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Michel's
Croissants
by Guillermo Alfonso Ortega - April 28, 2007 Michel, a nephew of mine, is a Brazilian architect recently graduated who to celebrate this change of status, traveled to a relative's encounter in a city at the State of Minas Gerais' hinterlands. When reaching to Confins' airport, after six hours on a bus, he discovered he needed to eat some thing until the departure of his flight back to Bahia. There was just a snack bar that sold the pleasant French small breads reminding those he used to eat at the city where he stayed costing something like fifty cents (equivalent to a quarter of a dollar). "How much is it?" - He asked pointing one of them. "Seven real" (Three dollars and a half) - answered the clerk. He took a shock but recovering asked: "A croissant and a soda" - ten real went away just like that. " Why did you do that?" "Simple, I was starving. I had to eat something." Genaro, one of my younger brothers, 56 years, went to spend Catholics' Holy Week at Antonieta's home, our sister, in Villa de Abrantes, a small town near Salvador in Bahia during the 2006's autumn. When trying to recover a pack of cigarettes that had fallen through the window to the back yard at the instant of detaching one of them, he managed to get a staircase to go down to that area. A mistake of calculation made him to fall down from a height of three meters, fracturing the right leg femur. The whole family, that was at that place getting ready for a deserved rest in that lingering holiday, saw itself summoned to an emergency to treat the accident. First, arrangements were made to transfer him to the General Hospital of Camaçari (HGC), where with no doubt, he would be well assisted. However, on that Saint Holiday began an unusual and cruel experience for somebody who had never had the opportunity to face a public hospital in Brazil. Genaro had not a Health Coverage Medical Plan so he had to join the Welfare Unique Health System known by most Brazilian as "SUS ". So far, it was ok, there would be no problem. Government Health Systems cannot offer luxuries but everything foresees to offer a functional and efficient care at least in the case of SUS that is a replica of the French system, there should not be complaint of any nature, because in the country of origin, this works perfectly. But, how about Brazil, does it work? On Monday, as soon as everything returned to normality, my brother was transferred, always under the SUS coverage, to Hospital Espanhol - the Spanish Hospital at the city of Salvador da Bahia - to have the fractured femur operated by one of Brazil's Orthopedics prominences that operates there and whose name I will decline since as I am convinced he would not approve to see it published known his discreet and elegant profile. A team of this famed surgeon prepared Genaro during two days, exams of every type were made, traction in the right leg was applied in order to avoid - I knew some months later - the fractured bone to reduce the length of the leg as well as other high level professional care foreseen by modern orthopedics. When giving a bath to the patient, the nurse in charge verified the presence of a bedsore in the back of the lumbar area. A genuine bedsore won through authentic hospital contamination in the course of his three days permanence at the emergency room at General Hospital of Camaçari, having thus the first indolence and negligence samples practiced in that institution but fate still would take across for some more experiences not only him but his companions, his siblings, in other words, Antonieta, Rosa and myself. I ignore which was the invoked mechanism but the Hospital Espanhol stated Genaro could not suffer intervention of any nature as he had no Surgical Roof. Exactly that: Surgical Roof. Therefore, he should return to the hospital from where he came in order to be cured and then he would come back once the bedsore had healed entirely. I accompanied my brother in the ambulance that took him back to Camaçari hospital. We have always been a very united family perhaps due to our Sephardim origin and we arrived in Brazil coming from Peru in the expectation of staying four to five years until things would turn to the normal position in our country that had been taken by a leftist Coup D'Etat. Huge mistake! Longer than twelve years had gone by when I returned to Peru for the first time in that space of time. It was another reality now that meant nothing to me. We belonged to Brazil because it was our new base where we were perfectly integrated. Integrated but foreigners, probably loving the land more than many a native but being conscious we were foreigners. In the meantime, a group of natives was being born in the family at the time that our parents passed away. I always say our old ones became Brazilian before us, their powder mixed with the land's that had welcomed them and hence they were natives now. Going back to Camaçari in the ambulance was something difficult to assimilate, almost unreal. Was it the fantastic realism of Garcia Marquez? No, it was really happening. I knew the surgeon was surprised too by the SUS management attitude at the Hospital Espanhol. Why was that determination born there? To my understanding and of some well known medical doctors, a hospital like that one was able to have treated such a lack of "Roof" with better conditions than the patient's issuing Hospital. But, that was the procedure to be followed and since it came from a service that didn't represent immediate costs for the patient or for the relatives, why not to say, it was simpler to accept such a decision. If it was a private service, well, then it would have been another matter. We are conditioned to think that SUS is something free. For heaven's sake, that is not true. No, nothing is for free into SUS, everything is paid and sustained by the incredible taxes we all obliged to disburse, absolutely everyone that lives in this country, pays a fabulous financial support so tremendously expressive that even mobsters infiltrations are detected, as published recently about the murder of bookkeeper from Salvador da