My dear friend that I have just met,
I must beg you to return in your journey and complete your pilgrimage to Santiago. I will forever be grateful for your genuine kindness and hospitality. But you are also a pilgrim and you have your journey. I have really enjoyed getting to know you better and am very impressed by your strong character. Your parents are undoubtedly proud of the man they produced. I would feel regret forever if I cannot convince you to continue. I am in very good care here. I may decide to fly home sooner as well as I will need to return in order to complete the trip.
Your grateful friend,
Zach
To which I replied:
“Good morning Zach,
Thank you for your heartfelt words. Despite the fact we only met a short time ago, I connected with you quickly and even though we grew up in very distant and culturally different places, I think we have a lot in common, apart from our age. Sometimes you never really get to know a person and sometimes a week is more than enough. I consider you a friend and a friend is someone you stick with through thick and thin. One of the reasons I’m doing the Camino is because of a good friend of mine who I lost a few years back, who was always there for me when I needed him. If I left without making sure you were ok, neither he, wherever he may be, nor I could ever forgive myself so I don’t want to hear any more about it. We walked into this hospital together and we’ll walk out of it together too. Let’s wait and see what the doctors say this morning and we’ll figure out our next steps from there. I’ll be with you in an hour.
Hug,
Javi”
I arrived at the hospital around ten. Zach wasn’t in the room so I sat down beside the bed to wait for him. A few minutes later he appeared, looking a little down in the mouth. He had come from the bathroom after the latest in a long line of defeats. Zilch. Each time Zach gets up to go to the toilet, those of us in A&E hold our breath, not because of the radioactivity that could emanate from in there, but because of how anxious we are to put an end to all of this. It reminds me of one of those American films where the aliens invade earth and the film shows clips of people from all over the planet glued to the television, be it at home, in a bar, at the office or at the hairdresser’s, watching how the invasion unfolds. I imagined a similar pattern; CNN opening the early evening news with the case of an American who was doing the Camino de Santiago and who is still quarantined in Spain after not being able to crap for a month. I imagined people of all nationalities glued to the TV, in New York, London, Madrid, Rio de Janeiro, Tokyo, Nairobi, Sydney and Jerusalem, waiting for the latest news, all working together, the world putting its differences aside, uniting in a game of virtual tug-of-war and pulling in unison to dislodge that meddling creature of Satan lying in the American’s lower abdomen.
A short while later the doctors came by on their morning ward round. It was a different pair to those yesterday but still a surgeon and an internist. As soon as they came in, they asked me to step out into the corridor for a moment and I told them that was fine, but that I took it they spoke English. The two of them said no at the same time and told me to stay if Zach didn’t speak any Spanish. The truth is that if we don’t insist on our leaders speaking decent English so that they don’t make a fool of themselves when they go abroad to supposedly defend our interests, we can’t expect it from doctors in Lugo Hospital either, but I think that in Spain, in general, language teaching needs to be reviewed as how can it be possible with English being compulsory in high schools until 18 years of age, for us to leave without knowing a damn word of English after all the money our parents invested and the time that we ourselves put in.
Apart from not speaking English, it became apparent that these doctors hadn’t read Zach’s history and didn’t seem to know much about his case. They were a bit surprised when we told them how many days he had gone without dropping the log down the waterfall, but they told us not to worry as they were going to apply a miracle-cure solution that would have him sorted in half an hour. As I saw they were a little lost, I asked them if they were referring to the solution that is applied for colonoscopies and, again with a surprised look on their faces, they told me that it was indeed and asked why I would say that. “Because you’ve already given him two litre and a half jugs of the stuff we still haven’t flushed anything away” – I replied, as the two of them almost fell over in shock. “Sweet mother of God!” - exclaimed one of them. The other one asked me if Zach has any history of this illness-with-no-name in his family and I said I didn’t know and that I would feel a little uncomfortable asking. She said they need to know as it could be something unexpected and undesirable obstructing his bowel, so I put the question to the American. Looking pale, he told me that there was no family history of any serious problems with the digestive tract, not immediate family anyway. The doctors said they were going to do more X-rays and try again with another dose of the same medicine, only a little stronger this time. For our peace of mind, we were told that his abdomen is still soft and as there aren’t any other symptoms, such as intense pain or vomiting, it’s safe to say the situation is under control.
