I knew it wasn’t a good idea to get sick on the Fourth of July weekend, but my body ignored that truism and gave me a raging case of MRSA, an antibiotic-resistant infection, on July 3. I made it through the ER all right, but when I got to the ward, the patient next to me was dying in a messy, noisy, prolonged way and so got all the attention.
Things got worse from there. I was moved onto the mixed medical-surgical service, and one of my bed’s cords wasn’t plugged in when they moved me; the call button was the function that was left unplugged. Furthermore, the hospital I was in had just shifted to all private rooms, with heavy doors that were kept firmly closed for patient privacy. My significant other was stuck in Seattle, chairing a conference he couldn’t leave. And I have a partially paralyzed vocal cord and can’t make myself heard across a table some days. So I had no way to summon help–which I realized I needed when my mattress got bloody.
In my addled, feverish state, the only thing I could think to do was try to make it to my room’s bathroom, where the pull cord by the toilet might allow me to summon someone. I remember sitting on the toilet for a few minutes, bleeding into the bowl and crying (MRSA really hurts!); I’m not sure if I ever actually pulled the cord. And I remember Enrique coming in and finding me on the floor, halfway back to my bed. He’d been sneaking a cigarette in the stairwell next to my room and heard me crying.
Enrique was a janitor in this hospital, but he had been a physician in Colombia and had fled the country with no money when he annoyed some drug lords. He was working as a janitor to improve his English and save money for taking his U.S. boards. I didn’t know this at the time, but the medical assistant filled me in later. The last thing I remember is somebody saying my blood pressure was 70 over something, and somebody else saying I was “circling the drain.”
In the end, I was okay. I never saw Enrique again, however, as he was moved to another ward. I’m sorry he had to be a janitor. But I’m very grateful he was a janitor. We are shameless about immigrants, and that angers me.
Anne Vinsel
Salt Lake City, Utah
2 thoughts on “Janitor-Doctor”
I’m so tired of the permissions given to Americans to discriminate against people of other countries. I knew an Iranian doctor who had been Head of Surgery at a hospital in Tehran who came to the USA and had to repeat a primary care residency in order to become licensed in this country. An accomplished man in his 50’s in a class of 25-35 year old residents taught by attendings younger than himself and with far less experience. We innately believe that we are superior in all things and it fuels discrimination against so many new arrivals. Enrique’s presence could have saved the writer, but his background continues to be ignored and there is no bridge for him to earn American credentials.
In every setting, it’s always the janitors and secretaries who know what is really going on and how to get what is needed.