The sinus surgery was a success. The doctor came back to see me at midnight with a colleague who had helped him with it. They used a monitor to see what they were doing, because they went in through the nose. They cleaned out a lot of pus and took the biopsy for culture and analysis. Ken came back about 12:30 from recovery, so it was a longer surgery than they expected I think. He had a pad taped under his nose to catch drainage and has a stitch in one nostril. He was awake and talked a little bit. He rang for help a couple of times in the night to use the urinal. But about 5:30 he was awake for the day and trying to articulate what he needed, struggling with Spanish.
I told him to talk in English, and he was almost normal. He is back after foggy days of low sodium. And one of the first things he said was: Why don't I hurt. His arm isn't even bothering him a lot from the vaccine. Maybe because he already has some pneumococcal antibodies running around in him. It is so exciting to have him clear headed. He has had to sort out what is going on because of the recent fog. His right arm was working a bit this morning but without fine motor control. He had to eat his oatmeal with his left hand, but fed himself. I brought oatmeal from home to put in his hot milk, because that is not normal breakfast fair here.
He got his breakfast early 6:00 instead of 9:00 because of his surgery fast yesterday. They brought hot milk instead of tea (Yeah) and two slices of bread, three crackers, two pieces of fresh cheese, honey, and apricot jam. So I just put the oatmeal in the hot milk and gave him half a banana from my breakfast.
What I thought was a stitch in his nostril was a string attached to a sponge. Dr. Suazo came and pulled it out slowly. A little bleeding, but not much. He says we can watch a DVD of the surgery. He seemed to think it was very exciting.
Ken was just taken out for the spinal MRI. I hope he can hold still for an hour. He is more rational, in less pain, and I just spent the last hour with him in bed, propping up his back so he could lie on his side. I hope it helps him be more comfortable. We had an interesting conversation with Dr. Rivas this morning about the state of medical care in Chile. Life expectancy in Chile is 83. For the Mapuchis it is about three years less. Some of the working class can afford to pay for the private hospital we are in. There are different tiers of health care. It is the public hospital that is free. At a conference in Portugal recently he was discussing health care with a German colleague who was shocked that the life expectancy was so high, almost as high as in Germany and yet without the same levels of medical care. Evidently Chileans are a hardy bunch.
When we first saw Dr. Concha's boss a month after Ken was released from the Clinic, she seemed very cold. After a while she warmed up and it was better. We found out today that at the time she was very upset because she had just seen a patient die in the public hospital who had the same medical condition that Ken did, and there he was sitting and walking and talking and probably complaining a little bit about what to her were insignificant symptoms. It may have been part of the reason she didn't take his sinus pain seriously. If she were thinking of us a rich Americans who could pay more to be healed, she may have been resentful. She couldn't have known how close he came to dying and how much of a miracle it was for him, even here in a private clinic to live instead of die.
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