Gracias Peru

While in Peru in 2012 I had a stroke. This chapters talks about what happened.

GracIas  Peru

In the early spring of 2012 Lyn and I decided to travel to Peru.  We had not been to Latin America before and Lyn thought that we should see Machu Picchu before we got too much older. I must admit to some foreboding as we decided to go.  Peru had a reputation for political inability, corruption and rural terrorism.  To complicate matters I had a history of atrial fibrillation and was unsure how high altitudes would affect my condition but I had been to mountainous regions before.  Travel had taught me that most fears tended to be unfounded so off we went.  Almost as an afterthought Lyn bought travel insurance, the first time she had done so in all our years of travelling.

What is unknown we tend to generalize. It is so easy. Africa is poor.  Asia is crowded.  New Yorkers are noisy.  Once I was told, “you know Africa.” I told the person that I knew what it was like to live in a small town in northern Nigeria in the early eighties and in a small town in Zimbabwe in the mid to late eighties but as for knowing Africa?  There are over fifty countries in Africa, hundreds of ethnic groups.  How can anyone claim to know it? Yet I was just as quick to generalize about South America.

Peru consist  of four major areas the coastal plain, the highlands or Altiplano, the mountains and the Amazon jungle.  We hoped to see three of them, traveling from Lima to Machu Pichhu.  Then we turn south back to Cuzco, down to Lake Titicaca. From there we hoped to go back to the coast through Arequipa .  We would follow the coastal plains north to Lima.  Then everything changed.

We had a good day at Puno.  We looked out over Lake Titicaca, booked into a bed and breakfast, chartered a trip out on the lake for the morning.  Then we went out to see the town.  Four o’clock in the morning 19^th of May.  I had a vivid image  of pink.  My right arm then began thrashing.  Lyn, a practical nurse by training, realized that something was very wrong.  She dressed me and then went out into the hallway looking for help.  I remember two odd things.  There was no pain, just a numbness paralyzing my body.  Secondly and perhaps even odder I remained aware of everything that was happening.    I knew that Lyn was dressing me.  I knew that she was going into the hallway to get help.  I knew that she returned with two men who lifted me up and carried me downstairs.  I knew that I was being put into a taxi.  There was nothing that I could do or say. Only later,  much later, back in Canada did I finally understand what had happened.  I had contracted pneumonia.  Combined with atrial fibrillation and the thinness of the air in Puno, it had precipitated a brain stem stroke.

The taxi raced through the streets of Puno.  Twice the driver tried hospitals.  Twice we were turned away.  Then on the third try we were admitted  at the Pro-Salud Clinic .  As a stretcher took me on Lyn paid the driver.   He would not accept more than tem sols, equivalent to five dollars.

                In the clinic I was placed on intravenous and a respirator while Doctor Rendo and his staff tried to determine what was wrong.  Pneumonia was immediately diagnosed.  The stroke  became apparent after I mentioned that I was having double vision.  Most of the time I was struggling to breathe.   I felt myself falling with vivid images of people walking on their heads.  Always I felt cold.  Through it all I understood some of what was going on around me.  Both Lyn and Doctor Rendo contacted our health insurance company and informed them of what was happening.  I remember the doctor talking to Lima and to  the Health Insurance convincing both that my evacuation was critical. 

                To complicate matters even more the stroke had paralyzed my throat muscles making it impossible for me to swallow.  During thre three days in the clinic the only nourishment I remember is sipping a slice of orange Lyn brought me.  Oddly enough, I did not feel hungry.  Even so it was evident that I would have to  be flown to Lima as soon as possible.  On the fourth day several stout men wearing uniforms arrived. They hustled me into an ambulance and drove me to the nearest airport.  I was placed on a plane (Canadian-made) and flown across the Andes to Lima.  From Lima airport I was placed in an ambulance and siren blaring  raced through Lima traffic  to Ricardo Palmer Clinic in the San Isidro District of Lima.  What followed were long days tied to machines, coughing up phlegm unable to move knowing little of what was happening. Endless days of being attached to machines unable to do anything except long for home.

Over and over the nurses repeated the same words. “Restez Tranquile.”    Be still.  Do nothing not that there was much that I could do.  My entire right side was unresponsive.  I could not move my right leg.  My right arm heavy as lead.   One brain seemed to be living in two bodies.

In such a situation the mind often thinks strange things.  For reasons that I still cannot understand I had a great fear of being left alone in Lima.  As the days dragged on I mentioned to Lyn that if worse came to worse and there was no prospect of my returning to Canada she should leave without me.  She took my left hand. “We came on the same plane.  We leave on the same plane.”

Three weeks after arriving in the clinic I was finally brought home on a direct flight from Lima to Toronto, the only time I ever travelled first class.  In Toronto I was placed in a limo and driven to Kingston General Hospital.  A week later I was transferred to Saint Mary’s by the Lake where I remained until the end of August.

Now at home I look out over snow covered lawn and remember. The doctors and nurses of Peru saved me, not because of what I am but because of what they are.  They are truly the hands of God.  I took a stranger that was broken and tended him until he was well enough to go home.  I will never see them again but I will never forget. Gracias Peru.

Kicking Up Dust,  Amazon Press.

 

Author's Note

Written in Canadian English