"FREE" Hospital in Vilcabamba, Ecuador

Yes, there is a free hospital in Vilcabamba, Ecuador. It was built with public funds years ago. A Japanese man gave an electrocardigram machine to the hospital that is said to have been valued at $40,000.00...so, they named the hospital after him: KAKCHI-OTANI. It is operated by the Catholics. It is a simple block building near downtown. It has private rooms and wards. It is kept immaculately clean. A young man came into the room at about 5 am and swept it, mopped it, and then went over it with some kind of disinfectant on another mop. The food was OK but I usually didn't know what it was that I was eating. OK, so why was I a patient there? It really started about two weeks earlier when I was visiting in Otavalo, a town north of Quito...well, at least in my opinion, that is when my problem began. One day an acquaintance I met invited me to go see the Peguche Waterfalls near the village of Peguche which is located about 10 or 12 miles North of Otavalo. You can go nearly all the way by taxi, which is inexpensive, but you have to walk then through a very old eucalyptus forest.I could not keep up with him so I lagged behind huffing and puffing. (I did not tell him I would get short of breath if I hurried...so I had to stop and rest a couple of minutes several times before I got to the bridge overlooking the falls.) Then I had to walk back to where we had kept a taxi waiting. A day or so later, I then went to Vilcabamba. There I started coughing and thought I had just caught a bad cold. About a week later, one day I was having lunch at a natural food restaurant (a large bowl of soup, which was VERY good), but all of a sudden I got very nauseated, There was no other customers at that point in the room (most people ate outside). I saw a door and thought it might be a restroom but it was locked. I went back to my seat, and about that time a woman came in to pick up a take out order. That's when I could hold it no longer, and let loose right in the bowl of that delicious soup. She came over and put her arm around my should telling me she had cared for her late husband for two years before he expired and she could help me. She had them to bring a wet towel from the kitchen and she wiped my forehead and they brought me a glass of orange juice from the kitchen. A man wearing a long leather coat appeared on the scene from nowhere and he told em, "He just got low on sugar and was going to pass out" I had happen to notice him earlier walking in the vicinity of the Catholic Church on one side of the central square and the thought came to me that he was probably a Monk or some religious figure, but I later heard he was a truck driver from Oregon down for the big natural food gathering that was going on in that area. (OK, Fred, get to the point. This is what my brother used to tell me if I drug on too long it telling an event, but I think it is important here for you to know the background of what I think it was all about)..So, this kind woman told me that she had a friend from the States who lived nearby and usually came into town over the week-end and that if I cared to tell her where I was staying she would have her check on me, saying she had noticed that I had been coughing a lot. I told her, and the nurse came to see me a couple of days later. She said, "Come on, we are going to the hospital" So, we got a taxi and went to the nearby free hospital (the only hospital of any kind in this town). No one there spoke English and my Spanish is rather limited. After listening to me breathe, the nurse there said, "Bronchial pneumonia, three days, hospital; stay?" So, I said, Si, stay. I was there for 2 1/2 days and the nurse who took me came to check on me on Wed (I was admitted on Monday am), she had talked with the doctor (She spoke fluent Spanish), and both he and she thought I should go to a larger hospital in Loja since the X-Ray machine here was broken and a patient diagnosed with pneumonia should have their lungs x-rayed. So, she and a taxi driver acquaintance took me to a large hospital in Loja about 40 miles North. I was there until Sun at noon when I was discharged. The bill there was $900.00. It was a very modern hospital, good food, private room, huge TV, etc. I knew that Medicare would not pay outside USA but then when I got home I remembered I had a supplemental policy that might pay some on it. I was surprised about 10 days after filing a claim that I received a check for $900.00 Some way to make money in Ecuador as I didn't have to pay for food and living accomodations for a week but I wouldn't want to repeat it. (I did have to buy my own medication at the free hospital, but everything else was free). Two other interesting things developed out of that trip to the falls; I will tell later.