"Part I - My Stay in a Public Hospital in Costa Rica - A Truly Cultural Experience"
"Bicho" is the Spanish term used in Costa Rica for "bug". And not just bug bugs, but anything smaller than a dog that is irritating. I've heard bats called bichos, also butterflies, hummingbirds, computer viruses, rodents, and microorganisms. It is of this latter definition that I write. A tale of how the microscopic "bichos" of Costa Rica afforded me a truly cultural experience in a Costa Rican public hospital.
I was out chopping with what is called a "weed whacker" in the States. A bit of a misnomer really since the "weeds" that are "whacked" here are sometimes in excess of an inch in diameter. We call them 'choppers' here. Well, my chopper picked up a piece of aluminum wire that was hidden under the brush, a rigid wire about 12" long, and it threw it at my ankle which was inside a good quality thick rubber boot. The force of the projectile was such that it went into the boot, and then into my ankle, and then back out of my ankle, effectively nailing my foot inside the boot.
My son heard my yelp and came running to see what had happened and since I had been unable to pull the wire out by hand, I hollered up to him to "BRING PLIERS", which he did, and with which he then extracted the offending protrusion from my boot / ankle. Needless to say this was a nasty injury to get in the tropics. We have observed that once you get up above the knees you are in a moderately safer zone with respect to bichos, but that below the knees is the red zone of danger.
When we first did a 3 week visit to Costa Rica to scope it out as a possible place to live, we found that we all had bicho bites and irritations from the knees down. Virtually all of our visitors have experienced the same thing, but the interesting thing is that, it only seems to last about 3 weeks and then goes away. There is a debate regarding whether we are at that point no longer appealing to the little beggars that live down in that region, perhaps from developing some biological response that wards them off. Or, as the other side of the debate contends, the bichos continue to bite, but the leg adapts to not really care anymore. Whatever the case, something interesting happens because the once visible irritations go away.
The point being that down there in the sub-knee region there is a constant attack by bichos seen, and unseen. So when I sustained this deep and violent puncture wound by a piece of aluminum, (which as a metal is good and porous providing all kinds of possible hangouts for infectious little blighters just waiting to be inserted into someone's ankle), I knew that the wound would be the subject of much interest to the culture that lives down there and that I would likely be getting an infection.
Hoping for the best, my wife went to the pharmacy and got some oral antibiotics (no prescription required) which I immediately commenced to taking religiously, while I kept the foot elevated and laid vigil on a lengthy stream of rented videos. Meanwhile my wife studied up on puncture wounds on the internet, from which study we pretty much concluded that I didn't stand a chance.
Day three I awoke to the unquestionable realization that I had lost the battle. Red, swollen, and hot, oh and really painful, the bichos had won.
A brief exerpt from the upcoming part 2:
Off to the hospital:
A public hospital in Costa Rica is a truly interesting experience. It is essentially free medicine. Not totally free, since we do pay insurance. For our family of 5, we pay around $15.00 a month in health insurance. A neighbor comes by once a month and collects the payment and we carry around a little "carnet" or doubled over thick paper card that is our insurance card. With this we have access to the country's public health system. Compared to anything that we had experienced in the States though, this was 'free'. Sounds great, the thought of free medicine, and it really does provide a wonderful service to a country where a large number of people are agricultural and self sufficient, but short on cash. The people around San Isidro live on farms well removed from the centro where markets and shops and the hospital are. So they raise rice, beans, various fruits and vegetables, and have plenty of meat around in the form of chicken, pigs and cattle. So for these folks, although certainly not needy, they would likely not consider the monthly payment free.
Replies: 1 Comment
Thanks WEBGUY for leading me to the journal articles, I read them all with great interest. As it has been five years since I visited Dominical and the Pacific coast of CR I am very happy to find there are at least some folks there that are trying to keep a part of CR from falling victim to greedy land developers as has happened in the coastal areas of Florida.
We moved our family to the West Coast of Flordia before it was overdeveloped and now it's a mess. It's almost impossible for your average working person to live on these coastal islands now. I certainly can't afford to retire here. I need to escape the very place I once loved, actually I still love it here, I just don't like it anymore - I mean what it's become since I first came here. Life now is too hectic and stressful, too many people, too many cars, too expensive!
If I can move to CR I don't want to see lots of expensive resorts and condominiums on the beach, I liked Dominical the way I found it - small, virtually unspoiled with nice friendly visitors, expats and locals. I hope it hasn't changed too much.
I'm a writer/naturalist and I applaud your efforts to create preserves, your reforestation projects and responsible ecotourism. I'd like to hear more about what you have been able to accomplish in the Dominical area, please publish more articles in your journal. I read your previous articles and want to know what's happening with the Dominical Social Program, the turtle conservation efforts, the life guard project, etc.
Here I conduct environmental education programs and try to educate visitors and locals on protecting our wildlife and estuaries, the need to conserve our water and the benefits of planting native plants. Many exotic plants that have been popular in Florida are now crowding out our native plant communities putting our wildlife in danger because they are losing habitat and food sources.
Right now we have to work very hard to control the exotics, mostly with volunteer labor, to keep them out of our beautiful parks and preservation lands. We have to replant native plants and find ways to create corridors to counteract the effects of our fragmented habitats.
The state and local governments have spent a lot of money to buy up properties to save some of our natural places and to protect our estuaries from declining further. I think it's too late to save our paradise, but then not everyone has the same idea of what paradise is. A few very wealthy people have created their paradise in Florida, but it's not my paradise. Don't lose your paradise the way we did.