Bahia's City Hall who was in charge of monitoring coming resources from SUS. Wide-ranging facilities, first class last generation equipment such as a magnetic resonance unit, an MITU completely equipped. Everything needed to be a first line hospital but little by little we discovered it had nothing to do with that while we accompanied, Antonieta and myself, our brother, day and night because we believed the bedsore would be cured soon. We even bought expensive creams that would make faster effect for the hospital's drugstore had not any and later on, we learned they had. We provided a good cleaning of the room where Genaro's bed was placed in order to avoid the threat of an always present hospital contamination. Complaints brought up we were trying to make a luxury hotel out of that and this came from nurses' aides, orderlies even a young doctor who was an assistant to the hospital's management convinced of his function as a disguised avenger. The most horrendous thing happened when a patient with no relatives died and nobody showed up to pick up the body. Putrefaction reached him in the mortuary and an unbearable stink dispersed for all the institution quarters. On the other hand, it was inadmissible to simply watch the lack of glasses in the rooms' windows just for negligence, because there was a maintenance team walking though corridors the whole day showing a supposed and intense activity in the hospital. Detecting the power they controlled we kindly asked them with lots of education to repair the windows of Genaro's ward, what they did it quickly. We had to change diapers and give a bath, the companions' function, to Genaro who should stay face down due to the bedsore besides the femur fracture had no an applied traction for there was not at least a weight or a piece of twine to place. Medical orthopedic specialists, diarists as they are classified by the hospital human resources structure, that visited our brother had tied hands to at least avoiding the risk of decreasing the leg length, which happened unavoidably. Days passed by and we were to know, with no intention of us, HGC's - as it is called the hospital - operation. By the way, the new management that recently assumed the hospital's direction declared by the end of last January " it is necessary to humanize and to turn HGC most efficient."The first matter we intend to reach immediately is to accomplish a reform and amplification of the Emergency Sector, treating the space in a humanized way". By the end of the first month, Genaro had infection to the pharynx, kidneys and a second bedsore. Yes, another bedsore had appeared in that same area. We decided to remove him because if he stayed in that place he would become in a short period of time one more death as those that came with a small wound in the sole and after amputating the leg in a week, they died under the largest negligence and indolence ever seen as if life was not worth anything. Yes, life is not worth a bit in that institution and one must understand necessarily that to humanize the services in that hospital is just a mere fallacy. Indolence is a feeling or the lack of it, inherited from our colonialist past of human injustice. Indians and then, Blacks, simply, never worth anything as persons on those days. That feeling lasts long until today and ends up being incoherent ever since it is impregnated in their own descendants' behavior or how to explain that exactly, most of them are the ones that apply negligence and inhuman acts against their own blood siblings. Suddenly, speaking of a strong and united Brazilian society is something needing to be deeply revalued in times that Neoliberalism - as the president of Venezuela said - steals one's soul. We spent longer than nine months looking at and treating Genaro's bedsores and when healed we went to check again with the famous Orthopedic specialist at the Hospital Espanhol who diagnosed that for the position, lied down face down and immobility was necessary to recover his vascularization with hydrotherapy and physiotherapy during three months to later think about having conditions of surgical intervention. Of course, he didn't speak in Surgical Roof in view of the fact that expression never belonged to him. Yib, a very close friend of ours, helped a lot in the hydrotherapy because to transport Genaro from the room to a swimming pool meant the construction of a special stretcher because the moving forward of the fractured bone toward the basin provokes deep pain in him. One year in the horizontal position for twenty four hours a day has made of our brother a man of great faith and trust in humanity. Particularly, he continues trusting the ability the mentioned Orthopedic specialist that even under the regime of inexpressive values as those paid by SUS he exercises with a lot of dignity and decency his profession helping to recover his patients' life independently of social class and origin. Then, Michel's croissant, as a title for this article, was a simple homage to the French people for their boulangerie and son pain délicieux and mainly for the efficiency of their SUS. This reminds me that once I read, that in beginning of the XX century, in Rio de Janeiro and in Salvador da Bahia, the language of Voltaire was spoken in residences by the decent families, rather wealthy. The common people spoke Nhangatu and, of course, Portuguese But, times in Brazil have changed under the mark of current social reality radically, for that I make votes that such HGC is reformatted, reformulated, re-done, and reconstructed in a drastic way, nothing of contemplations with humanizing proposals. That is not like this. That is to be accomplished by those who have already solved their basic needs, and that is not our case. It is a priority to bear a strong and vertical attitude in search of suitability and, above all, the respect to people's dignity - our only one and real capital - called people's health. If this is not possible, well, I suggest then, to hire a Finnish, Swedish or Danish director. They do know how to put order with dignity, no matter to whom this may hurt.
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