Nearly as scary looking and slightly taller Fitz Roy, is the largest peak above El Chaltèn. This is on my list and is the reason Derek and I headed south to Argentina once again. It and all the surrounding peaks, including Cerro Torre are known as the Fitz Roy Massif. We left the day after Derek’s last final (which ended at 10 p.m.) — he is a senior studying Electrical Engineering at CU Boulder. Most exciting about this trip was that Sheri would come join us for two of our three weeks. No, she wouldn’t be climbing anything, but she'll do some hiking, hopefully with us too, and have an adventure in a wild place.
Thursday:
I have a history of travel snafus. When I was younger I didn’t handle them well and stressed out over all the hiccups. When I started traveling with Sheri I eventually took a different attitude. I leave early enough so that I have plenty of time to get where I’m going and then if things come up, they come up and try to roll with it. Sheri took us and our four huge bags (and three carry-ons) down to take the 11:03 a.m. bus to DIA. After we said goodbye at the car, Sheri decided to wait until we got on the bus. That was good thing, as the bus didn’t come. We waited until it was more than ten minutes late. Our flight took off at 1:35 p.m. so we weren’t stressed about missing the flight, as yet, but we didn’t want to get stressed. We hauled the bags back up to the car, loaded them up, and Sheri drove us to DIA. The bus still didn’t show up for all of this. Must have been a mechanical problem.
Sheri dropped us off a bit before noon and we walked in and found no lines, but when we tried to check-in at a kiosk, we couldn’t. We went to an attendant with no delay and she spent 20 minutes on the phone trying to check us in. We had purchased the tickets through Aerolinas Argentinas, as our final flight destination was El Calafatè, but we actually flew on Delta clear to Buenos Aires. AA had sent us a notice of a flight change a week ago or so, but the time of departure had only changed by 15 minutes and we didn’t think it was anything more than that. Apparently that was a flight number change for Delta, but since we didn’t book through Delta we had a problem. The attendant told us we would have to call AA, but I knew that wouldn’t work. I’d tried to call them the previous Saturday to cancel this trip and no one answered after 70 minutes on hold.
Cancel the trip, did I say? Yes. Eleven days before leaving on this trip I did the Skyline (19 miles, 7000 vertical feet) for the 13th month in a row. I was doing it to train for this trip, but on this last outing I sustained an injury. I was sore the afternoon after the Skyline (on Sunday), but felt reasonable okay at the gym on Monday. Tuesday I was too gimpy to do Green Mountain. Wednesday I was in intense pain whenever I bent my left knee. I walked stiff legged and could only go down stairs by matching feet on each step. Googling around I thought it was bursitis, as the pain seemed to be on my kneecap. A trip to the doctor on Friday and he diagnosed it as quadricep tendonitis, telling me it would take 6-8 weeks to recover and my only chance for the Patagonia trip was PRP (platelet-rich plasma), a fairly new technique not covered by insurance that takes blood from your arm, spins it to concentrate the platelets in the blood and then injects that directly into the tendon. It cost $1000 and I made an appointment to have it done.
That afternoon I heard from my buddy Danny that another friend, Anton, had done this procedure. I contacted him and his experience wasn’t great. It sounded too risky. It would definitely set me back for a week or more before it would improve, but then it was supposed to be functional in two weeks, saving the last half of my 3-week trip. Friday night my knee was as bad as ever. After being able to bend it at work, sitting at my desk, I could not bend it without pain sitting on my couch. Hence, the next morning I tried to cancel the trip.
But then a funny thing happened. My knee improved. A lot. I could walk normal on Saturday. Stairs were still an issue, but by Sunday I could do them pretty well. Monday I climbed at the gym and it went well. I couldn’t bend the knee too radically, but as long as I didn’t dip too low, it worked well enough. Tuesday I hiked Flagstaff with no issues at all going up and a bit of a hitch coming down. This was so strange. I’m old (40+17) and I don’t heal fast. I hurt my left thumb (everything on my left side is damaged: knee, thumb, elbow, and shoulder) in a fall on the Second Flatiron six months ago and it still hasn’t fully healed. Tendons or ligaments or something. I didn’t get it, but I wasn’t complaining. The trip was on. I did another short gym session on Wednesday and then did Flagstaff again on the Thursday morning I left for Patagonia. Here we come, Fitz Roy. Brace yourself.