After the doctors on duty visited, it became more or less clear that we had another personal ordeal ahead of us today in Lugo Hospital’s A&E. Given the outlook and the recommendation from the medics that Zach get up and move about, we decided to take things in our stride and walk up and down the corridors and then the ground floor. As we were walking Zach asked me if I’d ever seen the episode of South Park where one of the characters breaks the world record for the biggest crap in history. He showed me the video on YouTube and we both fell about laughing. Zach said that that episode of South Park is a joke in comparison with what he has cooking and that they’d be better leaving him up out on the roof terrace of the building.
We continued our walk, stopping off in the newsagents to buy some Sudoku books, as Zach has never tried it and I thought it might entertain him, and a deck of cards to have a few games while we waited for something to happen that now seems impossible. After playing cards for a while, I went down to the visitors’ cafeteria for some lunch and then outside to get a bit of air. For someone who doesn’t like hospitals, I’m certainly getting my fair share with the American.
After lunch I decided to do a round-up of events with my sisters, the doctors, to let them know how things are going. They both agreed on the diagnosis: if there was something seriously obstructing the bowel, as the surgeon who visited us today suggested, the congestion would be accompanied by other symptoms which Zach doesn’t have. They said it’s very strange but that everything is pointing towards this being a very brutal case of traveller’s constipation caused by a certain predisposition of the patient, maybe to do with the apprehension of doing his business in pilgrim hostels where the Geneva convention wouldn’t even let a prisoner of war sit, dehydration from the long walks in the sun and everything that comes with a change of diet: Zach’s a vegetarian yet he’s been stuffing himself with all sorts of meat here.
One of my sisters, Doctor Zen, added another variant to the equation which, in my humble opinion, shouldn’t be overlooked: Zach is in a hospital in Spain where he doesn’t understand anything of what’s happening around him and is far from his loved ones and home, so he’s likely so overwhelmed that instead of literally shitting himself, as we vulgarly put it when fear relaxes our sphincter muscles, he’s holding it all inside and there’s no medicine for that other than shipping the American back off to the motherland and letting him listen to the stars and stripes hymn once every eight hours; “Javi, I’ll bet you that this guy won’t go until he’s sat on the plane and sees the Statue of Liberty from the window”, she very graphically illustrated.
As I made my way back into the hospital, I spotted a guy in the entrance hall selling tickets for the Red Cross ‘golden lottery’. I thought that if “mierda” is used as a synonym for good luck in certain contexts, I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to tempt fate by buying a couple of tickets, one for Zach and the other for myself with the aim of splitting the prize money between us if either of us won. With the amount of luck the American has inside him, the chances of us winning are, in my opinion, quite high. Zach was delighted when I gave it to him and put an alarm on his mobile so that the 18th of July, the date of the draw, wouldn’t pass him by. Afterwards he told me that, in my absence, he had been doing some yoga exercises and he also showed me a video that he took of me dancing during that night out in The Wall in León, which he tells me inspired him to start a specific type of exercise that he thinks could stimulate his lethargic bowels. The dance in question was no big secret and was nothing more than the epileptic movements of someone who had has too much to drink and is convulsively moving in time with the music. Something similar to the Chunk’s “truffle-shuffle” in The Goonies.
