed last week. On the last day of a four day trip to Ciudad Mexico with my sister and her man, I woke up with such painful stomach cramps I couldn’t get out of bed. When I did, it was to have a really bad time in the bathroom of our AirBnb, which was too posh to have walls that go all the way to the ceiling, making it an experience I was able to share with everyone.
What followed was five days of more cramps, nausea and really awful but more-private bathroom experiences. Sometimes I’d feel ok and have a beer and tacos with Steven and then a few hours later they’d come shooting out of me in a partially digested liquid form with a force I didn’t even know I was capable of. This is the PG version.
I’ve known a lot people with digestive issues who hardly complain or even talk about it at all, the majority of whom seem to be productive members of society. I’m telling you, these people deserve gold medals every time they get out of bed. When you don’t eat you feel tired, grumpy, sleepy, lazy, weird, lonely. When you do eat, you are dead. It’s sort of like our 2016 presidential candidate options. Also similar to the 2016 campaign process, any helpful information you find online has an evil twin saying exactly the opposite (Article A: eat yogurt. Article B: absolutely do not eat yogurt.). The internet was in agreement on a few things: I was not supposed to eat meat, dairy, fats, fiber and definitely not gluten, probably ever again. Which means that on the island, my options were bananas and water. One time I asked the alpha female who runs the island taqueria what type of tacos they had, and she said “carne.” And then I asked her what kind of carne and she said “carne.” I don’t really care to find out what her response would be to a question about gluten-free offerings.
When it comes to hypochondria, I’m definitely on the spectrum, which sometimes works against me when deciding with Steven whether or not I should go to the doctor. It’s not that he discourages it, it’s just that he tries to offer reasonable evidence that cancer is not the only logical conclusion. But on day six, I was so tired of feeling exactly like what was coming out of me and he was so tired of hearing it/about it that we both decided it was time to go.
We couldn’t find the office for the doctor that was recommended to us, but right across the street from where it was supposed to be was a pharmacy advertising medical consultations on a poster board in the window (one thing I love about Maz is that it’s super entrepreneur friendly. If you have an idea and some neon poster board, you’re a business). So we went inside. The clerks told us to go next door. So we went into another inside. And there was an empty waiting area and one closed door at the back of the room. No one was there to greet us or take a name or anything, so we just went ahead and knocked. A man in loafers without socks and a lab jacket the color of smokers teeth opened the door.
“Pasale.”
We sat in the two folding chairs across from him at his desk, and to the best of my abilities, I described how my stomach had seceded from the union to form its own state under martial law. He looked at me like I was the most boring thing he’d ever seen and asked me to lay down on something that looked sort of like an exam table while he held a stethoscope to my stomach and pressed down on a few places. He then told me to get up and started writing something on a prescription slip.
“Que piensas, doctor?” Steven said.
“Infección bacteriana. Muy común.”
He asked me if I wanted injections or pills. I said whatever was fastest (I did not have full mental clarity at the time). Within 5 minutes I was back in the room with needles and drugs I’d purchased next door. I sat upright on the exam table. He told me to lay down on my stomach. I thought that was odd but assumed it was a precautionary measure in case I passed out. I held out my arm and closed my eyes. And then I was getting a shot in my bare butt in a dingy office from a man who could have been a doctor or nurse or just another guy with a really attractive poster board. I’m not sure in that moment if it would have made a difference to me.
He sent us home with three more injections to take over the next three days. We told him we weren’t sure how to administer them and he seemed to think we’d figure it out, which we did (thanks, Andrea!). The entire visit, meds included, cost us about $27 USD.
Within a few hours, my stomach had traded its weaponry for an insatiable appetite and I was back to normal. We celebrated with street food.
So in summary: I went to see a doctor (I think) with no appointment and no wait. I paid an upfront fee that was posted on the wall. I got treatment from the same building on the same day. No one had to take a bunch of tests just to make sure no one else was getting sued. No one spent hours on the phone with an insurance company trying to understand what a deductible actually is. No one was forced to wear socks in 90 degree weather.
I’m going to miss it here.
(Please do not mistake this as an actual health care reform proposal. I admittedly have no idea how we are going to fix the mess the U.S. health care system is in, nor am I convinced we’ll find the solution in Mexico. All I am qualified to say is that in this particular example, I’d take their set up over ours any day.)
shaferpress 