Myriam Angelica's Poetry & Prose

I was writing this post and somehow I lost the article in cyber space. So, I will try to write it again.

Since the end of February I have been with unbearable itching, reddish, swollen, rounded marks which go to take any form in an enlarged kind of way and covering my whole body. No allergy medicine has had any effect to stop the marks appearing or the itching going away. Having fumigated the house, the bed, the floor of my bedroom every week, bugs have been discarded as the origin of this ailment. I consulted five different doctors and a nurse about this matter. Their advice has been the same: I must see a dermatologist.

As seeing a dermatologist involves travelling to either Santiago or Viña de Mar, I was rather oppossed to doing this. It involves going into the motorway, paying talls, gasoline, something to eat, plus the doctors fees and medicines and possibly having to go back a few times. It is costly, scary ( I am scared of going to big, polluted, mad capital cities), and tiring.

The other possible measure was going to the local shaman. I spoke to Manuel, the gardener and herbalist, and asked him to make an appointment for me with him, as Manuel was the person who told me about this shaman: Don Jorge.

Don Jorge is a man in his thirties to forties. He is tall, slim and a simple man with an unlikely appearance for a shaman. He works for a forestation (or deforestation, depending from your point of view) company in Chile. He lives in nearby Casablanca, a town in the Casablanca Valley, famous for the wine grapes it grows and where a few of the most famous wine making companies have headquarters.

Don Jorge's home is a small, simple and humble place in the corner of a long street lined with other humble homes. A working class neighbourhood where no rich or famous person would live. Don Jorge receives his patients in the front room of his parents' house. It is a simple, bare room which has few furniture. A table and four chairs at one end and a sofa and two arm chairs at the other end of the room. By the door leading to the other part of the house there is a big cage housing a few budgies. On the walls there are two pictures of women barely dressed, in suggestive posses.

No smouldering smoke from mysterious herbs anywhere. No black cat or other feline in sight. No broom to take Don Jorge away in nocturnal trips. Unless the budgies were to transform during full moon nights into awesome condors giving Don Jorge a ride over the beautiful Casablanca Valley... A modern working man dressed in jeans and a shirt was all that was there to account for this famed shaman.

Don Jorge came into the front room of his parents' home and found me siiting on the sofa accompanied by Raul by my side and Andrea sitting on one of the two arms chairs. He sat on the other arm chair. He took a look at me and smiled to himself. Then he said I have a plump, nice and happy spirit. He followed this observation with his diagnosis: I suffer from an allergy due to my worry about Raul's health. The state of my nerves is bad. I need to calm down. He said I need to boil for ten minutes a concoction of herbes, which he named for me and noted down on a paper, and dink two cups of the liquid a day for thirty one days. The consultation with Don Jorge is not for a given fee. When I asked how much it was, he said: what your heart feels is the right amount. My heart, which is closely linked to what my pocket can afford, said ten Pounds for my consultation and Raul's.

I will not give you the name of the herbs prescribed by Don Jorge to avoid temptation from my readers about experimenting with this medicine.

I still have not had the medicine Don Jorge precribed for me. I am waiting for Manuel to gather the herbs in the local brooks, which is not easy.

Meanwhile, yesterday, I finally went to consult a dermatologist for an appointment arranged for me by Andrea in Vña. I felt that, if I cannot have relief from this itching, my energy will continue to zap until I never wake up again from the rare moments in which I can fall asleep.

The dermatologist is a man in his sixties to seventies. The most amazing snow-white hair and a red, well shaped mouth (which makes him womanly looking) were the most noticiable characteristics in him. He was sitting behind a respectable sized desk, his back to the main wall, a window on his left side and the door to his right side. Very good feng shui position he chose for himself. He did not ask me to pay his fee following my heart's advice, I had to pay his fee upfront before I was allowed to go into his room.

I sat in front of him, all alone this time. Andrea was waiting for me at the nearby cafe, and Raul had declined to accompany me. I told him what had happened since the end of February. I omitted my visit to Don Jorge, just in case he did not understand my desperation.

The examination was this time rather more physically invasive. I had to take off my top clothes, then get my pants down to my knees, so he could look at the state of my skin. He made no observation about my spirit though.

When he named the medicine he was prescribing I felt my soul going into despair. I said this medicine had been prescribed with no good resuts. He said that, with the number of medicines and ailments I have, he could not prescribe anything stronger. He was going to try to help with treating the skin with a cream. He wrote another prescription which I had to take to the pharmacy and have the cream prepared there. He said if he gave me a laboratory made cream, it would cost about the equivalent to eighty Pounds, if the pharmacists prepared it, it would cost about the equivalent to eight Pounds. His concern for me saving my money won my heart, but nor my faith about whether his prescription would work. He wants me to go back in a weeks time.

I went to duly ask the pharmacist to prepare this cream. In total, the expenditure was the equivalent to forty pounds. Cheaper than going to Santago anyway.

I used the cream last night. I also used it this morning, after a bath with bicarbonate and oats. The skin looks better. It still itches but not to make me scratch it madly. Perhaps it is working? Let's wait and see,