Zach also told me that while I was down in the cafeteria having lunch, they took him down for more X-rays that we haven’t been told the results of yet. “What a year I’ve had”, he said all of a sudden, “it’s the second time in less than six months that I’ve ended up in hospital despite the supposedly healthy life I lead”. Zach had already told me briefly in León that he had a health scare in January which led him to seek urgent medical assistance. One Friday, as a stressful week at work was coming to an end, he started to feel very weak as if he was going to collapse at any moment. He used all his strength to make it home and spent most of the weekend in bed sleeping. He felt a bit better by Sunday and on Monday he was back at work in the IT company that provides solutions for financial institutions where he works. As he returned to the daily grind and stress, he again began to feel the same symptoms and as weak as before. At one particular moment, as he was speaking to a client in India who he had had it up to here with, he felt a pain in his chest and began gasping for air. He apologised to the client and told him that he was going to have to take himself up to hospital as he didn’t feel very well. Instead of saying of course and telling Zach he hoped it was nothing too serious, he continued speaking and asked him not to leave until they had resolved the problem at hand. “To hell with this”, Zach said to himself as he hung up with the guy still talking away.
He asked a work colleague for help as he didn’t feel strong enough to drive to the hospital himself and when he got there, he was treated as an emergency as the ECG detected an irregular heart rhythm. While he waiting for them to come and do some tests, Zach lay on a bed in the middle of the corridor connected to a machine to monitor his heart rate, as the hospital already had a lot of patients waiting. He had such a load of work on those weeks that his blackberry was still firmly attached to his hand even in those trying circumstances, as he replied to emails from the hospital bed. I’d like to think that it was partly to distract him and also to forget about the state of shock that his body must have been in as he found himself in that situation. Just then his blackberry started to ring. It was the pain in the ass Indian client again, this time on his work mobile. The mere sight of that jerk’s name appearing on the screen of his phone got Zach so worked up that the machine he was connected to began to beep, meaning that his heart rate was out of control. It was only then that he understood that he was in there because of the stress associated with his job, so he turned his mobile off and tried to relax.
Zach was diagnosed with atrial fibrillation, the most common type of abnormal heart rhythm in clinical practice which can be caused by many different factors. In this particular case, the subsequent tests and analysis showed that the American was absolutely fine, and that maybe a virus had caused this anomaly. When doctors don’t have an explanation for something they usually blame a virus, the medical catch-all term which is given to everything that can’t really be explained. He wasn’t prescribed any medication and was simply told to rest up for a few days. Zach had his own theory and was convinced that this incident was linked to his lifestyle and the stress that comes with a job that he doesn’t even particularly enjoy. The fact that the machine he was connected to went crazy when the annoying Indian phoned only served to confirm his theory. Zach wanted to change his life but he could never find the right time and didn’t know what else to do job-wise as he’d spent so many years training in the same field. He decided to do the Camino to have some time to reflect and think about where he was in his life and what he wanted to do next. And look where he ended up, in the same place he said he never wanted to end up again; in a hospital, afflicted with an unknown ailment which isn’t looking good.
I listened attentively to the American’s story and again began to think about whether fate exists and if so, why it made Zach and I meet on our respective paths. He seemed so dejected as he told me his story that I decided to tell him a similar story about something that happened to me, even though it’s not something I usually talk about, as I thought it might make him feel better and help him understand that what’s happening to him is more common that what he thinks and, in my personal opinion, based on my own experience, his body is telling him to change his lifestyle and look for something that makes him feel good. There’s no job in the world that’s worth losing your health over and at such an early age at that. Life’s too short to live it in fear. He has to be brave and not resign himself to going into the office like a zombie or taking medicine, if it gets to that stage, in order to be able to do his job; you don’t necessarily have to accept things due to a false sense of duty or because “that’s just the way it is”.
A few years back, I also went through a stressful time. I had started to work for one of the best banks in the world as head of department, as young as I was, and the pressure was on. Obviously due to the results that are expected from someone who holds a certain position in an institution of this calibre, but also due to the pressure that you impose on yourself out of fear of disappointing those who believed in you, in order to uphold your professional reputation and also out of amour propre, which can sometimes be excessive. Why is it so hard for us to admit that very often our problems are caused by a lack of modesty. So after several fifteen-hour working days in the office due to a couple of deals that needed closing at the time, my vision began to go all blurry and I started seeing double. At first I put it down to the amount of hours I’d spent in front of the computer screen and closed my eyes for a few seconds. When I opened them, I was still seeing double and no matter how much I tried to focus on the screen, I couldn’t read what was on it. I decided to get up and go to the bathroom to splash some cold water on my face, only to be left with the same negative results. It was no Lourdes and the water sure wasn’t holy.
