Pay de mango

Domingo 19 - Sábado 25 Enero 

Sunday what did we do? Packed for our trip to Veracruz and caught up on some reading. Dan printed off many maps to help us to find our way. We fed Shattuck's miss kitty, who was oh so happy to see us! She ran back and forth from her food dish to our laps.  A great sunset tonight.  They are rarer than we like, as we are backed up on the west with hills and mountains.

Monday we indeed did pick up our paperwork at IMSS, our envio, to go to the hospital in Veracruz. We thought to come back home before the 90 minute drive, but since the car was all packed, we choose to drive onwards. We decided on taking the toll autopista there and the free highway home. The drive went well, until we took a wrong turn just going into the city, in spite of all the maps!   But, we got to where we hoped to end up with no real difficulty. This being the inexpensive Hotel Merida with inside parking Dan had chosen from the internet. It was about 12 blocks or so from the hospital. The drive had of course exhausted us, so a nap was in order before we went out for lunch. We walked around several blocks near the hotel to get the “lay of the land.” Found no enticing restaurant, as this was very much a working neighborhood.  We had planned to drive north to find a good parking place near the hospital (so we wouldn't have to scope it all out early the next morning), so we thought we'd keep a lookout for a restaurant for lunch on the way. The route we took had us stop for a long freight train going back and forth, near a large railroad yard. Nope, we did not want that route the next morning. Turned out we found no parking near the hospital, so we parked at a large shopping center (lots of space here) about four blocks away, just over an overpass spanning the rail tracks.

The shopping center housed a huge Mega supermarket, a multiplex cinema and a smaller mall with shops and two restaurants.  We ate at the California Buffet here, but at twice the prices we are used to. The food was a good selection of Mexican fare, all quite tasty, including the best mashed potatoes ever.  After overstuffing ourselves, we walked around the mall, then drove back to our hotel room, which had only one small outside window. There was an overhead fan – really loud and one speed – fast. The room started out overly warm and stuffy, but the temperature soon dropped and we slept very comfortably. The water for morning showers was hot, hot, hot.

We arrived at the hospital, a large central unit housing regional specialists, at 8:30am, a half hour before our appointment. We were taken on time! We had three doctors and one nurse occupied in the otoneurology department. The one doctor did speak some english, and Dan was there to translate and answer questions, plus we had Carmen's symptoms and history all printed up in spanish.  One would expect many varied and exhaustive testing procedures, but to Carmen's disappointment, all was completed in two hours.  They checked her hearing in a soundproof chamber, then her eye responses to a special set of quick changes in position. The diagnosis was that she was suffering from BPPV and minor age-related hearing loss.  The problem of dizziness is believed to be from calcium crystals breaking off in the inner ear. She was given some eye & neck exercises to do several times a day. This is to re-train the brain to respond to balance cues in new ways.  That is, she can hopefully train herself out of experiencing the frequent disorientation and loss of balance. No other tests were done to find an organic cause, as the tests showed that there was no neurological basis for the sensations. She would really like to get the cause definitely discovered. How disappointing--could it all just be old age deterioration?

We walked back to our car, where we dined on the peanut butter and jelly sandwiches we had with us. Now drove south into and through upscale Boca del Rio, the city just south of Veracruz, where we connected with the free road back west to home. Both highways between home and the coast were in great condition, though lots of slow trucks (fully loaded with sugarcane) on the return free road.  The countryside was farms and hills instead of the flat sugar cane fields on the more northerly toll road.  Lots of bucolic smells too, as there are many cattle and chickens raised here on the flat coastal lands. The trip on the free road is more interesting with many small towns and took us two hours to traverse.  We purposely avoided the bypasses around the few larger towns, and drove straight thru the town centers of Cuitlahuac and Yanga, as we wanted to see of what these pueblos consisted.  Cuitlahuac, especially, is a neat, clean community devoted to servicing it's surrounding agricultural and ranching population.

Which is better, raw or cooked wild salmon from Alaska's coast? Gardi will eat only raw, and Smij will eat only cooked. That is what we had for dinner one day. Amazing to find such a treat down here, at US$6.25 a pound!  Wednesday, Carmelo told us his house had suffered wind damage the night before, so he was out selling plants to buy some lamina for repairs. In the evening, a lady stopped at our gate to ask for any old clothes or shoes we might have – her house burned down last night. Luckily Carmen had already packed up some clothes and had them waiting by the door, for just such a happening.

Oh horrors, our beautiful papaya tree has zillions of black insects under the leaves. Hope the little buggers enjoyed the special spray we put on them. Also our orchid tree looks like it is dying, but it may just be losing this year's leaves -- info is conflicting on the internet. We have spent hours searching the internet for the problem, but have come up with nothing. Nights have been in the upper 40Fs and days low 70Fs.  Carmen warmed the house with baking thursday morning. Mango pay (pie) – following her recipe for peach pie, and chocolate chip oatmeal cookies.

Friday we took the test results from Veracruz to our Cordoba ENT specialist. Finally the meds Carmen has been taking are being cut back. Just do the exercises and return in two months. Since our dentist is but two blocks from the doctor's hospital office, we walked there to see if the dentist by some remote chance had an opening. Not til the next day, saturday. We walked back to the car which we had parked near the CarneMart store, which carries only large institutional packages of frozen meats, along with odds and ends like onion rings, all at better-than-supermarket prices. IF our home freezer was bigger, we would have bought a bag of onion rings, however we purposely bought a refrigerator with a smaller freezer so that we would go shopping more often. We did however buy a four pound bag of diced pork which we have purchased there before. It is very good and oh so useable. Also tilapia fish filets and a three pound pork roast. Now our frig is full of thawing meat, as the roast is destined for a meal early next week. The diced pork gets repacked into meal size portions and frozen solid again.

Saturday Dan went to his cleaning session with our dentist, Doctora Gwen Contreras -- long overdue since his last appointment was in August.  After the cleaning and polishing, she suggested he followup immediately with a whitening procedure to improve the appearance of his aging but still strong front teeth.  The best time to do this is right after all the plaque is gone, so he agreed and underwent the first of three or four sessions that morning.