Blackout!

Dave and I miss having lots of choices of cultural activities:  plays, symphony, concerts, etc.  If something comes along that we are aware of here, we go!  (Finding out about events seems one huge hurdle to me.  Publicity seems to be lacking, or I am looking in all the wrong places.)

This week three young Mexican pianists came to perform at the Bliss Centre for the Performing Arts.

The program was one mixing classical pieces and regional pieces. And the pieces were for two, four or six hands!  The concert began on time with a respectable audience.  The young men were excellent pianists!  About one-third into the show, there was a sudden "POP" and all of the power went out! Right in the middle of Beethoven! Ricardo Moo paused, hands raised, in pitch darkness!  (No emergency lights went on, by the way.)  Then the audience pulled out their cell phones and turned on their flashlights, shining the light toward the stage...and Beethoven continued without fault!  One of the men asked if we wanted the concert to continue, and everyone yelled "Yes!"  With a few staff people holding flashlights, they continued their program.

The air conditioning was out, the fan on stage for the performers was silent (and though the audience suggested that they take off their jackets, they did not), and not a person in the hall left the concert!  The music was wonderful, but the spirit of the people, performers and audience alike made the experience memorable!  These young men will never forget the concert that they performed in Belize!

I thought that the building's circuitry had blown, but we left the theatre to total darkness.  It was a dark trip home!  We lit candles when we arrived home, and after the one-to-two hour blackout, the power returned.

I don't know if it is the heat or what, but this morning we had another two hour blackout.  Fortunately, we also had a strong, cool sea breeze.  Lately, the breezes have not come from the sea, if we have one at all, and the air is simply hot, moving or not.  Belize has had the driest wet season in history, but a tropical wave is to arrive tonight or tomorrow.

My observations of medical care here:  Having not really had a physical in well over a year and my brother having died recently of a heart attack, I decided I should have a thorough work-up.  I began with a blood test, a mammogram, and a doppler exam of the carotid arteries.  In U.S. dollars, an absolutely thorough blood screening cost about $150 (and several vials of my blood)!  The mammogram cost $50 and the doppler about $150.  Then I went to the cardiologist.  I was expecting to have an echocardiogram, but I spent more than two hours with him, talking!  Yes, talking...as he illustrated the mechanism of the entire heart in detail.  This cost me $60.  And I learned a lot!  From the many questions that he asked me, he determined that he preferred to do a stress test, so I was scheduled for the following week for that.  My first attempt was cancelled by an emergency that he had, as was the second attempt.  On the third attempt, I sat talking again for another hour or more.  He said:  "I don't need to do anything else but monitor a man with a faulty pacemaker and examine you."  Then I had the stress test, which I passed with flying colors.  All of this cost $175.  Oh, yes.  He did a urinalysis at the first visit for $5 U.S.  As reference, my co-pays and deductible would have exceeded the amount I spent on this physical. And I can assure you that I would never be able to find a cardiologist in the U.S. who would spend approximately 5 hours with me for any price!  And I would not have known what subtle symptoms might mean or that high cholesterol, my only real issue, would have symptoms such as irritability, inability to sleep, tingling in the arms and feet, etc.  End result:  I'm on statins and will have a follow-up blood test in a couple of weeks (but just a cheap, simple one!).

My other observation is on the medical system for the populace who gets free care, such as the children at the Centre.  Children can be rough and tumble, and the staff are very good about taking the children to the doctor promptly.  For example, one child came back to the Centre with a very swollen knee from playing football (soccer).  The doctor at the Clinic examined him and X-rayed the knee, finding that there was no fracture and that he should recover shortly.  We have had a child in the hospital for two weeks with a lung infection, and the doctors sent him to the private clinic for an MRI to be sure that nothing else was going on.  And my personal experience is with the psychiatry department.  Last year I was so dismayed that no psychiatrist was practicing in Belize.  Finally, one arrived from the Philippines. Now we have a second from Cuba.  This week I went to see the psychiatric nurse, who does the majority of monitoring the medications for our children.  She spent an hour with me, listening to my description of the symptoms of a child she had seen previously, with the result that she changed the medication back to a protocol that seemed to be working last spring.  (We didn't want to take the child out of her first week of high school, which is why I went alone.)  I will take the child back in two weeks for a follow-up appointment.

In general, I think that the medical care is good.  The public hospital is still a scary place to me, but they are working to improve the facility and the procedures that they can do.  Complicated cases are still sent to Guatemala or Mexico or to the United States.