Yesterday my little feet hit the ground in Bogota, Colombia. This is the first time in 6 years that I am traveling. I mean really traveling. Once I discovered Argentina and fell in love, I sort of stopped traveling to other places. I think Paris was my last trip outside of Buenos Aires in 2003. Most of my traveling was between California and Buenos Aires, and once I moved here in 2004, I had a year of reverse traveling.
After the car accident in 2006, I mostly stopped traveling. I had too much pain. I made small trips to Uruguay and Chile, and a few inside Argentina. This was so unlike me. I used to always be on a plane somewhere. Now I was no where except in Buenos Aires.
It is amazing how much a pill twice a day can change your life, here I am in Bogota, Colombia. Lyrica for me is a lifesaver. I am completely without pain. I spent 8 hours on a plane, most of it sleeping. I was so excited to be traveling that I didn't really sleep the night before. The Lyrica makes me a little disorganized, but maybe that is a good thing. I stayed up all night packing, and organizing. Maxi thought I was crazy. She went to bed. On my bed. Patiently waiting for me to come. Every once in awhile she would come out and look at me, then wander back to my bedroom. She knew something was up.
She is going to spend the 3 weeks with Juan, her paseador. Bootcamp. I know he will not put up with her shenanigans like I do. I am glad. Hopefully I will get back a more passive puppy. I miss her. She is turning out to be a great dog.
Landing in Bogota was interesting. Spanish is not a problem for me. I had to adjust to the accent. I found that when I did not understand something it was an issue of the accent. I now realize how Argentine my spanish is.
The taxi driver to my hostal was sort of a buffoon. He tried to tell me it was hot out. It was a cool 66. We had a very disjointed conversation. Getting any information out of him was useless. He had no idea where he was going. I am glad it was a prepaid taxi from the airport. It only cost $9 USD.
I am staying in the home of Myriam and Andres. They live in the Zona Rosa, the north of Bogota. I found them on Hostal World. They call their place Hostal Campobello. At first I was going to stay in the Candelaria. This is the center. For some reason I decided not to.
I have rented rooms in my apartment for 4 years. Now it is my turn to stay in someone else's home. Their home is beautiful. It is huge. I have a beautiful bedroom with a bathroom, that opens out onto a courtyard. It is scrupuously clean. The courtyard is gorgeous, full of plants, trees, and flowers. The home is in a very quiet barrio.
When I first arrived Myriam was about to leave, she started to greet me in English (my credit card info is all in US data) I answered her in Spanish. She raised her eyebrows "Argentina" she said to me. I laughed. I told her that I am Norteamericana, but I live in Buenos Aires. From then on we spoke in Spanish. She is a very gracious person. She left me with Andres her husband to help me out.
I got settled and then asked Andres for information around the barrio. He was very sweet, but not that helpful. I guess Myriam runs the show. He drew me a funny little map for the things I was looking for. Off I went.
The first things that hit me is that it is very clean here. There is no graffiti and no garbage on the street. I walked through the barrio to get to the main street recommended by Andres. A group of guys passed me. In BA in an unfamiliar area I would have tensed for the comments, here they just checked me out and said nothing. How nice.
I found the bridge and crossed the street. My first attempt to use the ATM failed. I went inside to the supermarket. Wow. Que intersante. Very different. More like in Mexico. More junk food. DIfferent than Argentine junk food. I found another ATM. This one liked me better.
I must have looked like an idiot, because finally someone asked me if I needed help. I told her no, that I was visiting and I just liked looking at the different foods. They are very friendly here. There is no edge. It is very comfortable.
I decide to go out and walk around. I find Calle 100 which is a huge main street. I walk and walk. There is nothing spectacular to look at. It is already dark. People are neatly dressed. I like how they look. The men are handsome. Guapissmimo. But I have always liked Colombian men. I stick out. Here the women have kept their beautiful dark hair and looks. They have not felt the need to make themself fake blonds.
In my walking I discover the restaurant that Andres has recommended to me. It is a very simple place. I go in. There are a couple of families. I sit in the corner. The waiter comes with a menu. It is so dark I cannot read it. I get up and go to the center of the room where there is light. The waiter comes to assist me.
