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Published: August 13th 2006
Well, the truth is, i didn´t want to worry anyone, but for the last 3 weeks, my life has been wrapped up in a medical issue. A year ago i had an abnormal mammogram that the doctors have been watching. On May 30, two weeks before my plane left for SA, i had another mammo. the previous condition was unchanged, but there was an additional nodule. Biopsy recommended. (yes, i know mom and dad, you are going to kill me). Being the lovely inhuman, complicated medical system we have in the USA, they told me they couldn´t possible get one in within the remaining 14 days. unbelievable, no? By the way, that´s UCLA. they suck.
So had a huge decision on my hands. I,d already booked a non-refundable plane tik, which i´d already spent $350 on change fees, booked and paid for a galapagos tour, all my Miami hotels and a dolphin swim. Besides, it seemed like this was just another one of god´s pact with the universe to try to keep me from going on this trip. i´d faced and overcome so many obstacles, (mostly financial) , sacrificed having a social life, trips and personal comforts for a year
and a half. I was 2 weeks from achieving the dream of a lifetime. I was not going to quit. I always quit when the going gets tough. that´s my m.o. Well not this time. Besides, i had a gut feeling that the whole thing was created by living a life that didn´t suit me. I felt like if i didn´t go now, i would never get there. So i went.
In the jungle, i worked with a Shaiman and took jungle plant juices, feeling 90% better. But there it was still in the back of my mind, stopping me from being free. So i found a better doctor, booked another non-refundable trip back to LA and told my volunteer station i would have to cut it short.
On the way back to quito to catch a flight, i stayed at my favorite place in Ecuador. The guy told me his wife had a uterine cyst which she had treated in quito. the doctors, he said, were all US trained and it only cost $800. Well, my head almost exploded. I had booked a ticket back already. So i rushed back to quito to check it out. Found
a wonderful doctor with a wall full of certificates, diplomas and board certifications from the US, plus 35 years of experience in the US. He examined me, spent over a half hour with me at no charge, quoted me a price of $1500 and said he could get it done in 2 days. Best care i´ve ever had in my life.
So i went to call my insurance back home. I was told that i had a $500 deductible on such procedures. So i fly to LA, thinking that would be cheapest. go to the doctor. He wants to refer me to yet someone else, which will take another 8 days for an appointment. Call my insurance to verify and find out that it is really a $5000 deductible. so this breast biopsy will cost me $5000 plus. At this point i am pissed. why didn´t they tell me that over the phone? Folks, there is seriously something wrong with our lovely country when a tax paying citizen who pays $166 a month for insurance, cannot afford to have a breast biopsy that she needs and has to run off to a 3rd world country. that is just WRONG.
By the way, Blue Cross sucks. So another decision. stay in LA and do this which would end my trip. (no more money), or go back to the nice doctor in Ecuador. Not a hard decision. To add to my frustration, while in LA walking around, i lose one of my ATM cards and spend $75 to get it replaced.
I had booked a 3 week stay in LA. Now being pointless, i try to get back earlier and am quoted $700 to change it. I didn´t want to waste 3 weeks in LA for nothing. So i find a discount flight which will get me back to quito for a couple hundred. 4 flights in 2 days. LA-Charlotte, Charlotte-Miami. Miami-CAracas, Caracas-Quito. I am to pick up my Miami-Quito ticket at the counter of the airport in Miami. So i fly in as scheduled, head to the ticket counter to find they´ve never heard of me. I spend $.50 to call information for the travel agent where i booked it. no listing. spend $1 for internet to look them up. the enter key doesn´t work. spend $.50 to call the hotel i´m staying at for their shuttle. the phone
eats my money and i realize that i have lost the same ATM i just had replaced. drag my pak to the curb outside, seething and near tears, cursing god, contemplating why the universal life force hates me, and wishing i had a gun so i could shoot myself in the face. go back in and get ahold of the shuttle, which takes me to my hotel. i´m afraid i have no flight for the next day. i have no phone. they have no internet. so i sneak into the nearby Marriott and convince the night desk lady to let me into the biz center where i find an email from the travel agent with an eticket. afraid to open my pak for fear of losing anything else, i sleep in my clothes (a decisioni i´d later regret)
to the airport the next morning to revisit the same "you have no reservation" conversation. after 10 minutes, they find it under my first name and i am issued a boarding pass. so i think, "well, maybe i´m only cursed on US soil. afterall, SA has been very good to me". NOPE. the story has just begun. (go get some refreshments
and come back- it´s good).
so i fly into Caracas, a gorgeous scene with mountains and ocean view. seemed like we were gonna land in the water. i am almost wishing i could step out and see it for a bit. So i get off the plane, where i find no mention of my flight number on the departure board. i am told "Demorado", which i don´t understand. Come to find out it´s "delayed", and i find a long line of people in the same position. i am told that the flight is delayed until 8 pm, which would drop me off in Quito at midnight. i plead my case of "it´s not safe to drop a lone female off in a city in the middle of the night". i lose the battle and am given a food voucher for dinner and blown off to wait. on the upside, the Venezuela airport had a huge bay window where i watched a gorgeous sunset. I found a lady at the information desk who spoke English (the only human in the building who does). she tells me the airline´s ONE plane is broken. so they rented another and it broke too.
After being shuffled around gate to gate, at 7:30 pm, an airline official shows up and says the flight is "cancellado". the crowd goes crazy. people start screaming. a lady is crying that she has been stranded for 2 days. we are taken through immigration, where we fill out forms and wait in line to get an entry stamp on our passport. at this point i´m half relieved to not be flying on a broken plane and half excited to get to see a bit of Caracas. But it takes forever. and then we go to the baggage claim to get our bags. Wait no less than an hour. 4 bags are missing. Wanna guess who´s? of course mine. the others were lost from Germany. these asses lost my bag on ONE flight from Maimi.
