Well, we survived our first trip to the hospital. Day three back on the road turned out to be kind of tough.
We got an early start (which is absolutely mandatory here with the brutal heat) and were making great time. But Dave wasn’t feeling that great, and we made a wrong turn that put us 40 km in the wrong direction. As we started to backtrack, Dave kept feeling worse and it just kept getting hotter.
I finally made an executive decision that we would not be able to make it back to Escuintla, the town where we had made the wrong turn and now needed to get to for the night. We found a guy to help us rent a truck for the last 20 km back to town. Once we found a hotel, we took our typical cold showers and Dave laid down on the bed to rest and recuperate. I was sure that he’d be feeling fine in about an hour and we’d make our daily trip out to the market to buy supplies for the next day.
I was wrong. In about an hour, Dave was throwing up–all over the bed. Fortunately we had a room with two beds, so we moved him to the clean one when he was done. But that wasn’t the end of it. He went back to the bathroom three more times before I decided we needed to get some serious help. I knew he was getting severely dehydrated. So, through broken Spanish, I managed to get the guy in charge of the hotel to have a taxi come there to take us to the hospital.
I’ll summarize our entire hospital trip by saying it was NOT the best night of my life. The floor was dirty, the equipment was old, and the bathroom was unbearable. However, we were grateful to get an IV and two liters of saline for Dave. The doctor ran some tests (which we had to carry the specimen down the lab ourselves–very interesting) and concluded Dave had some kind of infection. He was given some antibiotics and after spending one long night in the ER, he was released. Even though this hospital was far below American standards, I was thankful for the care they were able to give. I was even thankful that we made the wrong turn earlier in the day, because if we hadn’t been in Escuintla for the night, there would not have been a hospital where we could go without traveling quite a distance. So, we saw God’s incredible provision for us once again!
Our room at ¨Hotel Arizona¨ in Escuintla. We stayed here much longer than originally planned... three nights!
Our bathroom at Hotel Arizona... it smelled terrible, probably because of all the throwing up! Ha! Plus the sink was completely clogged and there was water all over the floor since you can see there was no shower curtain.