I tell him "Yo estoy una anciana, no parezco, pero estoy, no puedo leer en el oscuro." He says nothing. OK, no jokes. "No como carne." I say to him. Immediately he says "Pollo de la plancha." Broiled chicken. He tells me it comes with salad and potatoes. Then I see there is ajiaco on the menu. I love ajiaco. "¿Tienes ajiaco?" He nods his head. "OK," I say to him, "Quiero ajiaco." I also order a soft drink cola called "Colombiana."
He brings me a basket with warm arepas. They are wonderful filled with cheese, and two great salsas. One is mild and one is very spicy. I do know now why Diego's mother once told me that my arepas were the best outside of medellin. Soon comes a bowl of steamy ajiaco to die for. It is full of chicken in a creamy sauce with corn. I get a side dish of rice and avocado and a cream sauce. I love the cola Colombiana. I am in heaven.
My waiter is a bit taciturn. He comes to ask me how everything is. "Muy rico" I tell him. I explain to him that I live in Argentina and that everything there is empanadas, pizza, pasta, and asado. It is good, but I miss this kind of food. I cannot stop eating. I think for a second the waiter smiles.
I have read that Lyrica the drug I take for Fibromyralgia increases your appetite. It has had the opposite effect for me. I cannot finish my meal. The food is wonderful and I want to eat more, but my stomach is bursting. I pay my bill; 17,1000 peso. This is about $10USD with tip. (I gave him 20,000.) So far it looks like Bogota is much cheaper than Buenos Aires.
I start to walk back to my hostal. I go to the market and buy some tea, water, and cirulas. They are a plum that I used to buy in Mexico. I love the fruit here. Mango, paypayas are in abundance. The fruit is more tropical than in Argentina. There are vendors on the street who are selling large cups of mangos cut up covered in creme. There are others who are making arepas.
I get lost. It is dark. It is also cold. I am wearing my capris over my leggings. A long sleeve shirt, and my polar. The Internet lied about the temperature. I ask a man for directions. He gives them to me. I continue walking. A few men call me "linda" or "hermosa" but it is not threathening. This is a good thing as I really stick out here.
I thought I was close. But I feel lost again. This is frustrating. I decide to go right to the main street and look for the big health clinic. I know if I can find this, I will find where I am staying. I stop a woman on the street, "Una consulta por favor" and I ask. She points and tells me it is two blocks. I guess I am not as lost as I think.
Finally I am at the door of my hostal. I open it and Andres is eating dinner with another guest he introduces to me as Gilbert who is from Cali. Andres asked me how I fared. I tell him I found the restaurant and that it was spectacular. I tell him how I got lost. He looks concerned. "How do did you do?" He asks. "Everyone always wants to help una rubia." I tell them. They laugh in agreement. This ends my first day in Bogota.
It has been years since I have really traveled. Before I moved to Buenos Aires, I was always on an airplane. Europe, South America, LA. (Los Angeles to those of us that lived in the Bay Area, was another country.) I was somewhere, although mostly here. Then I moved here.
I wanted to travel, to see the rest of South America, to see Argentina. I was here a year when the fateful car accident happened. My life was never the same. I changed physically and mentally. I thought my body had healed, but it was a trucho - it was fooling me.
I made small trips - to Mendoza, Bariloche, Uruguay, and Chile. They were small trips. Never more than 5 days. I never traveled more than that. Then I stopped traveling. The pain in my back was so tremendous I could not think of going anywhere. Only to the natural hot springs here in Argentina. Even then, the idea of sitting on a bus for 8 hours was torture.
The day I was diagnosed with fibromyalgia was a day of liberation. The medication has relieved me of my pain and given me back my life. It makes me a little more dingy than normal. But I can function. On Saturday morning I got up and for the first time in I don't remember how long, I put on music and danced. I used to do that every morning. Put on tango music and walk, do ochos. I left the music on. All kinds of music. Now filling my apartment where there once was silence. Everyday there is music. All of my music. What a change.
The first thing I did was email my friend Nancy. "I am coming for Thanksgiving turkey" I wrote her. Nancy lives in Florida. I have not been in the US since Jan 06. I want to go shopping. Target, watch out this Rubia is on her way with her credit cards!
Then I had to think, where else did I want to go. I need a vacation. It has been years since I have really traveled. Somewhere exciting, where I could really see some new things. Chile? No, I can go there anythime. Same with Uruguay. Venezuela? No way, not even an option. Colombia, obvio! I have always wanted to go there. I lived with a Colombian man for 4 years or so and he always talked about Colombia, it was a lastima I never got to go there.
