Nobody plans to get sick. As a person who assumes good health, and typically ignores any indication to the alternative, I suppose I was especially ill-prepared when I started to feel like I was dragging my heels through Buenos Aires’ famous Recoleta Cemetery. I even found myself apathetic about seeing the culminating site of our guided tour—the final resting place of Eva Perón (Evita!). Though our trio of travelers, including our daughter, who was visiting us for the week, had evening plans, I told them I felt like maybe I was coming down with something and headed back to our apartment to rest.

After a nice warm bath, I decided to get into bed and try to sleep it off so I could get back to enjoying the amazing sights, foods, and ambiance of stunning Buenos Aires by morning. But the unwelcome guest in my body had another plan for me. You know how some illnesses creep in one annoying symptom at a time? A stuffy head? Then a sore throat? Then coughing, maybe a low-grade fever, loss of appetite? This one came barging through the front door with all its squabbling family members, luggage, noisy demands, poor manners, and expectations of hospitality. It set up camp in the tender area below my ribs, squeezed my head in a vise, and proceeded to turn the central heating up to its highest setting.

The next day, wracked with fever chills, sweating like a sprinter on a humid day, barely able to crawl from the bed, unable to eat, and with joints aching, we started considering the illness options. The first and most real concern was mosquito-borne dengue fever. Argentina was experiencing a record-breaking outbreak of cases, with 200% more cases than last year’s record-breaking numbers, and our beautiful, beaux arts apartment in the old town had no screens on its 10-foot-tall french doors and windows. Then again, I had no recollection of any recent mosquito bite and I typically get pretty itchy.

Day two, I was worse. Al, whose tolerance for standing by helplessly watching the ones he loves suffer had hit its limit, got into fix-it mode. He started by trying to find the local medical centers. He reached out to our Airbnb host for suggestions. He contacted a tele-health nurse through my US coverage. Here is what he learned:

1. “Local” is a relative term in Buenos Aires, with the nearest hospital emergency room about two hours away by taxi on account of the city’s traffic.
2. Our host said even if you can get to the hospital you will wait hours to be seen and don’t count on particularly good care.
3. The tele-health nurse said I needed to get to an E.R. and be seen within the hour based on the symptoms.

Hmmm, what to do? Luckily, our host came through and, by calling upon her connections, got us an appointment with a private doctor in town. Al poured me into an Uber and off we went, with a stack of 1000-peso notes in Al’s pocket. Remember the money situation in Argentina? The largest denomination available right now is the 1000-peso bill, worth around one dollar. (Read more about it in our Border Run post.) The very kind doctor gave me an old-school examination—open and say “aah”, deep breath, now another, thump thump on the abdomen— and declared I did not have dengue. He did suggest that further testing might be useful to determine what was the cause but we decided to risk it and stick to our plan to leave for Uruguay the next day (time waits for no one). We gave him a stack of pesos worth about $40, which he put in his desk drawer, and we were on our way, glad to know that at least my condition wasn’t dengue and didn’t appear immediately life-threatening. 

I think most Americans, myself included, have no idea that the capital of Argentina (Buenos Aires) and the capital of Uruguay (Montevideo) are a mere 127 direct line miles from one another, across the estuary of the Río de la Plata. So while it may seem crazy to pack up and change countries given the circumstances, it was not an arduous day of travel and regardless, our Airbnb in Buenos Aires was already rented to someone else. As soon as we secured the keys to our new apartment in Montevideo, Al and I got into a taxi and went to a nearby private hospital that had been recommended by a friend-of-a-friend who lives in Uruguay. BEST DECISION EVER!

I was seen promptly. The entire medical team was thorough, efficient, calm, and patient with us. The hospital staff communicated what we could expect each step of the way. They did a full battery of tests to rule out or in various possible ailments and shared the complete results with us. We shared them with my dad, a retired M.D. and expert diagnostician, and he was satisfied that our providers were on the right track (a very high bar to clear!). They began to rehydrate me and started antibiotics—an eviction notice for the infection that had by this time become the Guest Who Must Leave.

We had to provide payment up front for services and as each new need arose they checked in with us about the cost. When it became clear I was so sick I needed to be admitted, they said the easiest way to handle it would be to charge our credit card $5000 to cover everything and anything and then reimburse us any balance. Fair enough. We hope our U.S. health insurance will agree.

I was rolled to the nicest hospital room I’ve ever seen—arguably what would be an enviable hotel room in the city—a private room with a panoramic view, a couch they offered to make up into a bed for Al, and a separate sitting area for guests. The food was more cafeteria than bistro, but since I had no appetite anyway we’ll give them a pass on that. I was given first-class care, was allowed to sleep through the night (sorry U.S., but Uruguay has you beat handily there), and began to recover quickly. In the afternoon of the third day, I checked out feeling weak but on the mend, grateful to the medical team, for being in the right place at a bad time, and for my family support crew.

Though I wouldn’t want to repeat it, I learned a lot from this experience. Good health care is available in a lot of places in the world—some unexpected. If you heard that I was in a hospital in Uruguay, you might picture some jungle clinic with a thatched roof, but truly this was one of the finest, most modern hospitals I’ve seen anywhere. And while Montevideo has palm trees and dengue fever, it is decidedly not in the jungle! Also, the stark difference between two healthcare systems so near to one another and both in capital cities came as a surprise. Argentina’s economy is in tatters and its infrastructure weak, while Uruguay’s is relatively stable and strong. Clearly the latter has invested in health care while the former has not, but prior to this experience I would have expected that Buenos Aires would provide better healthcare than Montevideo based on size alone.

We also talked about what we learned to be better prepared for a health emergency in the future. Here are three lessons that any traveler could apply:

• Find the local emergency system (#911, hospital, fire dept., etc.) We always use our first day in a new place to orient ourselves—find the local market, get to know our neighborhood—now we will add locating the nearby emergency services.
• Be more willing to stop and act early. Many people (including me) tend to “wish away” signs of illness, especially when we have big plans (like visiting Buenos Aires). In my case, a week or so before I got sick, I had noticed some niggling symptoms that were likely the first indicators of a bacterial infection, but who wants to stop the fun they’re having to go to a clinic? Turns out I should have. 
• Use local and personal resources for help—and have their contact information readily accessible. Good resources are: Your lodging host/concierge, any personal contacts (friend of a friend, distant cousin, etc.), your home country’s embassy or consulate, your healthcare provider at home, and your health insurance provider.

I still don’t plan to get sick, but after this experience I plan to be better prepared if and when it happens.