It has been a while and memories are starting to fade a bit, but I'll visit Cambodia with you as I look through some of my photos.
The last post on Cambodia was about or trip to Kampong Chhnong - a province outside Phnom Penh. We went with the express purpose of delivering medical supplies to the hospital there. The hospital is growing and had construction of a few buildings happening while we were there, and we were there on a national holiday, so the placed felt a little deserted. The buildings we did walk through were the maternity ward,
the emergency area and the surgical area
This is the delivery room - quite sparse it seems, and not too sterile
Healthy mom and babies - how would you like to sleep on those hospital beds?
Sweet, wee newborn
This is the surgical suite which I didn't think seemed too bad, but I'm never in the OR so I'm certainly not an expert.
One of the medical supplies that we gave to them were disposable spinal needles - apparently they are expensive and hard to come by so they clean and reuse them. Chances are they will continue to clean and reuse the ones we brought them as well, but now they'll have a new supply.
This is the entrance to their emergency area ( I think their written language is beautiful). This was the only place that was busy and it was filled to overflow. Some patients were in beds on the porch. The care of the sick is still left much to families for providing cleaning, food, toileting - it's pretty interesting.
Here's a family caring for their ill family member that was lying in the bed. The blue basin is filled with ice. Ice is the main pain killer used over there - no morphine after surgery, just a bag of ice on your belly!
This is a peek into the emergency area - not quite as cush as our hospitals, eh?
And BTW, I was told today of a documentary entitled "Holly"
I'm sad that I missed this event, but Friday evening a woman named Somaly Mam was in Denver at the viewing of this film. She has an amazing story (click on her name to be taken to a story written about her in the Denver Post). This woman was sold into a brothel by her grandfather at the age of 9. She has spent her adult life trying to save at risk girls from her fate. It sounds amazing and I hope to make it to the film before it leaves.
8 comments:
Wow...I knew I had it pretty nice as do my patients. Those sparse conditions really drive home how fortunate we are to have such good health care readily accessible to us.
Kind of reminds us of how lucky we are, doesn't it? So glad you had the experience and gave of yourself in that way. Thanks for sharing.
I'll echo the M and Pipo; seeing such conditions reminds me how incredibly cush we have it here.
Thanks for sharing these photos. I'm proud of you and of your volunteering spirit, Beeb. You, my friend, are such a loving, giving soul... xoxo
So post some pics of the basement! The Cambodia pictures are really cool, and I guess you can say you inherited the cooking gene. Cara used to say she was going to Grandma's for good cooking, now she can come to your house!
Amazing pictures. The delivery and emergency rooms do look quite sparse. What a sweet little baby.
Mom is right...grandmas was the only place we could go, and when she would come up she'd cook enough for at least a week! I miss that...but these look amazing, as does the chocolate cake below..you know how my sweet tooth is! Hope you get to make it home soon! -Cara
Wonderful post! Really appreciate you sharing photos of the hospitals over there. I am reminded that people need to see the same from here, from Peru.
Fascinating.
Change the Cambodian script for Chinese pictograms and your hospital would be a ringer for the "Children's Hospital" in Guangzhou. My experiences in other parts of the Third World suggest that this porcelin tile type architecture is pretty standard once you get out of Disney World. And it never looked too comfortable to me, either, but then I was coming from the Land of the Big PX, like you, and not some 12th-Century farming village or teeming backstreet favela. So for the local folks, I suspect that this is a pretty good deal.
Sorry I missed this post for so long - it's a good one, but I get lost in the baking (not that there's anything wrong with baking, it's just not my thing).
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