Medical Care In The DR (update)

Massiel and I are very lucky that about 2 1/2 years ago we found a wonderful woman, by the name of Paulina, to be our housekeeper. She is one of my favorite Dominicans. She is very sweet, honest, and more hard working than you can imagine. She actually invents things to clean. Our apartment sparkles, thanks to her. Many years ago, while working for someone she fell and somehow her leg popped out of its socket and she was left with one leg shorter than the other. She could not afford any medical care, so she was left in this condition. For all these years she has walked with a very noticeable limp. This is how she was when we met her. About 3 or 4 months ago she told us that she was going into the hospital to have an operation that would fix her leg. About a month ago after much testing, she was finally admitted to one of the free, public hospitals in Santiago to have corrective surgery. This is surely one of the few benefits available to the poor here in the DR. They couldn't, however, operate right away. The two reasons given were that the piece that they were going to put into her hip had not as yet arrived, and that she was going to need people to donate blood for her, because she would need blood during the operation. The piece got there first and then it was a matter of hunting up enough people to give blood. Finally that happened. The operation was a success and after a few days, she was released from the hospital and sent home. She complained of weakness shortly after she got home and after a couple more days she started passing out. She was taken back to the hospital. They discovered that she was anemic, because while she was in the hospital, including the operation, she never received any of the blood that was donated for her. She is now out and recuperating nicely.