A few years ago in a meeting with the poet Diana Bellessi, I told her about some circumstances that had happened to me in the Peralta Ramos maternity hospital a year after the military coup of 1976. «You have to write that down and let it be known» was her comment, but since then the opportunity to do so has not been given and now that they ask me for a text for Intimate Worlds I believe that we must take advantage and comply with the desire of that great teacher.
It was March and it was still hot, my one-year-old baby began to have some lines of fever and I consulted with the pediatrician by phone who indicated an antibiotic by mouth. Milagros was happily crawling around the house, so I gave her the medicine and left her with the person who took care of her in the afternoons so I could go to work at the Institute of Religious Culture. I don’t know if Julia – that was her name – he mistaken the soup adapted for babies with another envelope of common soup for adults, that may have been the reason that overwhelmed the baby. And when she got sick she began to vomit, whereupon the protection of the antibiotic ceased and the infection grew towards the brain. We would find out about that later.
When I came back, the girl was complaining, she had a fever but not too much. I took her to the Peralta Ramos Maternity guard, in Las Heras and Austria, it was quite close to our apartment at that time. When leaving her, the fresh air seemed to revive her and the doctors indicated to continue as we came, without observing anything in particular. They added Reliveran for vomiting. But despite giving it to them, they did not stop, Milagros sobbed and the fever began to rise.
«No, ma’am, don’t come, my office is full of people, there’s a virus and all the kids are sick,» the pediatrician told me. “In addition, ma’am, other colleagues have already seen it and they are excellent. She doesn’t get anxious, it’s not her first baby, what’s wrong with her? But that sob was like that of a newborn kitten and also, the look got weird. Yes, my baby looked at me weird. I took a taxi and went to Dr. Llabrés’ office on Juramento street. Truly not a fly entered the waiting room. But the doctor still heard and went out to ask «What is the baby who complains like that?» «It’s Miracles, doctor.» He looked at me seriously after looking at my daughter. “I have never been so grateful when someone disobeyed me. Yes, what you say – and he pointed the flashlight at Mila’s eye, which didn’t blink – is so. Weird look because she is blind. You have to go in now. He ”called on the phone and gave the order to receive us at the Peralta Ramos. On the way I noticed that Mili was losing the mobility of her neck.
We ended up in the sector for the homeless – that’s what they called it -, something I found out about later. My roommate was the mother of a baby who had been born six months ago with only half a lung and it was known that she would not survive. She had a perfect face and a tiny body with which her mother got along perfectly. That is, in addition to changing and bathing him, she had learned to put on and take off the oxygen tent and other care that I don’t remember well today. That woman received me with incomparable sweetness, I accompanied her until the end of that story. I hugged her tight when she, bewildered, wondered how to resume her life and rebuild her bond with her four-year-old daughter whom she had hardly been able to see since the birth.
Mili had a lumbar puncture and they put the serum on her head, for which they shaved off part of her hair. She started the first night of hospitalization. Each mother had a chair next to her baby’s bed and that was our resting place. Around ten there had been a change of nurses and I, half asleep, managed to hear some terrified complaints coming from the bathroom. It sounded Guarani to me. Indeed, it was in the only language in which this woman could express herself. I saw her naked and desperate because they were «bathing» her between two nurses, one with a mop and another with a hose from approximately two meters away, without trying to calm her down at all, on the contrary, they shouted louder than her: «You are full of bugs.» It was incredible to see a person reduced to that state at almost the end of the 20th century, in the Recoleta neighborhood of the City of Buenos Aires. I thought that just by crossing Las Heras Avenue, there were some of the most sumptuous apartments in the Capital. And yet, the scene clearly showed how much we still participated in the primitivism of the caves (fulfilled her wish, dear Diana).
I decide to return to my daughter’s crib room because at that time and exhausted as I was, I couldn’t think of how I could help the woman. Passing by the infirmary, I see those who had arrived for the new shift: “Look at that puncture vial”, a middle-aged lady says to her partner, “that baby is already dead. The liquid is completely white and thick. Of course, as you suppose, it was what had been extracted from my daughter’s marrow. But anyway, I don’t give up easily. My daughter, she didn’t give up either. She survived and got better day by day. But I did not count on what was going to happen with the other mothers.” How could it be her? Wasn’t she the hopeless girl?» «What accommodation does this woman have so that her daughter improves while ours get worse?» Incredibly – for me, in my ignorance – even the detail that I read several newspapers caught their attention.
Friends and friends came to see me early after breakfast and left me different copies that they had already read. This was mysterious to them. «Dresses? Why so many different newspapers if it is the same news? The intimate differences between social classes are evident in a twenty-four hour coexistence where we all ran a desperate race for the lives of our babies. The slightest thing counts, everything is cause for suspicion, mistrust. The intellectual air, my vocabulary, the way I conversed with the doctors. I constantly felt mistrust of myself. As Lucía Lagargione would accurately instruct me years later: “Never underestimate class hatred.” Meanwhile, babies with summer diarrhea paraded. I remember one especially beautiful one, her mother had her in diapers and rubber panties, her torso naked and a fluffy towel was tied around her tummy. «You should put a robe on her, a T-shirt, she’s sweating a lot.» But the healer had recommended this way, or at least she understood it that way. Two days later, the diarrhea stopped but she developed pneumonia from which she was to die the following week.