The attendant solved the problem and got us checked in. That was a huge relief. If we had truly had to call them, the trip could have been off. Why AA doesn’t answer the phone, I don’t know. I sent an email that Saturday as well and never heard back from them. But they took our bags and we got on the plane. Derek watched 1.5 movies on the plane, while I read. Or at least tried to read. I read one page five times. I was so sleepy. It was just 2 p.m. I didn’t want to do any dozing, as I wanted a better chance of sleeping on the overnight trip to BA.
 |
| I got 100 on the test. No big whoop. |
We had a 3-hour layover in Atlanta. Derek checked his Power Electronics final and found out he got 100. That'll do. Of the four classes he took this past semester, he has A's in three of them and doesn't know his score on the Electromagnetic Fields final yet. This keeps his lifelong streak of never getting less than A. Smart kid. He found out later he got a 98 on his Electromagnetic Fields final, so another perfect semester for him. One to go.
Derek got Qdoba for dinner, but I'd had that recently at a work lunch and opted for Arby's instead, hoping to get a Jamocha shake. Unfortunately, they only had vanilla (basically, the flavor dispenser wasn't working). I got my sandwich, took a bite, and then noticed my bread was moldy, right where I took a bite. Ugh. I went back there and showed the sandwich. The lady cringed and asked, "Refund? Or do you want another sandwich." My wife, who wouldn't have gone there in the first place (she had a bad experience with Arby's as a teenager and hasn't eaten there since), would definitely have taken the refund. I don't hold much of a grudge when it comes to food I like though, so I got a replacement sandwich. Sheri also doesn't like KFC much. As you'll see, she apparently has pretty good instincts when it comes to food.
Buenos Aires
The 10-hour flight to Buenos Aires wasn't too bad. Rows in our plane were arranged as 2-3-2 and we were in a 2-seat grouping, with me against the window. I sleep intermittently in my bed at home and expected a very rough flight. I brought sleeping pills with me and planned on taking a couple, but I forgot about them and didn't need them. After watching the quite bad Ad Astra sci-fi movie with Brad Pitt (bad story, bad acting, ridiculous scenes that added nothing to the story, but presumably they had extra money in the special-effects budget), I slept a good portion of this flight. The airline also fed us, but we'd just had the Arby's, so I was stuffed. I ate most of it anyway, but get this — it proves how stuffed I was: They gave us a small container of Ben & Jerry's Cookie Dough ice cream...I barely had half before giving the rest to Derek. Under normal circumstances, my wife would have probably taken me to a mental hospital after such an act. Of course, Derek ate his full meal and both his ice creams without much trouble at all. Youths have high metabolisms.
Friday:
The airline attendants served us breakfast as well, but I didn't eat much of that either, mainly because I was getting some quality rest and so surprised that I tried to keep rolling with it, as it was going to be a long day. We didn’t have any trouble getting through customs, though it took an hour. Not surprisingly, our bags were already there by the time we got to baggage. We found a couple of free carts and made our way outside to a kiosk to get on the Tiendas Léon transfer bus service, because we had to switch airports here. The airports are supposedly 30 minutes apart. It took us 90 minutes, after waiting 30 minutes for the bus. We were glad to have a 6-hour layover between our flights. Buenas Aires, at 2.7 million people, is by far the largest city in Argentina (more than double the next closest), but the metropolitan area is about 12.7 million. The small part of the city between the two airports contains no highways, though some expressways have slightly less stoplights and are not cobbled. But our route seemed to be 90% small streets, probably due to an accident. We got our bags checked at our new airport (Aeroparque Jorge Newbery) with no wait at all. We found a great place to wait, near a Starbucks, a pizza place, and a KFC. We opted for the KFC. That would prove to be the biggest mistake of my culinary life.
 |
| In the airport medical center. I don't look too distressed here. |
Since I could breathe fine, that indicated the bone was beyond my wind pipe and impossible to reach with my fingers. I left the bathroom and knew I needed help. I flagged down a maintenance work to help me located medical help, but he didn’t speak English. A passerby, seeing I was in distress came to my aid as a translator and then walked with me down to the medical office. People are so great. It was a small gesture, but it was so meaningful to me. I thanked him profusely. On our way, we passed by Derek and told him I was going for help and to wait there. I assumed the medical area would have some tong and they could just reach down there, grab it, and pull it out. It would be over in a few minutes. My medical bona fides are a bit suspect. In the past, I’ve diagnosed myself with sunscreen in my eye (actually retinal detachment), a pulled chest muscle (actually pulmonary edema) and bursitis (actually quadricep tendonitis). This self-assessment didn’t break that pattern.
