Is This the Quiet Week We’ve All Been Hoping For?

We have four patients in the hospital. Yesterday we had seven, but two went home and one was transferred to Hospital Vozandes Quito because he had a heart attack that wouldn’t slow down.

Why are things slow here in Shell? There’s a strike. Strikes in Ecuador don’t just have people with signs walking in a circle, that doesn’t get the attention of the authorities. A strike in Ecuador is not a strike without roadblocks and burning tires. The strikers have found out that the police can pull apart a roadblock of burning tires lined up across the road with long metal poles, so now they use dump truck loads of dirt on the road so no one can pass until they decide to end the strike. Burning tires make great TV shots and blocking the roads brings capitalism to the aid of the strikers. The truckers and bus companies want to travel and make money, so they pressure the authorities to give in to the strikers' demands.

The semi-good thing about a strike for a day or two is that hardly anyone can come to the clinic, which means we don’t operate, which doesn’t affect me, but we also have very few patients in the clinic, which gives me time to catch up on my journal, emails and other important communication.

The bad thing about strikes is that travel gets bogged down. Our ophthalmologist, eye doctor, got stuck about 10 miles away. They let ambulances through, so our ambulance went to get him from the far side of the barricade. He called us to ask the ambulance driver to come get him. Thank goodness for cell phones.

Another bad thing is that the medical student who took the patient having the heart attack to Quito got stuck about 2 am ten miles away from the hospital. She tried to sleep on the gurney in the back of the ambulance, but when the ambulance driver lay down on a bench and started to snore loudly, she didn’t sleep anymore that night. She ended up walking with some patients in the rain, coming from 4 hours away to our fair hospital about 5 am. She is about 22. They are about 70, but because they walk everywhere out in the rural areas, and they have worked at manual labor all their lives, they walked her into the ground and the old folks had to slow down so that the young college student could keep up.

The worst thing is that the patients who need to come to the doctor can’t get here. The ophthalmologist is only here one week per month. Most of the patients who received operations last month can’t get in for their follow ups appointments, and patients who need to come to the clinic can’t get around the barricades. For me, the worst thing is there’s no bread and no Diet Coke in the stores. We missionaries really suffer. (Just kidding.)

Tomorrow, if the strike ends, we will be extra busy. If the strike drags on, patients who early need care won’t get it, and that could be tragic. For now, it’s just a relaxing slow day after a few weeks of horror.