Covid in the Canaries, January 18
I am breaking up the winter by working from an Airbnb in Gran Canaria - but unfortunately, I have spent most of it so far ill with Covid.
One night last week, I ended up in a private ambulance. After a few days of head-splitting pain, fearing I was going downhill, I found the local clinic 24-hour number online and dialed. The emergency doctors who turned up at the Airbnb an hour later gave me an initial assessment and then decided to summon the ambulance and send me to hospital. As is the way of these things, this happened during the period of the trip when I was here alone - although I have kind friends around the corner.
I learned a few things. First, I should have had my Covid booster. I haven’t had a vaccination for over a year and I guess that would have given me some protection. Because a vax pass is not necessary to get on a plane any more, I just didn’t get around to it. It looks as if a sizeable chunk of my gen X demographic is in the same boat, so there are probably a lot of us whose vaccine is wearing off. Let this be a warning to you! I have also never caught Covid before so this added to a certain complacency.
The Canaries seem to have a lot of Covid at the moment, with 25% of all of Spain’s Covid deaths in the last couple of weeks. Rates are high at home in Scotland too, but this is a bustling destination where snowbirds from across northern Europe congregate at this time of year, bringing their own strains of virus, so it would have been a good idea to get my jags up to date.
Second, I should have an European health insurance card (EHIC). I used to have one but I thought they stopped after Brexit. In fact they are one of the few things that were successfully renegotiated. If you live in the UK and don’t have one, you should apply for the UK GHIC which is the current incarnation of this card. (Someone shared the new design on social media recently, and it features a billowing Union Jack behind a small amount of text - perhaps you can also buy a blue EU cover with gaps in the right places?) If I had had one, I would have been able to make use of the public hospital without charge.
Third, buy health insurance. I am one of those people who usually skips the extras when buying flights - seats, bags, food vouchers - and health insurance. Sometimes you do lose the bet, as I did this time. I don’t have a credit card, and by the time I had shelled out for two emergency doctors to come up from the local clinic, their initial treatment of a drip of drugs, and for the ambulance, my current account was empty.
I waved my hand at the receptionist at the hospital when my card maxed out and told her I would make arrangements. I didn’t want to worry anyone unduly by waking them up so I texted a few close family members - sounding like a bad scammer - asking for help to pay a private hospital bill. The headmistressy receptionist then appeared at the doctor’s elbow, translating for him and pushing back firmly on suggested blood tests which would have cost 600 euros. She felt these were unnecessary as my blood oxygen was fine. It is hard to imagine a receptionist in a US hospital arguing the toss like this with health professionals, but she reduced my final bill considerably.
After another drip of a cocktail of various drugs, I felt a bit better. The pain in my head had receded. As I sat slumped on the hard seats in the entrance area trying to get on the wifi to sort out the bill, the receptionist took pity on me and invited me to sign a contract to pay later. She then called a cab back to take me back to the village where I am staying, and I returned home, wearing a mask of course.
I had to retrieve my keys from the good friend and neighbour who had taken them for emergencies, and then I fell into bed. My plan of not causing worry misfired when I didn’t manage to text the people I had contacted earlier, to update them, These included my sister who apparently woke to find a few cryptic seconds of heavy breathing on her voicemail - an accidental call. Instead, I fell into a deep sleep. But when I woke up suddenly, with a few missed calls, early the next day, I was able to reassure everyone, and I have continued to improve rapidly since then.
A footnote - I got a prescription for Nolotil. This is a very popular anti-fever medication in Spain but it is banned in the UK and the US because of a small number of complications which seem to mainly affect the elderly. They did ask if I had any underlying medical conditions before prescribing it. Although it seems that it is not supposed to be given to UK tourists, I decided to take it anyway and have found it effective, though I discontinued it after a day or two.
Now I am in recovery mode, it is nice to spend days on the roof terrace in the shade. After being ill, there is a certain euphoric pleasure in simply eating a juicy orange, reading my book or going for a short stroll in the quiet of mid-afternoon. It rained here recently and wild flowers are abundant in the scrubby tundra, which is aflutter with butterflies, some tiny, some the size of a hand.