 |
| In the ambulance |
A very nice lady, Evelyn, from AA came to talk us. She could speak English very well. She tracked down our luggage and pulled it off the plane (or out of staging to go on the plane). I still hoped to zip over to the hospital, get the tongs, and zip back for the flight. Alas, I didn’t know the there is no translation for the word “zip” in BA. They don’t do that. Derek described our bags, and she found them. She told us to come back to her when we were back from the hospital in order to reschedule our flights. She said we would need a doctor’s note that proved we had an emergency so that we wouldn’t be charged for a change of ticket.
 |
| Rom at the hospital. Denise is talking to me. |
 |
| Waiting for CT scan |
We left for hospital at 2:20, got there around 3 p.m. It was only about 5 miles away, but going anywhere in BA takes forever. There seems to be an intersection every 50 feet. Obviously we weren’t making the flight that day. After a long, bumpy ride I get out and into a wheelchair, which is protocol, though I have no trouble doing anything except swallowing. I’m wheeled into a room that is more like a walk-in closet and similarly equipped except it had no hangers. It had also: a single sink — full of an unknown brownish liquid. There are holes in the plaster walls, chipped concrete floor marks all over the wall, a half-filled pee container on the one shelf. I sit on a table/bed on one side and an old man with an IV and a tube taped to his nose is in the other bed. He’s about two feet away from me.
The doctor on duty, Denise, spoke English. She was feisty and dressed in floral tights. She ordered blood taken and do a CT scan. She could see I was in a distress and said, as she left the room, “Don’t worry, you’re not going to die.” Before blood was taken I laid down for the first time and then I had a strong cough and immediately the poking in my throat alleviated. Initially, I felt it was completely gone. I felt so silly about causing such a big deal that a cough solved. We missed our flight and would now have to spend the night in BA, all because I couldn’t eat chicken properly. And didn’t think to cough. Jesus…
 |
| CT scan showing chicken bone |
When Denise came back I told her that the bone didn’t seem to be in my throat any longer. Could I just go now? She insisted her previous plan of action regardless. I’m not sure why they drew my blood. Maybe they tested it for something, but I in that facility that didn’t seem possible. Or maybe just topping off the local blood bank, 10cc’s at a time. I’m wheeled in a rickity chair with only had one foot pad so I had to drape one foot over the other, into an uneven alley with rain puddles to another building. I felt like I’d tip over at any point and could easily walk. Just silly, as I walked all over this place later. I was wheeled into a check-in room for the imaging and placed under a cold fan. I waited 20 minutes, just sitting alone in my chair. Then I get the CT scan. Gestures tell me that when I hear the lady talk to me, put my arms over my head. On my first pass through the machine I notice it is missing bolts securing the carapace. On the second pass the lady says something in Spanish and I raise my arms. I’m back in my closet around 4 p.m. and Derek is there. He’s been carrying around our three carry-on bags. One roller and two backpacks.
At about 5:40 p.m. a different doctor reads the scan and immediately contradicts my post-cough self-diagnosis. I have as much natural ability to be a doctor as I have to play guitar, but I keep trying to do both. She can clearly see the chicken bone. I need to go to a hospital that can do an endoscopy. Wasn’t I already there? No. What was the hour-long wait at the airport for, then? They put an IV in my arm to prep for the trip to next hospital and then nothing. For hours. I needed to pee and asked for the bathroom. I was directed down the hallway to a tiny bathroom with a toilet and a shower basin but nothing else - no curtain. Below the sink was puddles of fresh blood. The door didn’t fit in jamb and could not close. There was no toilet paper. I just peed. This bathroom made a US gas-station bathroom look like the penthouse suite at the Luxor. I felt like I was in sub-Saharan Africa, instead of the capital city of Argentina, which I had thought of us a modern, first-world country.
Derek and I felt trapped. No one would update us. It seemed like we could be there for days. I finally tried to get some answers and walked around with my IV pole. A helpful lady translated for me, but she just told me that this is the way things are in public hospitals. I told her about the bathroom. She was nonplussed. I thought about asking what she does without toilet paper, but dropped it. We were at a very low point here. I was very close to pulling the IV out of my arm myself (they would not do it) and leaving for the airport and the next flight home to the US. Derek supported this plan. At some point we would have done it, but we wavered, stuck in a horrible limbo of no information and indecision. My situation wasn’t anyone’s fault but my own. It is not Argentinian’s responsibility to speak any English. I am a foreigner there. The problem wasn’t their lack of English. It was my lack of Spanish. I was receiving free health care from people doing the best they can. Still, I was in trouble and was not confident I could get relief in this country.
