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She is a patient, already operated, with active cancer cells. It is also, hyperinsulimic, asthmatic, hypertensive, with morbid obesity, and rheumatic osteoarthritis in both knees, so he uses a cane. “Pod path”, dice.
A physiological picture of this caliber, in Medicine, is called comorbidity, something very common in older people: Patient who presents different ailments at the same time and requires different medical and pharmacological treatments that must be administered simultaneously.
And that’s not all: In June he gave her a bilateral pneumonia (both lungs) who, due to her symptoms, made her suffer, being treated as a suspected coronavirus
Quite a physical and emotional burden that only beings with the strength of Ennys Norelys Cabello García, at age 51, fulfilled in March, they can bear it, as well as fight to beat it. And she showed it, at the beginning of August, when she was discharged from the Central Hospital, after being negative for the contagion.
His house is on a small lot whose front faces the long, busy street. They call it “Manuelita Sáenz invasion” Well, once unoccupied, it was taken over by those now living in it, in Palo Gordo, Cárdenas municipality. About ten or twelve ranches whose walls and roofs are zinc sheets, but which, due to their location in the middle of the row of houses in the residential area, is unnoticed by passers-by and motorists. Ennys lives there, alone, because her only son went to Peru and, due to the pandemic, is without work.
“I was sure that I did not have that virus, because I do not leave my environment, he explains. This quarantine I have spent in my house. I have only gone out three or four times to look for food. And I had to go to the doctor, because I felt bad. But that was not right now. It was in June, “she said.
Yes. The recent stage in Ennys’ life begins in June, when she went to the Palo Gordo clinic for a respiratory condition. He was diagnosed with pneumonia, but there was nothing to give him. Nebulizations. The following afternoon he felt a strong tachycardia and a lot of pain in his chest. At the outpatient clinic, the doctor who treated her told her that there was nothing to ease the pain.
“I came home at night, but in the early morning I felt worse. It dawned and I went to the Central Hospital. The doctor told me about an infection in the kidneys, and he ordered several tests, but since he did not have money to do them, I continued with the pain, “he said.
Monday I went to Antituberculoso, to see if they did the exams to me. And neither there, nor in the Insurance Hospital, nor in the Puente Real Outpatient Clinic, nor in the Health, were they doing them. They only ordered an X-ray, so I went to the Central Hospital on Tuesday to get it done. My son from Peru, and my nephew here, got the money, and that same day I did it.
According to the X-ray, I had a bilateral pneumonia. I took her to the Palo Gordo outpatient clinic to be checked, and they told me they had to get into the covid-19 protocol, and do the rapid test. And to find where, because there was none. They don’t have how to do it.
So on Monday 29, the pain in his legs from so much walking relieved, from his house he went on foot, “with my cane and my sore knees”, to the CDI in Táriba, about ten kilometers, more or less, a get tested.
“I was sure that I was not infected, because I take care of myself. But since this is acquired in the street, and since my defenses are very low due to my precarious health, I thought it could be. So I did my best to get tested. And it came out negative ”, she explained.
But in mid-July I started with diarrhea and abdominal pain. I lasted six days, because I felt that if I went to the doctor, I didn’t have money for more tests. When I had the money, I went to the doctor, who ordered a stool test and gave me pain reliever.
The next day, July 22, I went to the Central Hospital, had a stool test, and the result showed nothing bad. It had no parasites. I got home, rested, and at six I went to the Outpatient Clinic to take the result. He still had severe stomach pain. I was walking that I couldn’t breathe. I thought it was fatigue from walking, because since I’m chubby, it takes a lot of effort.
The doctor, in her safety suit, treated me in the Respiratory Triage area. Only she was with me, there were no other people, as they said. I had no contact with anyone else.
He told me I should take the quick test again. She managed to get it done for me that same day, but they couldn’t get it anywhere. She told me, “go home, stay isolated and tomorrow we will look for you to take you to the CDI.”
… already suffer
“The next day they came for me in the ambulance, Ennys continues. They had another patient. They didn’t put gloves on me, or the blue protective cloth. Nothing. And there I did get scared, he says, because if I didn’t have the virus, and the other one too, now I was at risk, “he continued.
They took us to the TB. There was no rapid test, there were no doctors, there was nothing. The CDI of Cadela, either; the Oncology Hospital, the same. At the insurance hospital it was worse: They didn’t even pay attention to the doctor who was with us: that there was nothing to treat us, that there was no room for patients. That, if anything, they did the test, but that he had to wait four or five days for the result. I mean, crazy!
