Spending time in a Cambodian hospital...

A big life event for me was getting a 15 year old boy, We, in for surgery to remove a chronically infected tendon in his neck (or some obscure medical condition in his neck/throat). It was leaking fluid through the scar tissue it had created, and after I commented on it I became the point man to get it done. After consulting with an American surgeon and learning my way around the system, I got him in for a free surgery at a local NGO-hospital (Rose Medical Center, which is run by an American doctor).

“We” is a true orphan, his past I don’t know, and his future is bleak. When I asked his friend Makara (who speaks English) if he would like a magazine to read while he was in the hospital, he chuckled and said “no, We don’t read.”

I was anxious as we waited for his turn for surgery. It became late in the morning, and it was looking like he wouldn’t get his turn this day, but then they called him from the courtyard and onto he operating table he went. We could watch his surgery through the window, and when they were done someone carried him into the next room and put his unconscious body onto a bed, next to another unconscious boy who had just had eye surgery. Once the surgery was done, it was our job to take care of him, including restrain him when he moved about so he would pull out any of the tubes coming out of him. There were 3 post-surgery boys in this room, all unconscious and being taken care of by family, and someone’s monitor kept sounding off like an EKG when someone is flat-lining (at least on TV). I was a little frantic, and kept calling for the unmarried nurse to see if someone’s heart had stopped or what the machine was trying to tell us, but they assured me that the machine making noise was the other boy’s, and apparently everyone was OK. As crazy as the scene was, the really crazy part was all the other patients hanging around, particularly children.

There were cleft pallets, lots of eye problems, and various run-of-the-mill injuries like a knee swollen to the size of a watermelon, with everyone in one room. There was no AC, and it was hot. I kept thinking how hard it is to survive here, and what these poor people must be going through. It was a spiritual experience.

After watching him for a while Clara and Vivian came to take over, and I was ready to lay on my bed and watch my ceiling fan; a favorite activity when my senses are overloaded and I need to process all that has happened. I returned later that day, and each of the following 2 days, and had incredible experiences with We, his friends who stayed with him, and the children who were recovering from surgery. One tiny girl, maybe 2 or 3 years old, had just had surgery on her hand and was left with needles coming out of the ends of her fingers, and wine corks on the end of the needles (I have no idea why). She was in great pain, and her father just held her hour after hour while she cried. I tried to get her to stop crying but to no avail. The next day, I bought an animal balloon for her (which was tricky to carry on my motorbike). At first she was confused, then she was infatuated with the balloons and smiled. It made my week.