I began to get worried as the minutes passed so I decided to go down and get some fresh air and walk about for a while. I did so for about ten minutes during which the situation didn’t improve. In certain types of jobs, such as the one I was doing, every now and again you hear about people who get a bit of a shock at an early age and, in these cases, fast acting can be crucial. As I’ve already made reference to on other occasions, I grew up amongst health professionals and perhaps being over-informed makes me pay closer attention to health issues than what others possibly would. I began to consider that maybe this double vision was related to something serious and that I should hop-skip it down to the hospital. I didn’t want to worry my sisters or my parents so I decided to phone Joserra, the brother of my friend Alberto. I’d already mentioned to Zach that this friend is one of the reasons I’m here doing the Camino de Santiago, and I clarified that a few years back I lost Alberto but gained his brother Joserra who, until then, I only knew briefly but those tragic circumstances brought us close in the same way I was close to his brother. Joserra got the highest marks in the MIR (resident doctor examination) in his year and is an internist in la Paz, one of the best hospitals in the country. I’m convinced that in a few years he’ll be recognised as one of the best in Spain in his specialisation, given his dedication and passion for medicine. I told Joserra what was wrong and he told me that the sensible thing to do would be to go straight to the hospital, even though it probably wouldn’t be anything too serious. He added that he was busy and couldn’t wait for me personally in A&E but that he would phone the doctor on duty to tell them to see me as quickly as possible.
I arrived at A&E fifteen minutes later and let those in admissions know what was wrong with me. Ten minutes later they called me into a room and a couple of male nurses asked me what my symptoms were and then took my blood pressure. They leapt up as they saw the reading on the instrument and told me to follow them. One of them asked the other if they should put me a wheelchair to move me and the other said no, we’d be quick. I started to think that this wasn’t real, this couldn’t be happening to me. I was only 34 years old and was hearing things that we all hope never to have to hear. They took me to a room where a couple of doctors were already waiting for me, surrounded by several nurses. They told me to take off my shirt and connected me to an ECG machine. They put a pill under my tongue and began to examine me and ask me questions to see if I knew where I was and if I was answering questions in a logical manner. I was relatively calm because I was convinced that all of this was excessive for what I thought was wrong with me, which was just that I was stressed and hospitals make me ill and make my blood pressure shoot up. “White coat syndrome” I think they call it. Afterwards they asked me to touch several points of my body with different fingers each time to see if I had coordination. There was a girl opposite me wearing the green hospital uniform who didn’t say a word. She was young and very pretty and seemed alarmed as she looked over at me. Her lips were lightly quivering and I thought she was going to burst out crying at any moment. I think she was a student on her first day of placement. The poor girl was scared stiffless. I smiled over at her to try and reassure her, convinced as I was that there was no way I was going to kick the bucket under these unfortunate circumstances due to the stress of a couple of loans and all the pain in the backsides who wouldn’t stop phoning me to tell me to do this and that as it was the most important thing in the world and it couldn’t wait. A bit like Zach and the asshole Indian client.