The doctor who accompanies us asks where she could take us, and nobody knew. She called the director of the Palo Gordo clinic, who in turn called an acquaintance at the Central Hospital and told her to take us there. But there wasn’t the quick test there either.
In the Triage area, if the person entering has a cough, breathing difficulties, or something similar, they remain a suspect. It doesn’t matter if you have something else. The doctor told me that, due to my condition, I was very vulnerable to the virus, but that my problem was pneumonia. She is a repeat offender, she told me, because since she did not have enough treatment, she is still ill. That is why he is going to stay to treat her, and do the PCR.
You have to have little money
They spent that day taking the tests and did not take it into account, Ennys says. She asked why, several times, and they did not answer her. In the afternoon, they tell him it was because he has no history at the Hospital.
“I asked what I should do. And I knew that, to get it, I had to find a few pesos. They explained to me that the patient must buy some photocopies of forms, which they sell for up to 2,000 pesos each, in the candy kiosks at the entrance to the HC. And there are several leaves ”.
In addition, to keep track of the patient’s evolution, you have to buy another two copies, each day you stay. So I entered on Thursday the 23rd, but until Saturday the 25th, the day my nephew was able to go buy the sheets, they did the test, and from there, they waited four or five days to get the result.
“I expected it for Wednesday the 29th. But no. Even on Thursday morning we had no results. It was until the afternoon when they told me it was negative. I was discharged on Thursday, and that I had to remain in isolation at home for 15 days, “he said.
But … what a Wednesday!
Ennys Norelys’s emotional stamina was on the brink. More than a month enduring everything, she had reduced it to its minimum expression. “Because of the delay in the results, she says, and because of other things that I saw, and that affected me, on Wednesday, late I panicked and rioted. I started demanding the results of my test, because for me it had been too long ”.
He makes a parenthesis to explain why he mutinied: “They enabled floor 1 for the suspects who enter, and it turns out that there are horrible contingencies there: There are not enough oxygen equipment, there are no nurses, there are no syringes, there are no masks. There is not even a bathroom. They told us that “with a cup we could bathe.” Suddenly they are racing, carrying or bringing stretchers … patients … That’s crazy, he says. Really yes!
And he adds: “On Thursday, the results were given to us, pointing a finger at each one of them, like this:” you are negative, you are negative, you are negative, you are positive “… well, without further ado … What a pod so crazy …! he reiterates.
When they told me I had cancer in 2009, I broke down. I cryed and cryed. The word cancer is like a symbol of instant death, he says. I cried so much, and I thought it was the end of the world for me. However, I had surgery, I was in treatment and I lost my hair. And look, now I have hair again. I survived! I thought that was the cruelest thing that could ever happen to me.
But that Wednesday… God! I thought I would not get out of the hospital alive. I no longer had a fever, not even a cough, I felt nothing … but I swore I would not come out alive. When I arrived at my house on Thursday, I couldn’t believe that I was back at my little ranch. That I am falling, well, whatever, but I’m here, in my business, I told myself.
Now your “new” neighborhood
“At home,” he says, “I hear so many things they said about my case. So many lies that I can’t understand how, or why, people take care of what is not really important, if now the only really important thing is to take care of themselves. Because everyone worries throughout the quarantine, that we cannot go out, that there is no transport, etc. “
But, look, you get a little closer, and appreciate how humanity is lacking. It deprives the morbid of the people. Here in the community the scandal was formed in the networks: They said that, with the ambulance, a lot of guards had come, that I had infected six people from the ambulance, that I was in serious condition. A neighbor in an audio said that she had died. Another told me that they did not want to sell anything to the people of this invasion at the informal food stalls near here, that they were being discriminated against in the stores.
The thing was alarming. Concern spread throughout the community, until Diego Jiménez, prefect of the Rangel Lamus parish, whose capital is Palo Gordo, published on WhatsApp that everything was false. He explained that in anticipation of the symptoms that Ennys presented, the test had been ordered to those who were in contact with her. And, finally, all were declared negative for infection, and discharged from the Hospital.
To finish, Ennys explains: I accepted this interview, because when the quarantine passes, I want to go out and be seen, and let them know that the only thing I am guilty of is being responsible for taking care of myself. I felt bad, and went out to seek medical help. Bad if it would have been, that it would have been positive, and I stayed here quiet, infecting everyone.
“Yes. I have felt rejection from some neighbors, answer the question on the subject. But that’s the least of it, because the problem is not that they don’t hang out with me, or that they scorn me. The problem is ignorance about the virus. Because, they don’t come near me, but they do go to the street, they come and go without a mask, they don’t wash their hands, anyway. That’s the problem”.
A problem that is now theirs because I have no problem: I already know that I am not positive!
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