IN STEREO

My wife died after ten days in intensive care. I mean, for me it was [like] one day, but at the same time, a long time. And everything costs you dearly. I took out 5000 bolivianos [~US$700] from my pocket like it was nothing. But when you are in this [kind of situation], the days go by and it becomes like you get drunk with the problems and you do not realise. And suddenly you come to the final moment, when there is no solution and they tell you, “Well, we did everything we could.” Nothing we did mattered. I gave everything for my wife, absolutely everything. She still passed away. Everything was in vain. And then you do the accounts. I worked for a year to cover all the expenses. I left my job and left a lot of things because I did not want to get out of bed, open my eyes. I wanted to go back to sleep.

Now it has been a good while and I want to take up my projects, my life, my travels again. At the end of the year, a party is held in Potosí to farewell the dead. So with that, I'm starting again. I think there is still hope [for] the specialty hospital. When my wife was director of this [health] programme, she had a very sad story. She told me, “People in Potosí die all the time.” I sometimes accompanied her to burials up there in the Pailaviri camp. And she would tell me, “When I go and visit them, at first they tell me I'm wrong: ‘But Mrs Maria, I'm going to recover.’ And when I see them in intensive care, they cannot speak because they have a tube in their mouth. And it gives me a lot of grief, because I already see them dead,” she said. Then when she was in intensive care, I saw the same thing. – Enrique