Better Day

Well, I'm only feeling a little bit better (after chugging away at a bottle of guaifenisina from the Pharmacia) but I wish that I had brought some Levaquin with me (oh heck, I shoulda just brought Dr. Karin Tansek with me, she can hablo Espanol). So I made it a quieter day (no airplanes). I visited the Museo Larco which is a definite Must See if you're going to Lima, Peru (and you like archeology and history and art more than you like gambling at casinos which is the other big thing to do here). In fact, even the casino crowd might enjoy Larco -- There is a separate comprehensive collection of Inca Erotica. You can also get a great bowl of Sopa de Pollo (chicken soup) in the lovely museum restaurant (the menu even says something about it being just like your Abuela (grandmother) used to make) which perked me up a bit.

Because it is in the same neighborhood (Peublo Libre) as the actual Hennepin County Medical Center equivalent (Sant Rosa Hospital) I traipsed over there to take a look. It amazes me that when I tell people that I'm a visiting doctora in Spinglish and I show then my Minnesota Driver's License they sometimes let me just skiddle around wherever I feel like it (they did make me exchange my driver's license for a Visitor's Badge while I was inside and it apparently helped that I wasn't wearing shorts). I have been able to ascertain that Peru has at least a 3-tiered health care system. If you can afford private insurance (i.e. if you're rich) you get your care at places called "Clinica's" and I am going to try to get a look at one of these and snap some photo's before this adventure is over so we can see how they compare to let's say, Allina or someplace like that. Be prepared for a full report. The next tier down is working-class people who pay the Peruvian government health service (named Es Salud) S.75 (that's about $25 US) per month for the comprehensive government health care plan. These people can go to Es Salud hospitals for the insured including Rebagliati. The lowest tier are the unemployed people who can't afford Es Salud. They can only go to charity hospitals like Santa Rosa. I couldn't take pictures inside the rooms but Santa Rosa makes HCMC look like heaven and Santa Rosa's laboratory makes the HCMC lab look like something in a futuristic science fiction version of laboratory heaven.

If I don't feel all better by tomorrow I will get someone to write me a prescription for Levaquin and I'll tell you all about it! LATE BREAKING UPDATE: I fell asleep at the laptop while writing that sentence and woke up at 5 PM Sunday with my right maxillary sinus throbulating to a tempo reminiscent of David Bowie in his Ziggy Stardust days and my whole person covered in a chilly sweat. I stumbled to the Pharmacia and showed them my US passport, my Minnesota Medical License (Martha Mason told me to bring it because she thought that I wouldn't get all my glass microscope slides through Minneapolis/St Paul Airport Security without it) and on a piece of paper I wrote, "Levofloxacin 10 mg p.o. qD X 10." The pharmacia took a quick look and pulled down a "Levo-Pak" and started wrapping it and saying, "S. 50 (that's about $20 US) por favor." Just-a una minuto I asked her, didn't she need a prescription??? Oh no, she told me, with a US passport and a Minnesota Medical License you can even get a side of codeine with that. I skipped the codeine and asked for a side of acidophilus which they sell here in a tasty liquid concoction for just a couple of soles (bucks) more.