If you didn't read the first part of these adventures, you can find it here. I invite you to read it otherwise this post won't make much sense to you.

_{^{Church in Vilcabamba}}

Finally the doctor was there. She opened the office and invited us in. She started to consult him, checked his pulse, applied gentle pressure on his abdomen, and suddenly released it. She asked me a few questions and then handed us a hospital note with her verdict: Appendicitis!

Appendicitis??? OMG! Black clouds gathered instantly over my head. What if it turns out to be peritonitis? No! This can not be happening to him! I shook my head to chase away the possibility of such a thing. It took me a second to put my thoughts in order and realize the doctor was offering me a ride to the hospital.

She had called in her husband who was waiting for her just outside the office, having a smoke and asked him to drive us to the hospital. He helped me put my buddy in to his car and rushed to the ER. There he entered first, said something to the nurse and then turned towards me saying: They'll take him in 5.! and Salud y mucha suerte! And gone he was.

Down, on the ancient ripped leather hospital couch there was an old man, with an odd hat on his head. He was wheezing loudly and his eyes were tearing. Next to him, a young boy, with a dusty face and blood on his pants. At a closer look, I realized he had been bitten by a dog or an animal. All of them, there were staring at us. Probably in their mind they would have said: What strange a pair of gringos, these two!

_{^{View of the Central Square in Vilcabamba}}

My buddy was standing, leaning on me, when suddenly I felt he was falling down. I grabbed him and asked him to put his arms around my neck, as if he would hug, so I could hold on to him. From far, it would have looked as if I was holding a straw scarecrow.

The five minutes were up and the ER door opened. A nurse came out calling my partner's name. She took us in, helped me put him on the bed, and started to question me about his medical condition, marital status, level of studies instead of his symptoms.

At that point, when I saw my buddy lying on the bed, agonizing in pain, I almost lost it. I yelled at the nurse to start working on him asap, to help him with his pain, telling her I would fill in the form once she was consulting him. She stood up and left the room, returning two minutes later with the doctor.

The doctor greeted me politely then asked the nurse to hydrate him using IV. After checking him up and questioning me about his symptoms, she decided to take blood and administer him antibiotics. Since he had vomited several times, his level of dehydration was so high that his veins were impossible to find. Therefore, the nurse and the ER doctor took almost twenty minutes to put the needle in.

I saw his arm and it was bleeding where the needle pinched and entered the skin and there was blood going in the IV. I always tolerated well the sight of blood, but this image was quite disturbing. My buddy was groaning in pain, his eyes were half open but all you could have seen was the white of his eyes; with his left hand he was holding his stomach, trying desperately to gain control over the pain.

_{^{Church interior in Vilcabamba}}

Sitting beside his bed, I felt so helpless and it scared the hell out of me. I suddenly felt everything tingling all over my body and a huge nod in my throat prevented me from breathing. I tried to tell the doctor he was bleeding, my the words were not coming out of my mouth.

I look around me and I felt as if I am floating towards the chair. Next thing I knew: I had fainted. I woke up couple of minutes on a hospital bed, in a different room, with a piece of cotton smelling like alcohol put on my nose.

I tried to leave the bed and a nurse rushed towards me handing me a glass of water with sugar, inviting me to drink it. I refused it, being conscious about the fact that my Lyme crawlers feed on the sugar I ingest. The nurse insisted to a point she gave me no choice but to have it. She was right, it did help.

Suddenly, as if I woke up from my dream, I remembered the reason why I was in the hospital: my buddy!. He needed me there and I left him alone. Darn it! Why did I have to faint? What happened to him?.

The nurse must have read my mind and told me he had been transferred to another room. She added that the blood results were due in forty minutes, and that they started to hydrate him with glucose for now. The blood test results would let us know how bad he was, as well as the intensity of his pain after taking the antibiotics.

_{^{View of a farm on the way to Loja}}

I went to see him in the reserve room; he was asleep. It was twelve thirty by now. He needed the sleep. He had been in pain for over several hours and his body was exhausted.

Nothing more to do for me than pray he would be fine and he would not need surgery. Imagine! Needing surgery in Vilcabamba! The black clouds started to hoover above my head again.

How and where will he have the surgery? How good are the doctors/ surgeons? Who are the surgeons? How do I get him transferred to Loja? Do I get an ambulance? A taxi? So many unanswered questions again.

