NEW HOSPITAL & NURSERIES the A-Z Blog Challenge

N MEANS WE'RE ON THE DOWNHILL RUN OF THE A-Z CHALLENGE,

For my post for today on my theme of life in Tenerife I have chosen NUEVO = NEW.and NURSERY.

After decades of NEGOTIATION and stop-start-stop building work, it looks as if Social Health patients in the south of Tenerife are finally getting their own hospital. At present any inpatients have to go to Santa Cruz, which is an hour's drive away.

Although the private Hospital in Las Americas has an arrangement with the government to deal with some patients, most outpatients in the south go to El Mohon – a tired, crowded, prefabricated building that was never intended to deal with the numbers it gets, and certainly not for this long. 

This is the El Mohon to which we have been going for fifteen years. Parking is always a battle, and  they keep moving the departments from one hut to another so we have to give our selves enough time to search for the one we want, but the view over Los Cristianos is amazing.

The new building has been standing like this for several years - no windows and probably nothing inside but bare walls. It will probably open to great fanfare just after we've returned to England!

NURSERIES - GUARDERIAS

 NURSERIES – The extended family system which deals with the problem of both parents working still functions here, but many young people no longer live near their families and have to send their babies to Nurseries. 

When one opened recently nearby I went to look round. There was a quiet area with cots, tiny tables and chairs for meals, and the dearest little urinals almost at floor level in the toddler toilets.   Bless! and don't you love the handprinted wall by the entrance?

LEARNING THE LANGUAGE - A-Z Challenge

LEARNING THE LANGUAGE – Yes, I have learned Spanish – it would have been rude not to. I am a foreigner who chose to move here, and it’s a Spanish speaking island.

I don’t speak it perfectly by any means, but I can hold a conversation and shop without pointing - there's a limit to what you can convey with sign language.

I can also cope with most medical situations. By giving myself a crash course in medical-speak I even survived a week in hospital having a hip replacement after living here for only a year.

As hospitals go, the Clinica Verde in Las Americas - a private hospital that takes some national health patients - isn't a bad place to be incarcerated, though having a bed bath in a room with two other patients and no curtains was a novel experience!

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Our lives are enriched by being able to talk to Spanish people as well as English, and I have sometimes helped our 10 year old neighbour with her English homework. For the next month I will also be helping her father learn English, and that's even more of a challenge, as his native tongue is Italian!

 Call me Professora Liz!  

LAUNDRY – One of the advantages of life in Tenerife is that you very rarely need a tumble-drier, but not everyone has a terrace like ours, so they Leave their Laundry out on the pavement.  I took this photo in a back alley in Los Abrigos. It doesn't get much sun but the temperature was 30 degrees.

And this line of washing in Las Galletas gets the sun all day. There is also a graffiti'd line of washing on the wall behind it - a visual joke which always makes me smile.

... and, talking as we were of hip replacements, here's a bit of FLASH FICTION to finish with.

LOOKING AFTER MOTHER

My world has shrunk to this.

I should be grateful – they’ve decorated the room and hung pretty curtains. 

But the window is double-glazed, and although I can see the children throwing snowballs I can’t hear them.

I’m afraid to look in the mirror in case I’ve disappeared.

I wanted to go outside in the snow yesterday but I couldn’t find my boots, and I knew Edie had hidden them when she said, “You could break your hip, Mother, and then where would you be?”

In a nursing home is where I’d be, with other people to talk to.

Edie's gone out for a while - I think I’ll get my coat.

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Thank you for reading - please leave a comment so I know you've been here!

CARNAVAL or HOSPITAL?

This is the official poster for Tenerife's Carnaval 2014. The theme is Animation, and the costumes are as fantastic as ever - there is a woman in there somewhere, though how she carries all that weight is a mystery.

Last night - Saturday 1st March - was the first night of the festivities, and the crowds numbered in the thousands.

So perhaps it's not surprising that the first report I read in the local paper this morning was about the number of people who needed treatment in the temporary tented Hospital de Carnaval organised by the Cabildo and Cruz Roja.

