1-21 thru 1-26

1-21 through 1-26

Wednesday

Andrew was feeling well enough to go to the hospital on Wednesday, although not completely recovered. We have a theory about what might have made him sick: When we were having lunch at the Broeckerts on Monday, Hubert, who loves spicy food, took a tube of wasabi out of the fridge. Andrew and Hubert started talking about spicy stuff and Hubert kept referring to the wasabi as horseradish. Andrew decided to put some “horseradish” on his sandwich, and used about a heaping tablespoon of wasabi. Needless to say, he was sweating bullets within a few seconds, but insisted on finishing the entire sandwich anyway. Now Hubert loves to tease Andrew about wasabi every time we eat!

Anyway, as I said before, Wednesday was our first day at the hospital. Mary introduced us (Heather & Tricia, the two ultrasound techs, and Andrew and I) to the director, doctors, and nurses there. Apparently the director wants to make a schedule of rotations for me (Hannah), but we’re not sure if that’s actually going to happen.

Mary showed me how to take BP, so if I’m tagging along with her on rounds, I usually take the blood pressure & temp… There are quite a few HIV/AIDS and TB patients, but they’re very good about getting them meds here.

We discovered the day before that the price for our hotel is going up for three days due to Chinese New Year. A lot of people celebrate that here (in fact, a large portion of the hospital staff is taking off for Chinese New Year). We looked around at different hotels to see if perhaps we should switch to save money, but all of the hotels are raising their prices for those three days.


Thursday

Hubert has gotten one of his typing students to agree to teach me Khmer (Cambodian) starting tomorrow! It’ll be interesting to see how that goes. There are so many sounds that have absolutely no equivalent in English… it’s hard to even try phonetically spelling the sounds. Hubert is going to ask Petros, one of his Bible study students to teach Andrew.

Before we went to the hospital today, Dr. Mary found out that Andrew is an EMT, so he is now introduced and known as the EMT at the hospital. She’s hoping to set up a CPR class for Andrew to teach at the hospital, but we’re not sure if that can logistically happen. The director wants all of us (the ultrasound techs & Andrew and I) to come to the morning staff meeting tomorrow so that we can be formally introduced to everybody all at once.

Today I got to watch how they put IVs in and draw blood… everything is done from the veins in the hands or feet instead of in the arm like we’re used to. The goal is for me to be able to do both (draw blood and start an IV) soon. The patients that we saw yesterday are all doing comparably better today with the exception of one or two patients, which is great, but there’s one patient that got admitted today that looks like he might not make it too much longer…

During lunchtime Heather, Tricia and I went down to the market with Hubert, who does almost all of the market shopping. At first the smell from the meat section seemed like it would knock us girls down, but I got used to it after a few minutes. It’s so interesting to see the different variety of fruits and vegetables that I’ve never seen before in my life… not to mention the assortment of pigs’ heads, livers, intestines, etc that are hanging up, along with live chickens with their legs tied, doomed to be somebody’s lunch or dinner. Yum. In the fish section (it’s a huge market) there were buckets of live catfish flopping around, and some buckets of live crabs. One crab managed to escape and scuttled right underneath a woman that was squatting on the ground cleaning fish. We all had to laugh at that… although I wouldn’t want to be that woman!

In the evening we stopped at an orphanage that’s run by some French people. Orphans are almost always taken care of by family in Cambodia, but the few that were at that orphanage seemed to be very happy. They do their best to keep siblings together, teach them English, and take them out on trips all over the place.

We passed a wedding on our way from the hotel to the Broeckerts. It’s such an elaborate affair with beautiful clothes, loud music, a huge meal, etc… When a few of the others went to see it later on, the parents of the bride and groom invited them in to eat. I’ll try to take pictures of a wedding and post them sometime.

Friday

Andrew and I started Cambodian language lessons today! Our poor teachers have such a hard time trying to get us to say things correctly. It’s really hard to hear all of the different intonations in their speech, but it’s so fun to finally be able to speak a few phrases! It makes up for the initial frustration of learning the words.

