Of Health and Hope in Cuba

Of Health and Hope in Cuba
May 1, 2013
Veronica Vega

HAVANA TIMES — I must confess I feel a profound aversion towards
hospitals and polyclinics. This is not only because of the physical
pain, misdiagnoses, indifference or mistreatment I have experienced in
these, but also because of the association my mind invariably makes
between these places and the time spent in waiting rooms.

Hours upon hours of waiting, feeling sick, shifting on an uncomfortable
seat or worrying about my son's illness. Waiting while I watch him
cough, complain, cry, among other kids who also cry, and adults who
completely disregard the sign posted in some emergency wards: "Please
speak in a low tone of voice."

Speaking rather more loudly than suggested, they converse, enumerate all
manner of calamities, reprimand their kids and even argue about whose
turn comes next.

Waiting time and that smell characteristic of hospitals, which I know
only too well thanks to my frequent, asthma-related admittances as a
child, have taken root deep in my subconscious.

Of course, I also have memories of the kind treatment I received from
some of the hospital staff, of thoughtful gestures that moved me. At one
point, I even reflected on how strange it was that, by a random twist of
fate (or by providence), a stranger should care for me at a moment of pain.

As I've grown older, and Cuba's health system has deteriorated, I have
become so ill-disposed towards hospitals that I go to the doctor only
when I have absolutely no other choice.

This morning, the symptoms of a kidney infection became so acute that I
decided it was one of those moments when I didn't have a choice. So, I
went to the family doctor's clinic, well equipped for the inevitable
wait with a book by one of the "loves of my life": the Argentinean
writer Ernesto Sabato.

I have to admit a family clinic does not have the aggressive atmosphere
typical of a hospital's emergency ward. Emergencies are rare there and,
as I was able to appreciate today, many people go to these clinics just
to get a prescription, pick up medical test results or get their blood
pressure measured.

That said, you still need to wait long before you can see the doctor,
and venturing into Sábato's universe was made rather difficult by the
far from "low" tone of voice with which those around me conversed.

Interestingly enough, all of the people in the waiting room (twelve in
total) were women. Seeing the irritation over the long wait in their
faces – they began to protest when the second pregnant woman entered the
doctor's office, aware of how long those consultations generally take –
I got to thinking, as I have done on other occasions, that the
healthcare demand exceeds the offer in Cuba today.

I began looking at the walls, the bulletin boards showing information
about breastfeeding, about the need to boil or sterilize tap water using
"1 % Sodium Hypochlorite". I was in pain, I needed to pee, I felt
fatigue. But I returned to Sábato, to the words of a book he wrote in
the twilight of his days, at the behest of those who insisted he write
his memoirs before departing.

He was a man who, like many others, had believed that socialism held the
answer to the world's social injustices, who had the courage to condemn
the horrors of Stalinism, who once wrote: "the one miracle capitalism
has achieved is having concentrated more than eighty percent of all
existing wealth in one fifth of the world's population."

A man who suffered because, every two seconds, a child dies of hunger,
who suffered over the young men and women who wrote him in despair,
looking for an answer that would give them a sound reason not to commit
suicide. A man who was fond of quoting Strindberg, who said: "I do not
detest human beings, I am afraid of them."

At the end of this book, Sabato, a man who confessed that he doubted the
validity of the arguments with which he had tried to find some meaning
to human existence, addresses those who had asked him to write it: "Let
us go out into the world, put our lives at risk for others, let us hope,
with those who stretch out their arms, that a new wave of history will
raise us from the ground. Maybe this is already happening in a silent
and subterranean way, like the springs that throb beneath the frozen
landscapes of the winter."

These words were knocking around my head when, finally, it was my turn
to see the doctor. She prescribed a preventive treatment for the kidney
infection, based on the symptoms I was already showing.

While sitting on a park bench with my son, waiting for the results of
the blood test I had done at the polyclinic, in spite of the pain and
the shivers that crawled up my body, I felt relieved. And it wasn't
exclusively thanks to Sabato. The doctor and lab technician who had,
perhaps unwittingly, fulfilled their humble duties, were also
responsible for this feeling.

I felt relieved, above all else, thanks to the need to cling to hope,
which survives crises and catastrophes, the need to trust others, to not
give in, which is inherent to human beings and stronger than any
disheartening memory. As strong, at least, as our aversion towards
discomfort, indifference or cruely.

And I thought: if only people, little by little, acknowledged this side
of themselves (and not necessarily through a rational deduction, but,
rather, through an instinctive appreciation of their own nature), how
profoundly the world would change! How profoundly Cuba would change!

After all, most of us who criticize this country so much (even here, on
the pages of the Havana Times), do it precisely because we cling to hope.

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