Stitches!!!

Well, we've gone 5 1/2 years without any serious or semi-serious injury and then 7 weeks after moving to Thailand we get our first trip to the ER. Seems kind of ironic to me. :-)

I walk into the apartment after putting a load of laundry in downstairs and the first thing I hear is Micaiah screaming. Then as I walk into the room, Damien says that Orin fell off of the stool and somehow (we still have no idea how this happened) cut his arm badly and it was bleeding a lot. So why was Micaiah screaming? Well, he doesn't handle blood very well. :-) I finally had to tell him to go into the other room because I couldn't talk to Orin because Micaiah was freaking out so much! LOL. It was sort of funny and I couldn't help but laugh. Damien's not so good with blood either so he just had the arm covered with a paper towel that was bleeding through. Finally we got the bleeding to stop enough so that I could actually see the cut. I had definitely never seen anything like it. But I'm no Doctor and have no idea if it needs stitches or not. I'm one of those mean moms that only takes there kids to the Doctor after they have had a high fever for many many days. So the last thing I wanted to do was to take him to the ER at 9:30pm for no reason. I was about to pick up my phone to call Aaron (my brother who is a Doctor) to see what he thought. At least I knew it was about 9am their time and I wouldn't wake him up. Then I decided to have Damien look it up on the Internet. There was no way he was going to look at the cut to give me his opinion so I figured I'd give him something else useful to do instead of just pacing. He gets much more worried about these things than me. I've had four brothers... stitches were a common occurrence in my house. So Damien finds the info and reads it to me. First, "Can you see any fatty tissue?" Oh, yes! I felt like I was watching the surgery channel. Second, "Is the wound gaping?" Check. At first I though he had actually taken a chunk skin out...but he didn't...it was just long enough of a cut that the skin was stretching so much it was open about 1/4inch. Ok, good. At least it was obvious that we needed to go.

So then came the second question. Where do we take him? We've been here long enough to know what hospitals are around and that some are better than others. We just couldn't remember which ones were the BAD ones. There is one really close that we thought would be good, but we couldn't remember if it was one of those bad ones. So we called a friend and she was able to help a lot. McCormick is a very small hospital just up the road. And since it was just stitches...about as minor of an "emergency" as you can get, we decided it would be ok. It wasn't the best hospital...and I certainly wouldn't have major surgery there, but stitches are pretty basic. My biggest worry was 1. Would it be sanitary enough (that is one of the biggest problems with some hospitals) and 2. Would the give him an anesthetic before stitching him up. One of the biggest problems in foreign hospitals is not giving enough pain killers...especially to children. My friend and I decided that if it looked like they weren't equipped to go a good job that I could just leave and go somewhere else.

So I left the house. Sora was sleeping and Micaiah was getting into bed so Damien stayed home. I was armed with my Thai-English dictionary and trying to build courage enough to forcefully ask that they clean the wound well (if it appeared that they weren't going to) and to ask for them to numb the area before doing it. Luckily, I didn't need the dictionary or the courage. :-) As I was walking in a few techs or something were sitting outside. They saw us and walked right in to the ER and called for the Doctor. We walked right in - it was a room with about 6 beds (the ER) and no other patients. The Doctor walked up and said, "Can I help you" and I breathed a sigh of relief because he spoke English which meant he and I wouldn't be doing the grunt/point communication which occurs often when someone doesn't speak English and my limited Thai doesn't cover what we're discussing. Ironically, the only translating I ended up doing was between Orin and the Doctor. Neither could understand the other. :-)

I showed him the cut and he brought Orin straight to a bed, asking what happened. Orin, who has been shaking and whimpering since it happened asked as soon as he saw the Doctor, "Will I need a shot." The kid has this hole in his arm and all he's been talking about since it happened was if he was going to have to get a shot or not. He does not like them. The Doctor said to Orin, "Yes, just a small one." Phew, first concern down, and I didn't even have to ask! Orin did it for me. The nurse came right up with two different antiseptics and started cleaning the wound. Phew. I knew we were set. Orin did great while she cleaned the wound. Then the Doctor did it again. It HAD to hurt worse then the shot...but that's what he complained most about. But he didn't fight or yell...just said "Ow" over and over. And then it was over. During the stitches I had him look at me while I played a silly game on my phone...he had no idea what was happening with the stitches and didn't feel a thing. I was so impressed with he Doctor. He wore gloves, and even put a sterile cloth on top of Orin's arm (with a hole cut out to access the cut). He was so nice and patient. Of course, Orin was the talk of the town. All of the nurses were standing around watching and talking to him. It was a positive first experience with Chiang Mai hospitals. The funniest part being that our registration consisted of someone having me write down Orin's name, address, phone number and birth date on a scrap piece of paper as they were working on him. Oh, and the fact that the entire thing (ER cost, Doctor cost, drugs, etc...) cost 1,400Baht. That's about $45.00. That's without any insurance.

After Orin was done and we were waiting for the Doctor to put some info into the computer, Orin read the screen that the Doctor was on and it said, "Girl." So Orin course corrected it. He gets mistaken for a girl ALL of the time! An interesting part of Thai culture that is different that US culture is how they act which someone is embarrassed or shammed. For example, if someone walks into a classroom in the US and trips and falls on their face, the nice thing to do is play it down, act as it's not a huge deal and maybe ask if they are ok. That is how you help someone not be embarrassed, right? In Thailand it's opposite. Everyone there would totally laugh. It's not that they are being mean. They are doing it to be nice, because by laughing they are making a joke out of it and making light of it...therefore saying it's not a big deal so don't be embarrassed. It's been very interesting for me to get used to this. So instead of people saying, "Oh, yeah, you do look like a boy. I'm surprised they thought you were a girl (which is what people usually do in the US when they mistake him for a girl), the Thai nurses kept coming up to him and saying, "You're such a beautiful girl. So pretty!" And playing with his hair, telling how beautiful it is etc.. It's so funny because my gut reaction is to think that they are being mean, but this is their way of telling him it doesn't matter, and making light of the situation. As I was paying the bill and getting the prescription the Doctor actually came by and took Orin away and bought him a coke. So nice!

So, I was very thankful we had a good experience with our minor injury. Orin went from asking if he was going to die and saying how much he hated this day (before we went to the hospital) to telling me it was the best day ever as we left the hospital. :-) We have to go back every day this week for them to change the dressing so I'm super glad we went to the closest hospital. Hopefully when they take the stitches out he'll have as good of an experience.

I wanted to take more pictures but I didn't know what was appropriate and I certainly didn't want to offend the Thai doctors so I waited until they were pretty much done to ask if I could take a picture. Orin's medication had kicked in and he was all smiles at this point.

Here he's probably asking if he needs to get another shot or something. :-) You can tell by his face he is worried.