Right now I am sitting in a Cambodian hospital bed to look after Jente/Chantee (sp?) overnight. It’s stinking hot, there is sweat dripping down my face, there are a bazillion little freaky flies everywhere and I feel as though it’s only me and her in this ghostly building. I’m waiting for the night nurse to turn on her second drip at 11pm. In Cambodia they will not let patients stay overnight in a hospital unless a caregiver stays as well, as they only check on the patients once at night. Chantee is a 20 year old girl who has been at the therapy centre for 4 weeks. She was brought in severely malnourished and thin as her mother had given up on caring for her severe physical disabilities and just wanted to get on with her funeral. Chantee has upper and lower limb spasticity, cannot speak clearly, her eyes don’t focus, has feet that curl up and therefore cannot walk or do anything independently except slowly scratch her head.
Jennifer and I spent today going to several medical clinics to get both Chantee and Sophanna (the 4 year old the size of a baby) assessed. The first doctor was a thin older woman with long grey-blonde hair who was having a smoke outside when we neared the clinic with Chantee, a bundle of stiff limbs in our arms. She had worked for 30 years in Ethiopia with malnourished children and that is why we had hunted her down. She stared at the girls for ages, slightly shaking her head and in her thick accent said there was no hope for the brain damage, they will be like this forever and it was just a matter of ‘supportive therapy’, whatever that euphemism meant. She put both girls on antibiotics and vitamins, diagnosed Chantee with strep throat and agreed that the neurological damage was most likely caused by childhood vaccines as the girl’s mothers had both stated that they were typically developing before their vaccinations. She warned us not to talk about vaccines as cause of brain damage in the public sector unless we wanted to get persecuted and that the conversation must stay in the room. The government is that corrupt that large pharmaceutical corporations with the big bucks control public health (or ill-health) in an ironic twist of fate.
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| Holding Chantee up in the tuk tuk |
Sixty-seven dollars later and big bag of medicine (zyrtec for a weeping scalp condition?) we lifted Chantee back into the tuk tuk (no mean feat) and drove to a another nearby clinic in the hope of getting an ultrasound on Chantee’s stomach as it has been rigid and extended for weeks and she had refused to eat at times. Once again we carried her into the clinic, plopped her down on a plastic chair and were told the doctor would not be able to see her for another hour and a half. So we went to lunch. Determined not to give up, Jennifer and I went to a third clinic after lunch to see a doctor recommended by a woman who finds families to adopt children from orphanages. This time as soon as we put Chantee down in a chair, a male nurse came immediately and scooped her up and took her upstairs to a consulting room. Finally someone was taking notice! Jennifer said late it was probably because she looked half dead and no Cambodian wants someone to die in their own home/building lest the spirit hangs around.
The doctor this time was really caring, actually interacting with Chantee and spoke at long lengths with Jennifer in Khmer about her history and recommended testing for hepatitis, malaria, AIDS, chromosomal abnormalities, dengue fever, typhoid, blood cell count, and the list went on. He claimed her throat infection was oral thrush, something we had suspected. As this doctor was so thorough and holistic, Jennifer left to get Sophanna from the guest house to be checked as well. Meanwhile I held Chantee’s hand as she got bloods taken and an IV drip inserted. The poor thing was terrified as she had no idea what it was and couldn’t even brush away the tears that streamed down her cheeks. I then spent the next 2 hours tickling her legs and arms to pass the time as we waited in the room on our own, trying to communicate with her weak body language. Finally in the evening she was brought up to her room and I left to go have some food and grab my stuff, leaving Jennifer in charge of the situation.
I grabbed some clothes, phone charger and laptop from the hotel, piled into the tuk tuk once again and sped through the balmy night streets. Stumbling out of the tuk tuk I dropped my tweezers and underwear on the road and tripped up the 3 flights of stairs to the room. After Jennifer left I was only armed with a ridiculously minimal collection of Khmer words, ‘yes’ and ‘no’ and ‘thank you’ which I knew already, and the words for ‘toilet’ and ‘water’. I switched off the light and sure enough I hear some unintelligible rasps come from Chantee. I offered her water as she was looking in that vague direction. I switch off the light, and go to wash the one single T shirt I brought to Phnom Penh.
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| The dreaded bathroom |
Soon after I hear a word that could be Junome, ‘toilet’. Hell, now what do I do? It’s hard enough carrying her on her own, let alone attached to a prehistoric IV stand, but foolishly I thought I would persevere. So I scooped her up under her head and legs like a baby, hooked my foot in the IV stand and dragged it across the floor in a staggered fashion, probably thumping her head against the IV pole with every movement. I got to the bathroom step and realised it was ridiculous. I could not in a million years lift the IV stand up a step with my foot whilst struggling with a heavy and awkward bundle of stiff flailing limbs and maintain enough slack in the line as to not rip the drip out of her arm altogether. I lay her on the floor and assessed the situation. I had to get her back on the bed. I looked around the room. A plastic cup and a bunch of tissues. This was survival mode. Bear Gryllis eat your heart out. “Woman versus Poverty”, here I come.
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| Chantee kept pointing to the floor until 2am when I called the nurse and he worked out that she was scared she was going to fall off the bed, so we put her mattress on the floor. |
I soon realised a plastic cup for a tiny reclined female was just plain wishful thinking and the thin 2 ply wouldn’t absorb more than a raindrop. Something has to be sacrificed. The only other absorbent item was my bed blanket which looked suspiciously like an oversized towel. It had to do. I folded it under Chantee, pointed to the towel and told her to ‘Junome’ right there. She cracked up laughing, and then looked shocked. I told her again. It took about 5 minutes holding her upright on this damn towel before she got up the courage to comply with this crazy white woman’s insistence to let loose the Niagara on the bed. Ok, so it didn’t absorb the whole stream, but it was better than nothing. I then folded up her bed blanket and placed it over the wet spots on her bed. Oh did we laugh after that! Some things language just transcends. Later when ‘Junome’ time arose again I had the stroke of genius of making the rubbish bin a makeshift commode. Worked brilliantly.
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