Getting Well

We've been a little out of sorts this past week. Tuesday night Damien started with a fever and stomach "thing." We thought it would just be one of those 24 hour viruses but Thursday morning he still had it. I already had a an audiology appointment for Sora and was bummed that Damien couldn't come. Then, Friday morning he was STILL sick. I think he had about had it so by Friday afternoon we decided to go to the doctor. I'm still figuring out the whole Doctor thing here. It's not as easy as just making an appointment with your family doctor. Other than a few clinics around the city (many in the evening) almost everything happens at the hospital. Most clinics are only certain days per week. If you happen to be sick you either hope it lands on the day/time your doctor is around you go to one of the hospitals in town and they just sort of hand you off to a doctor. The hospital is sort of like an all day walk-in clinic. So we pulled Damien out of bed and dragged him in. Between trips to the bathroom the Doctor diagnosed him with a bacterial infection. This is where I think it gets funny. They tell him they are going to give him the first dose of antibiotics as a shot. We are sent to the cashier where we pay for everything. The doctor visit, medication, etc... Then they hand me a big Ziploc bag with everything. Two vials of medication, a syringe, saline, lots of bags of pills, cotton balls, etc.. Then we are sent to another room and give all of the stuff to a nurse. The boys go in because they want to watch daddy be brave while he gets his shot. After a few minutes they come running out saying, "Daddy got an IV, daddy got an IV!" So we waited for about 15 minutes as it all went in.

The doctor said it was pretty strong stuff and that Damien should be feeling much better within 24 hours. Boy was he right! Damien woke up the next morning with no fever and not having gotten up 20 times in the middle of the night. In fact, it was probably way more antibiotic than he needed. It's actually usually only used when other antibiotics haven't worked. And has lots more possible side effects. This is where the language barrier can be so frustrating. Usually we would ask so many more questions about the medication before taking it. But we're thankful it worked and that we have daddy back!

A couple of other observations:

- When you to go to the bathroom at a hospital and there isn't any soap to wash your hands it doesn't give you much confidence in the cleanliness of the place.

- Damien's entire bill, without insurance was 1,300 Bhat. That's about $43.

- We're starting to get pretty comfortable at the hospitals around here. Between Orin's stitches, Micaiah's crazy bug bite/rash, Orin's rash (which I don't think I posted about), Sora's audiology and ENT appointments, we've been to almost all of the hospitals in town. Still, I feel like we've been healthy overall...at least healthier than we thought we'd be. :-)

- "Right to privacy" is not something that seems to be of concern here.

- We get stared at even more than usual when we're at the hospital.

- Doctors here don't necessarily tell you anything about what they think you have or the medication they are giving you...and I think most people don't ask many questions.

- The sink in the hospital room for the doctors has cloth towels for them to dry their hands.