I needed to get some answers fast and get a plan in case he actually had appendicitis. I needed to be ready and not waste any minute, cause it could be vital. I rushed towards the ER doctor's check point, trying to figure out what she could do for him there.

To be continued...

Thank you for coming along!

Here are other travel related posts:

ECUADOR SERIES: ADVENTURES IN VILCABAMBA 1

ECUADOR SERIES: DRIVING ON THE AVENUE OF VOLCANOES

ECUADOR SERIES: QUITO’S OLD TOWN

ECUADOR SERIES: MITAD DEL MUNDO + CABLE CAR RIDE IN QUITO

ECUADOR SERIES: ECUADORIAN WOMEN AND CULTURAL IDENTITY

ECUADOR SERIES: OTAVALO, THE ARTISAN MARKET MECCA

ECUADOR SERIES: COTACACHI, THE CITY BETWEN TWO VOLCANOS

ECUADOR SERIES - DUE DILIGENCE TRIP

ECUADOR SERIES: TIPS FOR TRAVELLING TO ECUADOR

PANAMA SERIES: FROM BOQUETE TO VOLCAN

PANAMA SERIES: HACIENDA LOS MOLINOS

PLACE DES ARTS, MONTREAL

OTTAWA DAY TRIP

PANAMA SERIES: PANAMA CITY’S SKYLINE AT NIGHT

PANAMA SERIES: THE GRINGO PRICE

PANAMA SERIES: STREET ART

PANAMA SERIES: TEN FACTS OR MORE ABOUT BOQUETE, PANAMA

PANAMA SERIES: BOQUETE’S FLOWERS AND COFFEE FESTIVAL

PANAMA SERIES: VISITING DAMARLI ESTATE IN BOQUETE

PANAMA SERIES: CARIBBEAN PARADISE - BOCAS DEL TORO

HIKING IN MONT-ROYAL PARK, MONTREAL

ZUMMER FUN BUS RIDE IN CONSTANTA, ROMANIA

F-MR STATION IN MONTREAL

THE STONEHENGE OF ROMANIA: SARMIZEGETUSA REGIA

LAURENTIANS MOUNTAINS: COTTAGE TRIP AT LAKE CACHÉE

OTTAWA LIGHTS SHOW ON PARLIAMENT BUILDINGS

HIKING AT DANUBE’S GORGES, ORSOVA, ROMANIA

DECEBALUS CARVED STATUE, ROMANIA

TRIP TO CALGARY, ALBERTA

BALCHIK, A BULGARIAN GEM

PIRATES TREASURE PLAYGROUND, CONSTANTA, ROMANIA

DOLPHINARIUM 2, CONSTANTA, ROMANIA

DOLPHINARIUM 1, CONSTANTA, ROMANIA

GONDOLA RIDE IN MAMAIA RESORT, ROMANIA

CONSTANTA’S MARINA, ROMANIA

BEACH DAY IN CONSTANTA, ROMANIA

BUBBLES - INDOOR PLAYGROUND IN CONSTANTA, ROMANIA

BAHIA DE PAQUERA, NICOYA GULF, COSTA RICA

EXPLORING AMSTERDAM, NETHERLANDS

MACKINAC BRIDGE, MICHIGAN, USA

CHASED BY TORNADOS IN MINNESOTA

MINNEHAHA FALLS REGIONAL PARK, A GEM IN BETWEEN THE TWIN CITIES

BANFF, A RESORT TOWN INSIDE THE BANFF NATIONAL PARK, ALBERTA, CANADA

OLD PORT OF CONSTANTA, ROMANIA

ENISALA FORTRESS, ROMANIA

MORAINE LAKE, A SURREAL BEAUTY IN ALBERTA, CANADA

TIPS ON HOW TO MAKE A LIVING WHILE TRAVELLING THE WORLD

FEELING UNINSPIRED? VISIT A WELSH RETREAT: GLADSTONE’S RESIDENTIAL LIBRARY

TURDA’S 400 FEET UNDERGROUND AMUSEMENT PARK, A HIDDEN GEM OF TRANSYLVANIA, ROMANIA

MEMORIES FROM CANCUN, MEXICO

TOURING MONTREAL CITY, CANADA

VISIT TO SAINT-JOSEPH’S ORATORY IN MONTREAL, CANADA

Unless stated otherwise, all photos used in this posts are taken and owned by myself. If you wish to use any of my images, please contact me!

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@2018 LaviPicu aka The Lyme Poet. All rights reserved.

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