If I move to Dominical I don't want to turn it into what we now have in Florida. If you have found your paradise, don't let anyone spoil it for you.
Thanks for the information,
Trudi,
Hoping to find my a new paradise in CR
Biz log articles said @ 03/12/2004 10:20 AM MST
I was out chopping with what is called a "weed whacker" in the States. A bit of a misnomer really since the "weeds" that are "whacked" here are sometimes in excess of an inch in diameter. We call them 'choppers' here. Well, my chopper picked up a piece of aluminum wire that was hidden under the brush, a rigid wire about 12" long, and it threw it at my ankle which was inside a good quality thick rubber boot. The force of the projectile was such that it went into the boot, and then into my ankle, and then back out of my ankle, effectively nailing my foot inside the boot.
My son heard my yelp and came running to see what had happened and since I had been unable to pull the wire out by hand, I hollered up to him to "BRING PLIERS", which he did, and with which he then extracted the offending protrusion from my boot / ankle. Needless to say this was a nasty injury to get in the tropics. We have observed that once you get up above the knees you are in a moderately safer zone with respect to bichos, but that below the knees is the red zone of danger.
When we first did a 3 week visit to Costa Rica to scope it out as a possible place to live, we found that we all had bicho bites and irritations from the knees down. Virtually all of our visitors have experienced the same thing, but the interesting thing is that, it only seems to last about 3 weeks and then goes away. There is a debate regarding whether we are at that point no longer appealing to the little beggars that live down in that region, perhaps from developing some biological response that wards them off. Or, as the other side of the debate contends, the bichos continue to bite, but the leg adapts to not really care anymore. Whatever the case, something interesting happens because the once visible irritations go away.
The point being that down there in the sub-knee region there is a constant attack by bichos seen, and unseen. So when I sustained this deep and violent puncture wound by a piece of aluminum, (which as a metal is good and porous providing all kinds of possible hangouts for infectious little blighters just waiting to be inserted into someone's ankle), I knew that the wound would be the subject of much interest to the culture that lives down there and that I would likely be getting an infection.
Hoping for the best, my wife went to the pharmacy and got some oral antibiotics (no prescription required) which I immediately commenced to taking religiously, while I kept the foot elevated and laid vigil on a lengthy stream of rented videos. Meanwhile my wife studied up on puncture wounds on the internet, from which study we pretty much concluded that I didn't stand a chance.
Day three I awoke to the unquestionable realization that I had lost the battle. Red, swollen, and hot, oh and really painful, the bichos had won.
A brief exerpt from the upcoming part 2:
Off to the hospital:
A public hospital in Costa Rica is a truly interesting experience. It is essentially free medicine. Not totally free, since we do pay insurance. For our family of 5, we pay around $15.00 a month in health insurance. A neighbor comes by once a month and collects the payment and we carry around a little "carnet" or doubled over thick paper card that is our insurance card. With this we have access to the country's public health system. Compared to anything that we had experienced in the States though, this was 'free'. Sounds great, the thought of free medicine, and it really does provide a wonderful service to a country where a large number of people are agricultural and self sufficient, but short on cash. The people around San Isidro live on farms well removed from the centro where markets and shops and the hospital are. So they raise rice, beans, various fruits and vegetables, and have plenty of meat around in the form of chicken, pigs and cattle. So for these folks, although certainly not needy, they would likely not consider the monthly payment free.
Replies: 1 Comment
Thanks WEBGUY for leading me to the journal articles, I read them all with great interest. As it has been five years since I visited Dominical and the Pacific coast of CR I am very happy to find there are at least some folks there that are trying to keep a part of CR from falling victim to greedy land developers as has happened in the coastal areas of Florida.
We moved our family to the West Coast of Flordia before it was overdeveloped and now it's a mess. It's almost impossible for your average working person to live on these coastal islands now. I certainly can't afford to retire here. I need to escape the very place I once loved, actually I still love it here, I just don't like it anymore - I mean what it's become since I first came here. Life now is too hectic and stressful, too many people, too many cars, too expensive!
If I can move to CR I don't want to see lots of expensive resorts and condominiums on the beach, I liked Dominical the way I found it - small, virtually unspoiled with nice friendly visitors, expats and locals. I hope it hasn't changed too much.
I'm a writer/naturalist and I applaud your efforts to create preserves, your reforestation projects and responsible ecotourism. I'd like to hear more about what you have been able to accomplish in the Dominical area, please publish more articles in your journal. I read your previous articles and want to know what's happening with the Dominical Social Program, the turtle conservation efforts, the life guard project, etc.
Here I conduct environmental education programs and try to educate visitors and locals on protecting our wildlife and estuaries, the need to conserve our water and the benefits of planting native plants. Many exotic plants that have been popular in Florida are now crowding out our native plant communities putting our wildlife in danger because they are losing habitat and food sources.
Right now we have to work very hard to control the exotics, mostly with volunteer labor, to keep them out of our beautiful parks and preservation lands. We have to replant native plants and find ways to create corridors to counteract the effects of our fragmented habitats.
The state and local governments have spent a lot of money to buy up properties to save some of our natural places and to protect our estuaries from declining further. I think it's too late to save our paradise, but then not everyone has the same idea of what paradise is. A few very wealthy people have created their paradise in Florida, but it's not my paradise. Don't lose your paradise the way we did.
If I move to Dominical I don't want to turn it into what we now have in Florida. If you have found your paradise, don't let anyone spoil it for you.
Thanks for the information,
Trudi,
Hoping to find my a new paradise in CR
Biz log articles said @ 03/12/2004 10:20 AM MST
posted by Ben at 4:27 AM