The cycle was repeated with infinite variations. I looked for a social worker from the hospital. “Look, ma’am, they don’t allow me to act, I know we should give instructions when the mothers are hospitalized, but they don’t authorize me, I was recently appointed, whatever I ask for, the answer is no. There is no budget but there is no permission for anything either and the truth is that there does not seem to be any interest or will to change. Doctors do what they can and lose kids every day to issues like this and malnutrition. Most bring them when the situation is already very serious. Yes, ma’am, I also know of that woman who gives the baby diarrhea so that she can come to eat. She has a terrible addiction to food and is a case of severe obesity. This summer she already brought it three times. But no, they don’t let me intervene at all.»
Milagros begins to see lights and shadows, manages to move a little arm. The resident doctors come to examine her. I notice they prepare the syringes. «If they are going to puncture, I will leave the room.» While she takes the syringe, the doctor responds: “Ma’am, in babies the pain threshold is lowered” “Ah! Yes? And the threshold of terror is raised. She is half blind, stiff, she asks: does it tie the car? Atá Uca? She, that is, she wants to see her brother Lucas, who is not allowed to enter, she hears the horns but cannot see where they are coming from. Her whole body aches, she gets pricked every now and then, there are weird smells, she’s barely a year old and you think she’s amazing! just because the pain is a little softer?” Dr. Levin, Associate of Pediatrics at the University of Buenos Aires, intervened: “Did you hear her? This baby is alive thanks to her mother’s disobedience. If you are not going to know how to listen to mothers, better look for another specialty. We’re going to do something. Next week they have the last practical. I am going to take care of the baby and the practical one is going to be given by the lady. And she is going to evaluate them. The fact that she says that she doesn’t listen to her, that she doesn’t know or can’t listen to her, she doesn’t approve. Because the lives of many kids who are going to attend depend on that.” And that was how I had to answer the questions from this group of doctors who wanted to find out how I had realized the seriousness of the case. Unexpectedly, although I never put it on my resume, I taught a class at the Medical School for pediatric residents.
In the two weeks that I spent in that place eating abundantly, I emphasize that the food was good, I lost eleven kilos. We cleaned the wards, we worked hard because the maternity hospital is a building with high ceilings, huge rooms, and there was no staff. We replaced workshop employees and also did nursing tasks. We also dozed but couldn’t really sleep. Only those who had a replacement so they could go home one afternoon to take a nap. I didn’t have anyone. My sister Beatriz had traveled to Uruguay for a Psychology Congress, my sister-in-law had suffered a car accident and was in a cast. The men -unless they were doctors or nurses- could not enter the rooms because sometimes the mothers had to change and we did not have facilities that provided privacy. So, the father of my children could only see me in the corridor, but he could not accompany the baby. So I didn’t sleep soundly until we were “discharged”.
But each advance of my daughter against everything predicted, served as a support for me.. A mixture of maternal love and a spirit of contradiction, «no and no, they don’t defeat us, just like that.» From the beginning she talked to him and sang to him, when she recovered her sight she showed him a magazine with photos. The last day, already changed to get out of her, I supported her on her floor, during the second week, I had gotten her out of bed daily encouraging her to crawl. But that day she stood up and clinging to the bedspread -I think I can see her- she stood firm. After a few days at home, she started walking through life. But what I will never, ever forget was the meeting between the two brothers in the hospital corridor. My children were a year and a half older, calculate, Lucas was still almost a baby. Mila barely sees him, she stretches out her arms and her brother tells her: “Now Uca takes care of you, baby, not doctor.” And so we left, courageous, to continue our adventure. The pains -both their own and those of others- remained in a little bundle on the way that since then, stubbornly, accompanies the steps like a weight on one side, barely perceptible to others.
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Grace Perosio He was born at dawn on June 14, 1950 in the middle of a storm. Written with a stormy air, her life was fatally linked to melodrama, one misfortune after another. She was born to think, but in order not to forget what she thought, she had to learn to write. She enthusiastically wrote twelve books of poems, plus a few essays on other poets. Such insistence moved the Municipal Award Jury, which awarded her the 3rd Prize to her collection of poems “El Ansia” (2019). As compensation for so much mental life, she practiced different disciplines: dance, yoga, tai chi, swimming, painting and singing! But if they ask her what served her the most, including Literature at USAL, she answers: “Acrobatics! To live in Argentina, first the acrobatics, second the bicycle.” Graciela ventures more into autofiction every day and her latest book “Fresias de octubre” is a cross between lyrics, operatic script, sick parts and even a touch of humorous narration.
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Fuente: Titulares.com