I needed to use the bathroom again and wouldn’t go near the first one. I walked myself to the other building, through the rain-puddled alley, toting my IV pole and bag, bending it down to get through doorways. I went past the imaging area, searching for a bathroom sign. I found one and the bathroom was much better. Two urinals, two toilets. Zero toilet paper. This lack of toilet paper became emblematic of the situation here. When Venezuela descended into chaos among the things making the international news was their lack of toilet paper. Yet, here in Argentina, it is just normal at the public hospitals.
At 9 p.m. an ambulance arrived to take me to the second hospital. Finally, something happened. It had been eight hours since I swallowed the bone. I sat upright in the ambulance, holding my IV bag and trying not to bend that arm too much. Blood pooled in the line, as it did whenever the IV was more than 3/4’s empty or when I held it too low. Why I needed this IV six hours before an operation is baffling. They said when the ambulance gets here it leaves immediately if you aren’t ready to go. It arrived at 9:02 and we left at 9:17. On the very long trip (45 minutes) to the next hospital I finally had the idea of contact Rolo. At that point he told us the name of private hospitals and told us to go to one of them, as they will take good care of me, though I would have to pay. If we had had this information at 1 p.m. it would have changed everything, but at this point we were almost there and the driver and nurse (who sat in the front and had no interaction with me whatsoever) didn’t speak any English, of course. During the course of the day we tried to use multiple translator apps. Most did not work very well or at all. Google Translator was surprisingly bad. Derek speaks Spanish somewhat, but not enough to give either one of us confidence of what was going on.
We got to second Hospital - Hospital Muñiz, built in 1824 and looked that way — past 10 p.m. It didn’t look bad from the outside, though it still didn’t look like a hospital. The inside felt a lot like the first hospital, though it had an elevator (dirty, chipped, worn down) and we took it to the second floor. It was very quiet here. The only people there was a nurse and the doctor - an endoscopy specialist. The doctor looked at the scans (we were given them at the first hospital) and was told my symptoms had been relieved some (after the cough). He said there was a chance the bone could have passed down into my stomach, which would not be good. He ordered another CT scan. We couldn’t understand the doctor very well and this place looked little better than the last place. I was nervous and wondered if we should leave and go to a private hospital.
I called Rolo and he and the doctor talked for quite awhile and then Rolo assured me that I was in good hands. This place specialized in foreign objects in the esophagus, and had lots of experience. I felt a lot better after hearing that. The CT scanner was in another building, only 400 meters away, but we drove. This was a much nicer CT machine. They had to unlock the door to enter the scanning area and a cat ran in. It was apparently is the hospital cat, as no one reacted to it darting in there. Maybe it was a therapy cat like Avista does with dogs, though they are on a leash. And they are dogs. Cats don’t do therapy. Maybe they kept the rat population down.
The doctor came over and looked at the scans immediately. He rode back with me and used his translator app to tell me bone was still high in my esophagus. He was a very nice guy and told me he had relatives in the US and he used this app to talk to them. He would have to operate to remove the chicken bone. Is that the right term when there is no slicing open of the body? I had to go under general anesthesia (propanol and fentanyl), so very similar to a colonoscopy, only from the different end. I asked how long it would take and told it depends. Much like Sheri’s gallstone operation. She was unlucky and it was brutal. I was lucky and it only took 19 minutes out of a projected range of 15-60 minutes.
 |
| In the operating room. Derek took this photo from the office, where he waited. |
 |
| Post surgery, inspecting the culprit. |
I asked Ignacio if he was an anesthesiologist and he didn’t really answer. I suspect not. But he’s probably watched some YouTube videos on how to apply the gas. I was definitely nervous. This was happening so quickly and so casually and so different from the US. Ignacio told me he was going to start the Propanol and to count backwards from twenty. I started and went quickly. He told me to slow down. I went very slowly. I wanted to remember how far I got so that I could tell Sheri. I got all the way down to zero and was still awake.I was thinking I should make sure they knew I wasn’t under but then don’t remember what happened next.
Derek:
It was a pretty unique experience. After waiting for practically 9 hours without much happening at all at the airport and then the first hospital, it was actually quite pleasing to be doing things. After the doctor talked with Rolo, the ball started to roll. The CT scan only took about 15 minutes, and when Pops got back, he was practically pushed directly into the operating room. I had planned to run an email by him that I was writing for him in response to a writer for Marmot, but had no time.
I know why Pops was nervous, and when I texted my mom a picture of the operating conditions, she said she was nervous too. But I wasn’t. I was happy things were happening and Rolo and Ignacio had given us confidence that they knew what they were doing.