The statistics were: 84 adults and 8 children treated.
40 due to alcoholic intoxication: 6 due to 'stupefying substances' - don't you just love that euphemism! :5 'ordinary illnesses: 7 'traumatic injuries': 5 falls: 11 injuries caused by aggression: 9 due to other causes.
Of these only 9 ended up in the standard hospital, so the temporary one is obviously doing a grand job.

Oh yes - and to end on a positive note - there were no arrests. When half of the very macho Tinerfeno men are dressed like this, the police were probably too bemused to arrest anyone!

A DESPICABLE THIEF

I was visiting a friend today in hospital in Santa Cruz. The woman who shares her room went into the en suite bathroom just before a couple came to visit her. At least I assumed they were a couple.
They asked where she was. I told them and turned back to talk to my friend.
The other patient came out of the bathroom to discover her mobile phone was missing, along with the young man.
Her visitor had assumed he was with me, just as I had assumed he was with her.
He had calmly walked into a room where two women were seriously ill and stolen a mobile phone from the patient's side-table.
One could almost wish it was contaminated with eboli.

MEDICAL MOMENTS & MONKEYS

MAYBE you never get sick? MANY expats in Tenerife live by that MAXIM. There are three ways to deal with your health when leaving your home country – cross your fingers and hope you stay well, buy private MEDICAL insurance, or join the system.

We were getting on a bit when we MOVED here so we MADE sure we were covered for medical care. We brought E111 certificates for tourists, (you could get one from the Post Office in those days) which gave us a sense of security until the OH turned 65. Then it was all systems go to get a MEDICO here. We had learned the hard way to take with us, on any official occasion, every piece of paper we possessed, plus photocopies of everything, and we had to visit several different offices, but eventually we had a GP. Our treatment is paid for by the UK, using the contributions into the British National Health system that we had paid during our working lives. This is our small Medical Centre.

Within MONTHS I had seen traumatologists in Las Americas and Santa Cruz and was on the list for a hip replacement. They said it would be done in about a year! I panicked – an operation, in a hospital for a week or more, and my Spanish was still basic. OMG! Another reason to learn Spanish fast. My printed diagram of the female body, with every part labelled, caused much amusement at subsequent consultations. The MAIN hospital is in Santa Cruz, so some patients are dealt with in the private hospital in Las Americas – I was one of the lucky ones.

MODESTY? Forget it. As a MOTHER of four I lost all false modesty years ago, but it was a shock not to have curtains between the beds. MY first blanket-bath served as the MORNING entertainment for the two other women in my room, plus the person who ignored the closed door. I wasn’t allowed out of bed for several days and MANAGING a bedpan discreetly was a challenge. A visitor to the next bed actually emptied mine once. My first shower caused some MAYHEM – I still wasn’t allowed to stand, so I sat on the toilet while the MALE nurse held the shower hose over me. Unfortunately the room sloped the wrong way (a common design fault out here) and we flooded the ward.

Our Outpatients Department is up the hill at El MOHON, and there’s a half-built hospital there, but the Canary Government have run out of money and can’t finish it. There was also a crisis recently when it emerged that the Farmacias hadn’t been paid for the MEDICINES they had supplied on prescriptions – for a whole year! They've been paid now, though not until they threatened to stop dispensing.

MONKEY ZOO


MONKEYS are engaging creatures, and if they have to be in a zoo, at least the one near us gives them room to move. you are allowed inside some of the cages, which entranced my grandsons. The tiny MARMOSETS were rather shy but some ring-tailed lemurs took fruit from their hands.

My daughter-in-law spent ages talking to a parrot - she had to leave her own behind when she moved to the UK and MARRIED my son. The parrot seemed happy to get so much attention - you could almost see it smiling.

MEANWHILE  my son had a long conversation with a chimp. He shouldn't have climbed the barrier to tickle its armpit but there was no-one to stop him. The chimp eventually had enough of him – he had been chatting up the females as well, which probably wasn't wise - and sprayed him with a mouthful of water. "Sod off" in Chimp!

For those of you who couldn’t find MY MYSTERIOUS ghost in the Los Abrigos photo (yesterday’s blog) here is an enlargement. I drew the ring round the relevant bit.

Only a computer would recognize this as a face!