Moonbeam

After hours and hours of travel, we have made it to Phnom Phen. Know that any attempt to describe this will not do it justice, partially from fatigue or limited writing skills, but also from lack of perspective at this point to have any of this get well-seated in my mind.
We arrived at the airport with our MANY pieces of luggage, each of us bringing one personal bag and one filled with medical supplies. We were met by Gabi, an RN on the board of CMMCJH (for brevity, I will refer to the mission group as JH from here out) who has stayed since the January trip to coordinate and build relationships with the local hospitals and staff, and also by Nary, a lovely young Cambodian woman working with JH as our local administrative liaison. After Nary choreographed our luggage into a truck and all of us into a van, we headed off.



We had a few hours before we could check into our hotel so were taken to a military complex that is being newly built that will house a medical and nursing school. JH, I believe, has been involved in creating curriculum for the schools. The buildings were closed for the day, so we just walked the grounds. From there we were taken to our hotel.















The drive was fascinating with motorbikes, trucks and cars of all sizes weaving and bobbing along the road in what looks like a death-defying dance. We did see a crowd around a lamppost where a small car had crashed. Other than that, no accidents to report (amazingly) I’ll post a few photos that I took from the second row seat in the van to attempt to give you some perspective.



























Once at the hotel and finally checked in we had one hour to unpack and freshen up after 36 hours of travel before walking to hour the hospital we’ll be working at for the next two weeks. We I went’ to my room it was still dirty. I wanted to cry, but instead went to Bernadette’s room to wash my face and change into some fresh clothes I had carried in my carry-on. Not a much needed shower, but that would come in time.
The hospital is only a short walk from the hotel. The heart hospital is quite different than any hospital in the states. There is a central courtyard filled with grass and palm trees with the cath lab, OR suite, exam rooms and patient rooms all surrounding the courtyard. Families of patients are very involved in their care and sort of live on the sidewalks of the hospital. I didn’t take many pictures there not wanting to be disrespectful.

We did meet one woman who is scheduled for surgery tomorrow (actually late today as I’m writing this after waking at 2am Mon my time- noon Denver time). She is scheduled to have an ASD (hole in her heart at the level of her atrium) repaired. However the surgery is complicated by the fact that she also has dextrocardia, which means her heart is flipped in her chest. Not life, threatening – rare!, but not life threatening, it just complicated the surgery for Dan. This woman is one of the elders of Cambodia being 63 – I can only imagine what she’s lived through after Po Pot’s reign in the 70’s

After the hospital, back to the hotel for a team meeting then finally off to dinner then a much needed night’s sleep. I was able to sleep about 6 hours before waking. ‘m now going to look over the charts of some of the people we’ll being seeing later today. Of the two I’ve looked at, one needs a lung removed after sever scarring from TB, the other needs her mitral valve fixed after scarring caused by rheumatic heart disease.

More later..
Pats to the pooches





Court yard of the hospital from first and second level