Letters
Editor,
12-year old Olivia Ortiz has been invited to represent Mexico in the FEI (Federation Equestre Internationale) in Bogota, Colombia this July. Olivia will be competing against 12- to 14-year-olds from 24 countries around the world, jumping from 1 meter to 1.15 meters.
Last year, Olivia was the champion in 90 centimeters for the State of Querétaro and was selected to go to the Nationals last November. She has since moved up to the 1-meter class with her beloved Elegido Naciente. Olivia is trained by the incredible Manuel Tejeda, who has been her trainer for five years.
We are hoping that she will be able to go, but we are looking for sponsors who might be interested in being represented by Olivia in her passion to ride.
If anyone is interested or would like more information, please email us at delsoldorado@aol.com.
Holly Ortiz
Editor,
Whoa—how to respond to Herbert L. Bolz’s letter about firework noise without being offensive. First the editor should have never printed this opinion. Foreigners, who for whatever misguided reasons, want to tell sanmiguelenses how to live, do nothing but harm irreparably the relations between us and Mexicans. Possibly you haven’t been watching Contrastes, the Channel 4 program hosted by Lucy Nunez. Well, she’s already touched on the cohuete theme, about 200 times. It goes like this...the audacity and arrogance of Americans coming and telling Mexicans how to run their city. First we create a market for a billion-dollar Mafia business threatening the republic, then we sell the Mafia a lot of illegal weapons so their officiales can be assassinated at an average of eight a day, then we build a wall to keep all of those problematic Mexicans south, and finally we come here and want to change the way they want to do things in their own country. Is that hubris or what? I won’t bore you with a Levi Straussian anthropological structural analysis of exactly how many cultural taboos were broken with that ignorant suggestion, but let’s just say that perhaps Americans who aren’t happy with the way the sanmiguelenses are running things should look to live elsewhere, possibly returning to where they do have a say. And let’s hope Atención could be a little smarter in what viewpoints they publish. It was obvious by the byline they were trying to deny authorship, however the damage was already done when that letter reached the light of day.
Kurth Bousman
Editor’s note: Atención staff have neither the time nor the inclination to invent outrageous opinions in the hope of generating letters.
Editor,
We were recently visiting San Miguel de Allende from Manchester, England. Unfortunately after two weeks, my wife Brenda French developed a brain aneurysm. We rushed her to Hospital de la Fé where she was immediately admitted late at night and attended to by Doctor Robert Maxwell and the neurologist Dr. Jose Luis Gallegos. CAT scans were immediately completed and she was deemed to be in a very high-risk, precarious situation.
I don’t want to dwell on the traumatic experience that Brenda went through but I want to comment on the kind of care and attention that Brenda and we received while we were going through this tragedy. We arranged an air ambulance to fly her back to Manchester but unfortunately she died a few hours before the airplane took off. Doctor Maxwell went through the whole crisis as the head physician and we found him to be unbelievably dedicated and sympathetic. He was always completely honest but at the same time encouraging and emotionally supportive. When Brenda passed on at approximately 4:30am before her planned medical evacuation flight, I realized Dr. Maxwell had been up practically the whole night doing what was humanly possible to care for her and prepare her for the trip overseas. He was exhausted and obviously very upset.
I thanked him and told him to go home and get some sleep. I found out that he is recently a new father. In my life in dealing with doctors, I have never met a more kind, devoted and compassionate doctor. We realized that the kind of intimate care and attention that Brenda received would’ve been unusual for a public health care hospital in England. During the crisis we brought in a special neurologist from Celaya to do some EEGs and Dr. Salmon confirmed everything that Dr. Jose Luis Gallegos and Dr. Maxwell had been telling us.
I realized, never having been aware of this before, to what extent a good and compassionate doctor has to cope with the psychological problems of the family dealing with acceptance and denial of the patient’s condition and how a good doctor like Dr. Maxwell is capable of being honest about a worsening condition but always encouraging hope at the same time. It takes enormous skill for a doctor to educate the family of a dying patient about the inevitability that the doctor suspects will take place at some time in the near future without seeming brutal or callous. I found the staff of the hospital, José Luis de la Hoz (the new director) and especially Dr. Maxwell to be extremely emotionally supportive through the traumatic nine days that Brenda was in the hospital. Of course, dealing with a medical crisis like this is always expensive but we found that the costs of everything at the hospital were a small fraction of what we would have had to pay in the US or a private hospital in Britain. We feel that people in
San Miguel are very fortunate to have such a quality institution there locally with doctors like Dr. Maxwell who have spent a great deal of their lives working in US hospitals (e.g., San Diego) and who now continue to live and work in your community for personal reasons.
I plan to return to San Miguel in the future.
Nicholas French
Editor,
I hope I can encourage other expats to not ignore their health concerns because of ungrounded fears of being hospitalized here.
After suffering for a week, I flew to the US where my physician ignored my symptoms. Flying home, within 24 hours I was in serious trouble.
Dr. Quiroz at the Hospital de la Fe walked to the exam table, tucked his fingers under my right rib cage and said, “There’s your trouble and you’re not going home!” Two days later after constant IVs and tests with his diagnosis of five organs affected confirmed, he felt I should have surgery in the States where my heart specialist, who knew my case, could be involved although we have excellent surgeons in Querétaro.
Prior to leaving the hospital, I told Dr. Quiroz I had experienced the most kind and compassionate care I had ever received, from him and his hospital staff. The hospital bill was a pittance compared to US charges.
Having ignored Sky Med evacuation insurance, I had settled on a less expensive version not worth the paper written on. My 2 1/2 hour flight to Baton Rouge, LA cost US$28,200, while a friend was flown free, to Baltimore, Maryland on Sky Med she had enrolled in months previously.
I once again wish to share my view of the honesty and integrity of the Mexican people who truly live by the Good Book! Running late for an appointment, I flagged a taxi and parked my car. Over three hours and three meetings later, I returned to my locked car, with no keys! Turning, not knowing what to do, I saw the taxi driver driving up with keys in hand. Think of how many times he must have circled back between calls to look for me! Truly a man of God! Happens in the US? I think not.
Cheri McDaniel
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