I barely had time to start watching a show on my phone, and eat about 10 Lays Stax before Ignacio comes out to show me the chicken bone. I took pictures and then was recruited to wake up Pops. Ignacio was yelling “Wake up! Wake up!” And slapping gently on his face, but to no response. When I got in there I said “Cmon Pops time to get up! It’s over now!” And almost immediately his eyes flickered open, and he tried to form words. He was way out of it though and it was clear he was very tired — a combination of the long day and the anesthesia. Ignacio and I pulled Pops’ torso into a seated position, and we tried to ease off, but Pops fell right back into us. We held him up until the other nurses helped get him into the wheelchair. He was starting to talk at this point, asking every ~20 seconds “Did you get it?” Or “Is it over?” Once he became a little more competent in his speech, he began to ask “It would’ve killed a regular man, right?” or “Was it the biggest chicken bone you’ve ever seen?” He was very funny. This is probably the only time I will ever see my dad display behavior of utter inebriation. A brief relapse had him asking if it was over again, and by this time I had the entire video of the operation on my phone, so I showed him. We were also given the bone in a little cup as a souvenir.
We bid our doctors goodnight and were taken by Walter (Pops by wheelchair) to another building where we would stay the night. We got out and entered the Women’s Ward (Sala de Mujeres) — I took this as the answer to my dad’s earlier questions… Pops had his own room with a bed and I tucked him in. I asked the nurse if I could have a bed too and so she just took one from one of the unused cots in the other room. I settled in as well and sent some final updates to the family, who were following the events of the day. By this time it was 1am and we got some sleep. I turned off Pops’ alarm for 5am. At about 1:30, a dude in a T-shirt came in holding a needle full of brownish liquid. He told me in Spanish that it was anti-inflammatorio for the throat. I gave my permission and he spiked the IV bag. This medication seemed to work until late the next day, when it probably wore off.
 |
| My overnight room and Derek's mattress. |
Saturday:
I slept pretty well until nearly 8 a.m. I haven’t slept that late, without some special circumstances like going to bed at 3 a.m. or later, in at least a decade. But I guess these were special circumstances as well. I woke up feeling well. They didn’t allow me to eat or drink anything after the operation, letting my throat heal a bit. Not that I wanted either. I just wanted to sleep then. I was surprised and glad to see my doctor/surgeon before 9 a.m. I thought we might get the next shift, like at the first hospital. He told me to drink a cup of water and asked how I felt. I said fine and he said okay, we’ll discharge you. Cool! Another guy helped us with the discharge, which was easier and way faster than Sheri’s discharge at Avista. And no charge. Obviously that is a big topic of debate in the US.
We walked outside and I installed and tried to set up Uber on my phone. It was taking so long that Derek hailed us a ride. The ride was far away, so I hailed another one. Derek’s driver cancelled on us. Then my driver did as well. Derek’s second driver picked us up and another tedious ride put us at the airport. Uber worked very well and only cost $10 for both us to ride not many miles but around 30 minutes.
In the airport we quickly found Evelyn, who had taken care of our bags the day before. I was so pleased to see her working on Saturday, as she knew our full story. She went with us to get the bags and then took us to the VIP check-in (airport was very crowded today) and got our bags checked and boarding passes. So very nice and helpful. Booked, we went back to the exact same chair and table (comfy, nice view) where we were 24 hours earlier. We ordered pizza this time. And Starbucks. The flight was smooth to El Calafate except for just a minute or so when we started our descent. It was crazy bumpy, but we passed through it quickly.
 |
| Waiting for our flight to El Calafatè |
 |
| Derek catches up on sleep on the drive to El Chaltèn |
Vanessa, the daughter of Isabela, the owner of the apartment we were renting for our stay, met us at the van. She was obviously waiting for us. She showed us to our apartment, which was quite nice. It is on the first floor (second floor in the US), above a baker. We have a small bathroom, kitchen, and two bedrooms, both with two beds. The master bedroom has a small armoire and a tiny deck overlooking the porch at the front of the bakery.
We were very impressed with everyone we met. I know they are all somewhat in the tourist industry (save the hospital staff, of course, and they were nice, but quite different, as the business is very different), but they seemed exceptional nice and friendly. They make a great first impression of their country. We were so excited to be there, that we didn’t go straight to bed. We unpacked completely. Derek wrote some of this report.
Around 11:30 p.m. a group sat at the table on the bakery porch, directly below me and talked loudly until at least 1 a.m. I was practicing my Spanish to nicely ask them to be quiet before I decided to just put on my headphones and watch a movie, which I did until 3 a.m. Also, someone in the next apartment was snoring so loudly that I could clearly hear him after the movie ended. Sheri will need her best earplugs for this place.
No comments:
Post a Comment