Besos at the Emergency Room

Before anyone gets worried, this post is not about me and all parties are fine!

One of my roommates at my new apartment, Emily, is in culinary school. She's a fellow American and unfortunately sliced her pinkie today in class in the middle of a practicum exam. An ambulance came, wrapped up her finger, gave her a tetanus shot in her bum and sent her on her merry way. Amazingly, she still finished her exam with high marks, save a few for the attempted amputation.

So this evening, as she was cleaning her bandages, I took one look at her finger and tried to keep a calm and straight face (although totally aghast) when I saw just what exactly had happened. A 1/3 of the tip of her pinkie was sliced wide open, about 3mm deep. Using all my strength to contain my shock and horror that this hadn't been stitched up, I firmly said we needed to go to the emergency room now and have it checked out.

We walked to the small Italian hospital about 10 blocks away, only to find it was closed. The security guard reluctantly answered the door telling us to come back in the morning. So we walked 2-3 more blocks to the pharmacy hoping they could tell us where to find an open hospital. This pharmacy had just closed, and although we were 10 yards from the actual pharmacists, the security guard wouldn't let us ask them where the nearest emergency room is located. He sent us to another pharmacy. 2 blocks farther, we came to a 24 hour pharmacy (kind of like Walgreens). The pharmacists were much more helpful there and sent us to a public hospital about 15 blocks away. This time we decided to take a cab.

When we walked in, we couldn't exactly figure out where to check in. We saw a very small waiting room and wandered around a courtyard until being told to wait in the waiting room and eventually we'd be triaged. Emily asked how long the woman beside her had been waiting. She said since 5pm (That was 5 hours!) Emily decided she'd just go to the first hospital tomorrow morning. On our way out, we asked the policeman/guard if there was another hospital we could go to, he gave us a name and said is was a few blocks away. At this point I was thinking of contacting the friend of one of my coworkers that I've been meaning to get in touch with who is a surgeon here in BsAs. Not exactly how I'd intended to introduce myself. Then I considered contacting my other friend's friend who works for the US embassy thinking maybe he could help. (Yes, I was concerned about this pinkie finger!) Instead we hailed a cab and asked him if he knew of an open private emergency room. He took us to the main Hospital Italiano across town.

The difference between hospitals was night and day. At the huge triage desk, we started the sign-in process. Emily had only given her name, DOB, and phone number when a nurse or doctor called her in and tended to her finger. He cleaned it up and said that by this point, it had all coagulated and while they would have stitched it earlier, the risk of closing up an infection was too great. Within 3-5 minutes her finger was all bandaged up. And then he gave her the Argentine kiss (a besos) on the cheek.

A kiss on the cheek??? Huh? Everyone kisses here. Something I thought I was fairly used to from Europe. But here, everyone kisses, be it two men or people you barely know. Emily says if she talks with any of her teachers, they always "besos" after chatting.

UCSF is undergoing a huge hand washing campaign. Their moto is that handwashing saves lives. If we were to start cheek kissing at UCSF, we'd be washing our face between each patient, as well as our hands. Walking out of the hospital 10 minutes later, after paying the full price of $20 for this private hospital, and spending more than 45 minutes walking and cabbing around town trying to find the hospital, I chuckled to myself reveling in the cultural differences I find so amusing. Besos to everyone!

Another funny account of kissing in BsAs:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/6684727.stm