Dying to Get Home

It’s every traveler’s nightmare: to fall seriously ill far from home. It’s not one that my friend Rochelle Winters and I dwelled on when planning our nine-day trip to Guatemala last December. Armed with good guidebooks, decent Spanish and common sense, we managed to cut a swath from the jungles of Tikal to Mayan villages in the western highlands with nary a bus or boat missed. Now we were in the airport, on the way home to L.A., feeling that our wonderful experience in Guatemala was a good omen for the new year. It was Jan. 1, 1998, and the serendipity that had blessed us was about to be sorely tested.

We had celebrated New Year’s Eve in the colonial city of Antigua, at the excellent table of the Meson Panza Verde, where we shared a beautifully appointed room off the small hotel’s tranquil courtyard. The next morning we wandered the cobblestoned streets, taking in the vine-covered ruins amid the colorful red-tiled buildings.

An hour before the taxi came to take us to the airport, Rochelle lost her lunch. We assumed it was something she ate. She would feel better. She didn’t. On the hourlong ride from Antigua to Guatemala City’s airport, she continued to throw up, each time feeling briefly better before succumbing again. We still assumed it was some errant bug, perhaps in the morning’s granola or orange juice.

At the airport we paid our last quetzales to the taxi driver and dragged our luggage into the terminal--where Rochelle promptly collapsed on the floor.

No problem. I filled out our immigration forms, checked us in and got our seat assignments. Rochelle had struggled to her feet, and concerned Guatemalans had gathered around us. A representative of Aviateca, the Guatemalan airline we were flying, offered an office where Rochelle could rest quietly until our flight was called. Once inside, lying on the floor, her head against the luggage, she grew sicker and sicker. As worried Aviateca employees eyed us warily, she whispered to me, “I’ll pull it together to board the plane.”

Denial is a wonderful mechanism for navigating life, but not, unfortunately, for boarding airplanes. It was becoming obvious to everybody but us that my friend was in no condition to board the plane, which was leaving in less than two hours. In fact, she was getting worse almost by the minute. She had a fever, but her legs were so icy they were nearly blue, and they were beginning to cramp. An Aviateca employee called the airport doctor. We waited, my friend now moaning in pain from the excruciating cramps in her legs. Slowly it was dawning on me that this had nothing to do with anything she had eaten. This could be serious.

I’ve traveled all over the world and had a number of, shall we say, interesting adventures. There was the time I was in a motorcycle accident on a small island in Greece, which landed me in a primitive hospital where the woman in the bed next to me put amulets on my bandaged, stitched head and chanted folk medicine magic. I was in Egypt with my 16-year-old brother when war broke out and troops were marching through the streets and the airport was closed indefinitely. Somehow, I’d bungled my way through it all--and on my own steam.

Maybe it’s age (I was in my 20s then). Maybe it was the fact that my friend’s lips were turning blue and she was becoming incoherent. I did what every American citizen has the right to do: I called the Marines.

Actually, I called the U.S. Embassy. It was closed--remember, this was New Year’s Day. But there was an emergency number, and I called that. When a Marine answered the phone, I nearly wept with relief. After first determining that my sick friend was an American citizen, he asked for my phone number and said he’d call us back. By then, the Aviateca employees had found out that the airport doctor wasn’t there--again, the holiday--but they’d called what they said was the equivalent of 911 in Guatemala.

An eternity later, two emergency medical technicians entered the office, carrying a black bag and exhaling the vapors of what had obviously been a celebratory day. I tried to be nonjudgmental, but Rochelle had smelled the alcohol and was, if possible, even less of a happy camper. One of the men opened the black bag and pulled out its sole content, a battered stethoscope. He borrowed a watch to take her pulse. Then came the diagnosis of--I kid you not--mental depression.

Despite the fanciful diagnosis, they decided that the leg pains warranted a trip to the hospital. They lifted my friend onto a stretcher, and I slung both our day packs over my shoulder and bade farewell to the Aviateca folks--and to all our luggage, in a heap on the office floor.

On the outside, it looked like a regular ambulance, painted white and red, with flashing lights. Inside, it was a dirty, empty panel truck with a spare tire. The EMTs placed the stretcher and my friend on the cold, filthy floor, and I crouched beside her, helping one of the men to massage her legs. And we waited.

“Vamanos!” I cried. The man explained that his partner had gone back into the airport to help another person in need. Not enough ambulances. By now, Rochelle was writhing, nearly screaming in pain. I begged him to drive; he patted my arm and told me not to worry.

Twenty minutes later we were on our way, winding through the now-dark streets of Guatemala City toward God only knew what destination. The last shreds of my denial dissolved as I overheard the two EMTs debate over what hospital might be open on New Year’s Day.

Finally they found one. It looked like a dump, but I’d been around enough Third World medical facilities to know that appearances can be deceiving. Then again, sometimes not. Was it indeed a dump? There was only one way to find out. While a doctor got to work on Rochelle, I got back on the phone to the U.S. Embassy and reached the same Marine. He’d been trying to find me at the airport, but we’d been sitting outside in the ambulance. I gave him our phone number at the hospital and he told me to sit tight. Five minutes later, the phone rang; it was for me.

“Hi, I’m Michael Orlansky, the embassy officer on duty,” the caller said. “What seems to be the problem?”

No voice was ever more welcome.

As I struggled to control my tears, he told me that Hospital Bella Aurora was indeed a good hospital, one of three in Guatemala City that the embassy recommends to Americans. Second, he said he would grab an embassy car and be on the way to see how he could help out. Meanwhile, unbeknown to me, the doctor looking after Rochelle had called the hospital’s gastroenterologist.

*

Fifteen minutes later, Michael Orlansky and Dr. Jorge Chang walked in at the same moment. Michael brought his cell phone, his fluent Spanish and a book compiled by the embassy that lists the backgrounds of many doctors in Guatemala. Dr. Chang brought his confidence-inspiring physician’s aura and fluent English. It was a bonus to hear he’d done a residency at a major hospital in New York, a tidbit he no doubt fed us to make us feel at ease. He then examined Rochelle and diagnosed her problem in five minutes: She was suffering extreme potassium deficiency from an allergy medication she’d been given by her own doctor just before leaving Los Angeles. Ultimately, potassium deficiency leads to heart failure; it can happen within a few hours. We were lucky that we hadn’t boarded the plane.

As the nurses wheeled Rochelle, now hooked up to two IVs, to her hospital room to spend the night, Dr. Chang gave me a slip of paper with his home phone and pager numbers. It was nearly midnight, but he’d be back at my friend’s bed at 6:30 the next morning, he promised.

Michael had made a reservation for me at a hotel nearby. He took me there in the embassy van, making sure I checked in all right. And he hugged me goodbye.

The next morning, Rochelle was a new woman, and we made our shaky way to the airport for the second time. The Aviateca crew greeted us like long-lost friends and reunited us with all our luggage, including hand luggage, which they’d zealously guarded in their offices. Five hours later, we were home.

The hospitality and warmth of the Guatemalan people that we’d experienced throughout our trip was even more abundant in our time of need. And, though I’d heard many tales of unresponsive embassies, the Marines and the U.S. Embassy in Guatemala really came through for us. Should I ever find myself in the midst of another nightmare “adventure,” I won’t hesitate to call.