At this point, i´ve been chatting with an Ecuadorian woman who´s lived in the US for 19 years and speaks English. The airline personnel couldn´t care less that i have no bag. sensing she´s a spitfire, i grab her, and from here on out she becomes my translator and my spokesperson, fighting all my many battles for me. It made me rethink the lack
of benevolent forces in this world, because she was no less than a guardian angel, never leaving my side, going through all the red tape, immigration, ticket counters with me, often holding my hand, literally. in the midst of this confusion and arguing, the crowd is shuffled off onto a bus. wait forever. drive forever. BUT, we are dropped off at the Hilton, Caracas, a posh hotel, waaaaaaaaaay nicer than any hostel i´d stayed at. and we each got our own room. we are allowed one 3 minute call, and other than that, spend 2 days without internet or phone. Illiane, my new friend lent me a nightgown and shirt, we got a meal, and went to bed around 1 am. i spent the entire night dreaming about the contents of my pak, which i was afraid i may never see again.
The next day was crazy. airline personnel would show up randomly and just talk to whoever happened to be around. i always managed to come in at the tail end of it. still no sign of my bag. i came down to the lobby at one point to find a protest going on. At first, i thought,
oh, these crazy Venezualans. and then i realized it was the passengers of my flight. they got thrown out of the lobby and continued their protest across the street, where they managed to snag a reporter and got themselves on the evening news!! at this point, we are all like family.
The airline personnel tell us we will go to the airport at 3 pm. so i took a short walk around Caracas to grab some photos. we went to eat at 1, at which point, an airline personnel showed up and talked to a few people, who promptly ran off. so we jumped up to follow, to find out that the bus to the airport was boarding. traffic to the airport was horrid. there were vendors standing in the lanes of traffic!
We get to the airport and wait. Illane´s husband had called to find that the planes were still broken, so we weren´t too hopeful. Luckily, when we got to the ticket counter and asked again about my pak, we were told, "it´s here". we insisted they take us to it. and there it was. hallelujah!! but i had to give it back to the incompetent
airlines to check again. at this point, i´ve been in the same clothes for 3 days.
So at 8 pm, a chartered plane shows up and we get on! i am starving. after fighting a battle on my own, i am promised a veggie meal and get some fruit on the plane. the airline assured us were were getting to quito that night, that we would be put up in a hotel, and that there would be airline personnel meeting the plane. well, the plane made it to Guayaquil ( 8 hours by bus from quito, 1-2 hr plane ride) and we were dumped off at the airport, sans airline personnel. the crowd goes wild again and the banner comes out. go through immigration at midnight. being the smart cookie i am, i stuck with the 2 wheelchair bound ladies and get the first ride to the hotel, refusing to part with my newly discoevered pack. the hotel is so-so. i am starving . there is no food. go to bed at 2. up at 6. to the airport. wait for an hour on the cold, hard floor. finally get a flight to quito. we land at 12;20 pm
on sunday. took us 3 days for 6 hours of flying.
Illiane had left me in Guayaquil, but had replaced herself as my bodyguard with one of the wheelchair ladies who lived in quito and spoke no english. so she insists i come to her house, feeds me more fruit (please god, protein), and let´s me use her son´s internet. punchy and exhausted, i want to get going. there is a language barrier, so i sit in her house, trying not to drink the juice she so wonderfully squeezed for me, in fear that it is cut with tap water. finally her son drove me to my hostel and gave me his number in case i need anything. so nice. made it to a hostal and crashed.
see the doctor monday, who looks at my scans and tells me after all this, he doesn´t think i need any further action. "clearly benign", he says. exhuasted and frustrated, i think on it a night, and then go back the next day to say let´s do it to be sure. so i after landing back in quito on sunday, i have a biopsy on thursday. the night before, i called
my friend carmen´s son (the lady in the wheelchair from the venezuela plane!) and they graciously agree to pick me up from the hospital. everything goes off without a hitch, but the doctor insists on his $500 fee in cash! at which point, fausto and erica drive me all over creation in quito for 3 hours because no atm would take my one remaining card. they ask me if i want to pray to jesus for help. i tell them ´no thanks, i don´t think there is a god, but the devil sure has my number´, but they can ask him for help on my befalf. so they do! finally get the doctor to agree on a money transfer, and i think the prayer worked, because the next atm took my card and i was able to continue on in my travels.
after all that, the doctor was right. BENIGN! i am relieved, but seriously disheartened by the frustration of recent and the $2300 all in all that this saga cost me out of my trip money. i will have to cut out or cut short my tour, avoid most touristy things, and watch every penny to be able
to stay on the road. so if any of you have any encouraging or inspiring words, they would be much appreciated at this point!!!
hey, it sure is an adventure, right?!
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monster
non-member comment
yeah, see...
...see, NOW I'm gonna kick your ass for you. :) Here's me, in Chi, thinking you're safely in L.A. til YESTERDAY, and meanwhile you've been wacketed all over hell-and-f*ck-all. Ya butthead. So THAT was a travel nightmare for the record-books. You had to have ONE on this trip, right? And monster? Remember in college, the things we were gonna get for your key-ring, the thing that beeps so you can find them?? Might wanna get one of those for your ATM card. (And what kind of f*ckwad bank are you dealing with, anyway, that charges $75 to replace an ATM card???? Good lord, woman.) And even though it was a freakin' nightmare, keep this in mind: you paid $500 to find out it was benign instead of $5000. So you got your good news at a 90% discount. (Seriously, I am so happy to hear it's not serious. Because if I was gonna be down a monster? I would have REALLY kicked your ass--even if I had to fly to Venezuela on a broke-ass plane to do it.)