The diagnosis was a hypertensive crisis related to stress. The tests that they carried out in the subsequent weeks showed that everything was alright. The analyses showed normal levels of cholesterol and sugar. My resting blood pressure was absolutely fine but it went up a bit during working hours, nevertheless the average reading for the day was within the normal range for my age. I spoke to the doctor who took on my case and he told me there was nothing to be alarmed about but that the type of job I was doing was causing my blood pressure to increase and that this could, not now, but within ten years or so if I continued on the same path, place me amongst the population at risk of suffering from high blood pressure and I could need continuous medication. I was pretty sure that the problem was to do with me rather than my job as such. Of course, my job had its stressful moments but my blood pressure could have just as easily gone up while working on the till in a supermarket or in a bar where you don’t get a moment to come up for air, or in a mine. Not forgetting that those jobs pay a lot less than what I was getting so I’m not going to blame my misfortune on the type of job. I feel it would be disrespectful to all those other people who don’t have freedom of choice or who have to go on with what they have and what’s more, be thankful for it. No, my problem was something else, something I had been chewing over for some time. My problem was seriously analysing if what I had been doing for some years now was what I wanted to do for the rest of my life, however much satisfaction it may have brought me; whether or not I wanted to retire at 65 after working twelve hour days from Monday to Friday, then look back and realise I hadn’t given the other restless ideas I had in me a chance to flourish. Given that 100% of the time the answer was no, it was at that moment, while confined to a hospital bed in A&E, connected to a machine, I said to myself: “dammit Javi, what the hell are you doing here”. So from that moment on I knew I had to draw up a plan B. There were no excuses, it was time to be brave and break the dynamic. Take risks, like ten years ago, when I left for Stockholm empty-handed, then Belfast and after Belfast, London. At that moment, I decided that the first stage of that plan B would be to do the Camino de Santiago, something which I had promised myself for a long time.
Zach listened to my story just as attentively and thanked me for sharing it with him, telling me he found it very inspiring. He also admitted that this is the exact same problem he thinks he has but that he still hasn’t worked up enough courage to take that leap into the unknown, break away from a comfortable life and try other things. I think Zach now gets why I think we have so many things in common and why I connected with him so quickly. In some way or other, I can see myself in him and I feel the need to let him know that if the untimely loss of the friend I told him about these days taught me anything, it’s that we are here for a short time. We only have today and every tomorrow is a gift. Being as privileged as we are to be able to make decisions about our lives, we can’t afford to waste them by doing something that doesn’t fulfil us or that makes us unhappy. Manifestations of stress are, in my opinion, nothing more than signs of inner dissatisfaction, conflicts to be resolved, signs from your body that you should change certain things in your life; after all it is wiser than you, it has gathered genetic information from generations passed and it knows what is best for you.
It was getting late so I told Zach I was going to look for the doctor on duty to see if there was any news. She told me that the last few X-rays were better and that some gaseous activity and bowel movement could be seen, so they hope that the volcano will start to erupt over the next few hours. Despite this, the American can’t leave until some magma has been expelled. I explained the situation to Zach and told him that we would have to make a decision tomorrow as if there is no “Big Bang”, he’ll have to consider signing the self-discharge form and going back to the United States off his own accord to get a thorough check-up done once there. For obvious reasons, I didn’t want to tell him that it was likely that they didn’t want to do this check-up in Lugo due to fear of what they might find. He turned to me seriously and said that whatever happens, he intends on leaving the hospital tomorrow and will look at flights to see if he can go back home a day earlier than planned.
I travelled back down into Lugo again and spent the night in the same hotel where the owner can’t quite believe his eyes every day he sees me coming back with my pilgrim rucksack, meaning that the D-day landing in Normandy has again been postponed. After the customary hot shower to relax, I went out for some dinner and while in the tapas area, I ended up running into the attractive internist who dealt with us on the second day. She was having something to eat with her boyfriend and offered me a pintxo and a beer, which I gladly accepted. She was surprised to hear that we were still at the hospital, as she was off today, and told me that this is all very strange and that they’ve never seen anything like it before. She added that it’s a pity that the American is going to leave and have the problem solved elsewhere as this story is worthy of publication in a medical journal. After spending a while with them, I decided it was time to leave and politely said goodbye, as even though her boyfriend was perfectly nice and friendly the whole time, I got the impression that he didn’t exactly want to spend the first evening of his long-anticipated weekend, apart from with his girlfriend, with a third wheel who’s there because his American friend hasn’t been to the toilet in a month. Perfectly understandable, of course.
As I arrived at the hotel I sent Zach a message to tell him that I had some good news and some bad news for him. The good news is that I had met the doctor who visited us yesterday out having tapas and we chatted for a while. The bad news is that her boyfriend was there too. Zach made me smile with his typical American reply: “shit man, I was getting really excited until you threw that part in about her boyfriend! Oh well...”
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