The paradox of Rut Carpintero’s second life is that this philosophy professor is alive thanks to public health, after a terrifying bacterial offensive that began as a bad cold and almost cost her her life. But, since she was discharged from the hospital, with all four limbs amputated, her only chance of recovering a dignified existence rests on the strength of a dense family support network and modest personal savings, whose destiny was to be other.
Rut Carpintero has become an influencer through her Instagram account and a campaign on change.org that demands physiotherapy care for prosthetic patients in provincial public hospitals, with 50,000 accumulated signatures. Today, after having paid out of his own pocket for the expensive prostheses for all four limbs –almost 100,000 euros–, he receives physiotherapy and occupational therapy – to learn, respectively, to use the lower prostheses (one from the femur and another from the knee, each with a unique learning) and higher – three times a month in Madrid, paying for private clinics and stays in the capital out of his own pocket. In the public health of the capital of the community of Castilla y León there is neither one thing nor the other. “I spoke with a quadruple amputee from Zaragoza who received daily assistance from the Aragonese healthcare system when she went through the same thing seven years ago,” explains Rut. The difference between paying for three days a month in Madrid and receiving care 20 days a month in the city itself is not going to decide the fate of Rut, who ends her previous life, but it will determine the deadlines in which she can achieve the greatest possible autonomy and, therefore, her husband, Daniel Rodríguez San José, can resume his work activity, today obliterated by the attention required by his wife and their two daughters. She “she was a philosophy teacher at the institute. “I loved being a teacher, but that ended.”
The nightmare of this woman and her family broke out ten months ago as an unexpected storm, which did not appear on any forecast radar. Rut went to the private clinic of her health insurance (as a public education official, she has a mutual health insurance) suffering from what seemed to be persistent and acute pharyngitis. In a few hours, she ended up admitted to the ICU of a public hospital with bilateral pneumonia of bacterial origin and resistant to available antibiotics that caused her to go into cardiorespiratory arrest on the second day. Sepsis led to ischemia that forced doctors to amputate all four of her limbs. Two months in intensive care and six months of hospitalization, two relapses of the infection and a terrible catalog of painful experiences – which persist – are the attributes of that unfortunate year. But she also lives grateful and convinced of being alive thanks to the quality of care, training and resources of the public health system.
Victim of the terrible paradox of lack of care, Rut emphasizes that public health not only saved her life but that its health personnel went beyond what was required, committed to medical and psychiatric care and to the emotional well-being of the patient. and his family: “They were six months in which they treated me phenomenally in every way, even regarding my emotional needs, with two very young girls – 3 and 5 years old –: they did everything possible for me to see them and be with them. they”. Her husband remembers the moment on Rut’s birthday, when the hospital staff deployed a complex technical and personnel device, thanks to a pioneering outing program, so that Rut could see the sunlight and feel the outdoors. It was in a prosaic ambulance parking lot and a gray day when the sun refused to appear. I do not care. “I valued every minute, the staff we went out with were lovely people who wanted to do that for me. We all took a photo together. The truth is that it was even a nice birthday.” That, she remembers, helped her a lot in those eternal and painful days of relapses, persistence of infection and lung flooding. It was at the Río Ortega university hospital, a reference center for lung conditions, although the couple’s gratitude extends to practically all public health facilities in the province, because in that semester they visited all of them.
The public health strategy, however, failed with the medical discharge: “The moment I was discharged, everything was loneliness.” The teacher from Valladolid got ahead, she explains, thanks to her contact with other amputees and her own initiative. “If from that day on you want to have prosthetics and have a fairly normal life, you have to do everything yourself.” When speaking with other affected people, Daniel was the one who looked for doctors, therapists and prosthetic clinics to fill the void and silence of the public health system of Castilla y León.
That is the cruel irony: “Everything possible was done for me to move forward, for me to stay alive, paying the price of the four amputations,” explains Rut. But once she was discharged, “it was over.” The administration will pay for the prostheses, although the deadline is unknown, she explains. The support of the family and the resources of the couple – “we have been savers, especially him,” says Rut – are what have prevented both of their lives, after the bacterial devastation, from being frozen while awaiting unscheduled care. . Also on the emotional level: while she was admitted she received constant psychological care at the center, even during the two months in the ICU, but since returning home, she has paid for the psychiatric care out of her own pocket at a rate of 75 euros. weekly. And despite the virulence and resilience of the infection, since discharge she has not had pulmonological follow-up.
Beyond the accumulation of patients and medical staff consultations, Rut explains that her case is not so much a problem of resources as of management and public health strategy. “Having physiotherapists trained to care for patients with prostheses does not require a large investment because it is supplementary training that they can receive in courses, perhaps not for a weekend, but for little more.” Because we are not talking about an exceptional case: the public and private health personnel with whom Rut and Daniel deal assure that cases like theirs are proliferating without anyone seeming to notice it: resistance of bacteria to antibiotics, depression of the immune system after the pandemic…, the causes may be varied, but the fact, they say, is that doctors are alarmed.
Ruth and Daniel have other tasks left in the life to come. Starting with the bond with his daughters. The patent poise and amazing serenity of both have served to avoid further trauma to the two little girls. The eldest of her, at five years old, hugs and kisses her mother’s stumps and shares with her the language of the cyborgs. She talks about “assembling and disassembling mom” to refer to the process of putting on and taking off the prostheses. The little one, on the other hand, is strange. “It was three years while I was admitted, I have lost six months of a three-year life.” So today, back at home, “I am a lady who is suddenly in her life. Sometimes she pushes me away from her with her hand and looks for her father. But I think I’m starting to win her over.”