At the hospital today Andrew, Charia (one o our interpreters) and I helped clean the ICU of the new surgery building. (Each ward is in its own building here.) We’re hoping that Dr. Peterson will be able to do surgeries there by next week. In case I haven’t explained before, Dr. Peterson is an OB/GYN surgeon. He and his wife usually travel to Togo and Bangladesh so that he can work in the hospitals there, but this year they’re also making a two week stop here, in Cambodia. A good deal of the hospital here has been rebuilt recently, and the new surgery ward is still in the process of being set up. It looks really nice so far, but there are a few hurdles in the way of it being completely ready or surgeries: they need a Buddhist monk to come and bless the building before it can be used, a few more things need to be moved into the building, and the anesthesiologist isn’t around. I think he works at the hospital part time (but don’t quote me on that), and I’m not really sure where he is right now.

Teaching ultrasounds to the doctors is going pretty well. Mary is learning a lot and quickly (very characteristic of her), and one of the other doctors has also been actively observing and learning. Every once in a while some of the other nurses and doctors stop in, but not consistently.

We went to the McKong hamburger shop today for dinner. It was started by the Broeckerts so that the Christians could have somewhere to work (for various reasons). Mary taught the cooks there how to make American hamburgers, fried chicken and pizza, and they then altered the recipes a bit to appeal more to the Cambodian palate. One of the results is that the hamburgers have fresh cucumbers instead of pickles on them, and I think they actually taste a lot better that way. Either way, we had a great time there and the food was really good.


Saturday

Saturday was a really full day! In the morning we went to the market with Lalin and Pren (two of the Christians here), who needed to buy a few things because they were going to make us lunch. On the way back we managed to snag a watermelon for all of twenty-five cents. (For those of you that know how much I love watermelon, you can imagine how happy that made me.)
A little while after we got back, we headed out to the market again to pick up a skirt that Tricia was having made for her, buy some shirts for me, and pick up some groceries or the Broeckerts. While we were out we noticed a lot of private clinics all over the place, and Mary explained to us that a lot of the doctors at the hospital had their own private clinics to supplement their income.

It rained for a little while in the afternoon, which was GREAT, because the city is in danger of running out of water. The evening before, there was no water pressure in any of the faucets in the Broeckerts house, and only a few of the faucets at the hospital had any pressure. A lot of people have a big tank of water at their house as a reserve for if/when the city runs out of water.

The Petersons arrived in the early afternoon on the bus from Phnom Penh, and we all had lunch together, after which they headed back to the hotel to rest up before dinner. My language teacher and two of her friends came over to take me out to the mangrove forest. It was absolutely beautiful there, and we had a good discussion about Buddhism and Christianity; why they’re Buddhist, why I’m a Christian, etc. They’re all 16 yrs old, and absolutely do not want to go against their parents…

While I was gone at the mangrove forest, Andrew and Hubert “fixed” the Broeckerts’ ping-pong table. They drilled into one of the metal legs, got shavings all over the place, and it seemed as if Andrew managed to clean up all but one of the metal shavings with his bare feet. The one that didn’t get stuck in his foot was in Hubert’s foot, and I managed to pull it out with some pliers. Mary had to pull the pieces out of Andrew’s foot, because they were embedded in there pretty well.
We were going to go out to eat at a restaurant or dinner, but Mary got called to the hospital for a suspected overdose. Fortunately, it turned out not to really be an overdose as far as we could tell, but unfortunately attempted suicides are not rare.


Sunday

Church services are held at the Broeckerts’ house at 8AM and 5PM. Directly after the morning service every week, Hubert and Lalin head out on a motorcycle to Toma Bang, a village that’s 1.5 hours away from the nearest paved road. Andrew, Heather and I tagged along this time, taking the car. When we got there, Lalin taught a children’s class, singing some songs, going over a Bible story, and teaching memory verses; while Hubert walks around the village trying to talk to the adults. The children are pretty attentive, and most know quite a few verses by memory, but as of yet, nobody in the village has responded. After the lesson, Heather gave out punch-balls… those balloons that you blow up that have a long rubber band attached to one end. The only problem was, more than half of them exploded! Lalin brought one in the car with us on the way back, and it exploded in the car. At first we all thought that somebody had thrown a firecracker at the car, because they had been setting of hundreds o them in the village to celebrate Chinese New Year, and some teenagers were throwing them in the direction of the children’s class.

When we got back, we ate lunch and then Mary headed out to a different village to teach a children’s class. Andrew and I stayed back at the house to recuperate from the last trip.
At 5, the evening service, which is a youth service, started. The three girls that took me out the day before came… right after the preaching was over. Seems they have a habit of doing that. Either way, I played games with them until it was time or dinner, which the youth ate with us.