I began to research flights. Where did I want to go? Bogota? Medellin? Cartagena? So many choices. In the end I decided to go to Bogota first and end with Medellin. I left the middle of my trip open. I will ask in Bogota for recommendations. You never know what places people who live there might recommend. I can always go to Cartagena.
I booked my flight to Bogota, then to Miami. Because I spent hours and hours surfing 9 million sites, I managed to get a great deal on my tickets. I found what I think will be great places to stay. Inexpensive but in great barrios. If not, they will be interesting experiences. I always think positive.
I want to dance salsa in Bogota. I also want to dance tango. I emailed the people in Bogota and Medellin for information on Tango. Both gave me their cells and told me to call. Juan in Medellin has been incredible. They have lots of tango in Medellin and I cannot wait to go and dance there. Juan has sent me lots of information. Plus Colombian food..I am going to die - arepas, frijoles negros, ajiaco. I will be in heaven. I will have to do lots of walking and dancing.
Maximiliana will be spending her 3 weeks dentention or boot camp with her paseador Juan Carlos. I thought about sending her to the campo and one of the chi chi doggie training camps. But, she already has "issues" from being abandoned, I didn't want to add to them. I figured bunking with her paseador was a better option. Besides he will kick her ass. I am sure her bad habits will be broken in no time. Either that or she will have given him a nervous breakdown. I don't call her "La Demonia" for no reason.
So here I sit, in a messy, disorganized apartment. There is stuff everywhere. I leave on Thursday. I had a small despidida in Torquato Tasso on Sunday. Thanks to Miguel Romero. When I tell people I am going to Colombia, they ask me if I am going there to work. They mean am I teaching. It has been a long time since people asked me that. Not having pain is showing in my face, in my dancing. I tell them I am going to find a new "pareja". "What is wrong with the Argentines?" they ask me. I laugh. "Me encanto con Los Colombianos." I tell them. "Vas a enganchar con un Colombiano y no vas a volver." Nadie nunca sabe.
If you have been reading this blog for any amount of time, then you know, that I have been suffering from pain in my back. In 2006 I was in a bad car accident here in Buenos Aires. I fractured my hip and damaged my knee. I thought that I had recovered from that accident. I am not a hypochondriac and I don't like being told no. I pushed myself beyond what my doctors thought I could do.
I knew my body was not the same, but I pushed myself harder. I was not going to give up. For years after I had a nagging pain in my back. My doctor blew it off. It was the humidity of Buenos Aires. It was the aftermath of the accident. The same for my knee. The pains got worse.
If you knew me during this time, I was a mess. I was not me. I was exhausted all the time. Me, the person who could go on 4 hours of sleep. The pain became insufferable. I think in the last year and a half I saw probably 8 orthopedists, 2 neurosurgeons, and 2 rheumatologists. I went to physical therapists, accupuncture, and massage therapists. Everyone had their opinion on what was wrong with me.
The orthopedists and the neurosurgeons all wanted to carve me up for something I did not have. Thank God for Dr. Brain my neurologist. He read my MRIs and told me I didn't need surgery. They were all convincing in their stupid doctor ways. You have to wonder, were they stupid? Or did they just want to make money?
The Internet can be a fabulous tool. When the first doctor told me I had lumbar stenosis I went to the Internet to research it. Hello. I did not have one symptom. I could write a book on the little devices they wanted to install in my back - X-Stop, Cofler, Pixus. The funny thing was I knew more about them, than the silly doctors who wanted to shred my back and install them.
The rheumatologists? The one with his fancy degrees sent me to GPR. (Global Postural Re-eduacation) He blew me off on to the son of his colleague. A young man who eventually told me that there was nothing wrong with me. The drugs he prescribed didn't help. He told me to do sit-ups. When I told him that sometimes the pain was so bad I wanted to die, he rolled his eyes.
The famous neurosurgeon who was dazzled by her own credentials began to grow fangs when she told me what she wanted to do my back. It was horrifying. "You are so young." she clucked. "What a shame." The one positive thing she did was send me to a pain clinic.
