Four trips to the hospital in one month

My eye was no better this morning, but I thought I could make it. I met Simeon at his house, and much to my surprise, we encountered the monkeys when we’d barely even entered the forest. I’d never seen the monkeys come that low. When we found them, we were still walking through fields—just a sparse row of trees on either side of the path. I was incredulous that this was my group, but Simeon assured me that it was. His assertion was confirmed when, through my bleary eye, I squinted up into the trees and saw Wrinkle Belly. Wrinkle Belly is a fabulous specimen of a monkey. He must be ancient. He has no fur on his belly, so he’s just got pale, wrinkled skin—hence the name. He’s missing some of his teeth, and at least one of his canines is broken off. Wrinkle Belly is in the group that I usually study, so when I saw him, I knew this was the same group. I pointed him out to Simeon and we had a good laugh at poor old Wrinkle Belly.

Despite my joy at finding Wrinkle Belly and the numerous infants and juveniles of this group, I was having difficulty observing them. My eye was swollen up and hurt really bad, plus, looking up at the monkeys was making it water all the worse. Simeon said he had been surprised I showed up this morning; he said he had told his wife that he did not expect to see me because he thought I would be having too much trouble with my eye. He said that I should really go to the doctor because there were some kinds of plants in the forest that could be dangerous, and if I had brushed up against one of those, this would not get better on its own. His concern sufficiently freaked me out. He sagely advised me that although studying the monkeys was important, what was the most important was my vision, so we left the forest.

Much to my luck, Jorge—the Hacienda driver—was making a trip to Moyogalpa in the afternoon. I was scared to go through this by myself, so I asked Rob to come with me. I figured with him along, my Spanish comprehension would double. So after an hour and a half truck ride, Jorge dropped us of at the hospital while he went to go do his errands. I had to wait in a big room for a while, and then finally a nurse called me back to see the doctor. It was the same guy who had treated Rob when he was in for his dehydration/blood sugar episode. He briefly glanced at my eye as I described my symptoms, and he told me that it was an infection. He wrote me a prescription for antibiotic eyedrops, and before we left, he asked how Rob’s blood sugar was. I was glad he had brought this up, because it is a topic that has been foremost on my mind. We told him what it had been the last time we were in Moyogalpa, and he assured us that was normal. I am skeptical, but will hold off freaking out until Rob sees his real doctor at home next month.

Anywho, we went to a pharmacy and bought the eye drops. We ended up having about an hour and a half to wait around in Moyogalpa—we were picking up some people from the ferry, which had been delayed. We did a bit of shopping, and somehow, Jorge managed to pick up the package that our friend Dr. Y had sent for Rob. Amazingly, Dr. Y was able to send us a test kit so that Rob can monitor his blood sugar daily and we can get to the bottom of this issue. A million thanks to AK and BY for this.

I put in some of my eyedrops and hoped that this would be the one antibiotic I am not allergic to. Watching the sky darken as we headed home, I realized that we’ve been here for slightly over a month, and this is the fourth time we’ve been to the hospital in Moyogalpa. Hopefully during the next 11 months we are here, our rate of visiting the hospital drops significantly!