PANDEMICS (1980-2020), MEDICAL PLANS AND CRUELTY

A close friend, a woman, suffers of allergies and during certain times of the year, the symptoms get worse. This time, around three months ago, she began to feel sick, tired and was treated for her allergies. The treatment did not help. As she began to deteriorate, unable to use hr arms, legs, drink or eat easily, the doctor stopped the treatment and did all kind of tests to find out what was going on. The tests had to be sent to the USA and came back indicating she has an autoimmune disease. As she became more ill, they rushed her to the hospital and was treated with very strong dosages of cortisone. She was placed in a large room with four more patients. Within two weeks all the patients became infected with Covid. 

As it happens in Puerto Rican hospitals, unless you are rich and can pay for a private nurse, relatives usually stay 24 hours with the patient, helping with the basics: bathing, feeding them. Her husband was there for two weeks, and when she tested positive also, he asked if the hospital was going to test him. “No”, was the answer, to go home, get a referral from his doctor and be tested. He also came out positive and did the 14 days quarantine and then turned out negative. Luckily, the rest of the family came out negative. Like all Covid patients, she was isolated and no one but medical staff is allowed in her room. They communicate with her through the smartphones, but she cannot respond. For reasons that are not clear to me, her treatment of the original autoimmune disease was stopped and new ones, experimental, dealing with the virus began. She is a very good friend, with unconditional solidarity like “primitive Catholics” were with each other before Christianity fell into the hands of politicians; a  strong woman who is not easily scared, determined and ready to act, a Puerto Rican “matrona” in the fullest meaning of the world. A friend we all should have. 

As I wait daily for news -her husband and son keep me informed, I read two short stories dealing with medical plans: Indian Camp by Ernest Hemingway; and Face Time by Lorrie Moore. Cruelty and medicine are themes addressed in both stories. Hemingway does not hide it, places it right on the face of the reader. Moore is more reserved, dresses up cruelty as part of medical protocols, uncertain science as it is applied by medicine, experimenting with people. While talking with my friend’s husband and son, news are not very promising, I find that both of them sound very tired, kind of having given up with the “mistakes”, not on purpose, made by the medical professionals, institutions. Cruelty is not in their vision of what has taken place.

During the previous pandemic, around 1980, my very good friend Frank was hospitalized and isolated. He suffered of what was informally known as the “Gay disease”. It was not yet in the public domain but some gays in San Francisco and New York were becoming very sick and doctors did not know what was going on. Visitors could see him through a glassed wall. The medical personnel treated him, but were simply figuring out it this or that medicine would work out. None did. Some made him sicker. He gradually became emaciated. The broad shoulders, strong arms, legs, handsome face, man ended up looking like a character from a horror movie: big eyes and a skeleton. He died around two or three months after being hospitalized. 

When I first visited him, the hospital social worker asked me if I could meet with her. I knew nothing about what was going on and was informed about it, interviewed, gave names of other people who knew him and that we were just the best of friends, no sex. Luckily, it was not a communist country, otherwise, I would have been interned and never heard of again. Some quarantines are more restrictive than others, more so, when nothing is known about the disease. 

Frank was the first friend of mine who became infected with HIV. As time went by, more of my friends began to get sick, all of them died; one killed himself in my apartment. I was away for the weekend and the memory of rushing back to New York to deal with the police, cleaning the mess left by him in the bathroom, where the suicide took place, seems now like it was a cathartic event. I did not ask another friend who knew what was going to happen, how he did it, but the walls of the bathroom were covered with excrements. It did not look like it was a peaceful life-death transition. Having very supportive friends helped me go through the process, including, dealing with my work at CCNY, and face the “very nice” liberal petite bourgeoisie hetero colleagues. Had they known what was going on among gay men, their passive-agressive kindness would have taken a not so pleasant turn. 

In Hemingway’s story, once the lady gave birth, the baby bathed, they went over to check on the husband. He could not take the pain his wife was going thru and killed himself, slashing his throat. Moore ends her tale ascertaining that  her father’s desire to be able to live up to November and be able to vote was too much to hope for.

After my friend’s burial a group of friends got together to held a memorial. We did not talk about the disease, suicide nor praised his greatness or used the moment to go into “touchie-feelie” anecdotes. Like the “grand queens”, gays of my generation can be and act, we dished and trashed him. We had very good wines and “pate de foie gras” -one of them used to call it using Americana gay talk “French liver spread.” There were some straight friends in the memorial, and all they could do was laugh; and, I am sure, say to themselves, “Oh, my God!, they’ve been cruel.”