They believed me when I told them I did not have stenosis. You can't walk 30 blocks and have stenosis. They decided to take more xrays. The xrays none of the others wanted to take. Because the CAT scan showed no stenois and what it did show was that one vertebrae had moved over the other. Very common in athletes and dancers, they told me. That was why I had pain. That and I had arthritis. I had heard that before. Except none of the drugs for arthritis helped.
About a month ago they gave me a fancy guided block. It was supposed to make all the pain go away. It didn't. I still felt like a truck had driven over me every morning. I was exhausted. I figured it was from the chronic pain. They told me to go swimming. I hate swimming.
One day in the dog park with Maxi an older woman approached me. She stopped and looked at me and asked me what was wrong. I told her I had arthritis in my spine and that I was in pain. She took my hands in hers and looked into my face. She told me to call a doctor at Hospital Italiano. It was a very strange meeting. She made me repeat his name 3 times and to promise to call him.
I go to this dog park every Sunday with Maxi. We are the same crowd of people. I have never seen this woman there before. She said she was from Tandil and her dog needed to run. I figured that I had seen so many idiot doctors, one more didn't matter. There was something about this woman, that made me want to call for an appointment. It took almost 2 months to get one with him.
Two weeks ago I went to see this doctor. I was the youngest person in the waiting area by probably 20 years. I seemed to be the only one not in a wheelchair, using a walker, or a cane. Talk about feeling out of place. I clutched my millions of xrays waiting to see him.
I walked into a small room. There was a doctor sitting behind a computer and a young woman doctor off to the side. I offered my xrays but he waved them away. "Sit down." he barked at me. I did. I don't think I had much choice. The other idiot doctors all asked me to tell my life story. This guy didn't want to hear it. He started asking me questions. "How do you feel in the morning?" "How do you feel 2 hours after you get up?" I could not believe it. It was like school. He didn't miss a beat. He just kept asking me question after question.
Finally he told me to stand up and touch my toes. I did. Then they asked me to do a bunch of tests for flexibility. I wowed them. I don't think I had much competition, considering the waiting room. At some point I think they were having fun with me. Then they asked me to lay on the table. The woman associate began to press points on my body. I thought I was going to die. It was horrible. When she got to my back I wanted to slap her. I didn't think that was a good idea.
When she was done and I got down, the doctor looked at me and said "Señora, you have fibromyalgia." "Huh?" That never entered my mind. He explained that it was very difficult to diagnose, but I had a classic case. There are 18 points in the body to test. Usually 11 are inflamed. I had all 18. My back was worse because of my dancing. He told me he felt badly for me. My arthritis is not that bad nor is the problem with the vertebrae. This was my problem all along and none of the drugs that I was taking were the right ones. He gave me a prescription for two more. "Don't worry." he said to me. "There are many drugs we can try until we get the right ones. Come back when you can get an appointment, in a month or 6 weeks."
Could it be this simple? I rushed to fill the prescription. I am pain free. It is weird. For the first time in a long time I have no pain. I am also sleeping. What a trip. I always thought the pain in my shoulders and neck were from using the computer. The pain in my arms from bad dancers. I justified everything.
Weather changes still bother me. Now all I need is tylenol and darvocett instead of an army of drugs. I am still tired at times, but not like before. They say this can be corrected. I am just happy to be pain free. I am happy to have my life back. I can dance again.
The doctor says I have to be monitored. The drugs sometimes have to change. Whatever. He says all the exercise that I do along with the Alexander Technique is great. I have been reading up on this syndrome as they call it. Some doctors refuse to believe that it exists.
I always knew throughout this whole ordeal that there would be an answer. I never gave up. I just kept going to doctors. I figured sooner or later I would find one that would know what was really wrong with me. I finally did and in the oddest way. In the dog park.
I looked at a couple of forums on fibromyalgia but those places are not for me. I never wallowed in self pity. I just kept pushing on. It was not easy. But it was better than being carved up for something that I didn't have. I am lucky that in the Argentine medical system I can go to a doctor without a referral. I could have seen every doctor in my book if I wanted. (Now that is a scary thought.) I just had to do it in Spanish and with doctors who hated a patient who knew more than they did at times. I know my body.
They do not know what causes fibromyalgia. It can be a tragic event such as my accident was. They say it is the nerve endings gone wild. I know for me, that I will not let it dominate my life. I am thrilled to death that I do not have pain. I know now that if it comes back, then there are other drug options. For the time being it is two pills in the morning and 1 at night, the gym, walking, and of course tango.