Hoping to Make a Difference

Dogs barking, doors opening and closing, motorbikes passing by, the same song being sung in Lao, and the I want to poke my eyes out sound of the ice cream man driving by. Those are the sounds you continuously hear sitting inside our house. All of the windows and doors are always open downstairs. The ceiling fans are going. It’s hot, but not unbearable. It’s always hot and humid here… Maybe for a second, after a monsoonal downpour the humidity lessens, but it is still here. Dermatologists must hate it here, as there really is no need for botox with all this humidity.

Three weeks in, with two weeks at work. I have read everything there is to read about the projects I am here to work on,  and I am that much more excited to get out into the field and start really working. Really making a difference. Especially after last night. Ari has been sick for a few days. Typical summer cold. However, as what usually happens when he gets a cold, his asthma kicks in. Home nebulizer treatments weren’t making much of a difference, so it was time to see a doctor. At 8pm on a Saturday night, where do you go? The local Children’s Hospital of course. Lao Friends Hospital for Children, Friends without a Border, was the first NGO I had applied to. I was given the name of the head of Patient Outreach and their Volunteer program. They do lots of patient outreach, and I wanted to be a part of that. Well, as it turns out, they do not accept volunteers without Medical Degrees. Many of the pediatricians at this hospital are volunteers from all over the globe. In fact, I had actually met with a family of two Emergency Pediatric Physicians last November. Their family was here volunteering from Boston for about six months. Anyway, back to last night. I messaged my friend Rachel to make sure that this hospital was ok to bring Ari to. I had been to the Provincial Hospital back in February, and wasn’t really impressed. Rachel assured me that that was the reason that her family knew they could move here with three young children.  I got all of our Global Insurance information ready. I was going to get our passports, but…. really not sure where they are…. I got whatever KIP I had, as well as some USD, and credit cards. I had no idea what to expect and wanted to be prepared. We arrived to the hospital and found where we were supposed to be. There were many people waiting to be seen. Thankfully, Sarah, a Nurse that I had seen on FB was there. She is from Australia, and has been here for a few years. Phew….She got us triaged, and worked with a local lao nurse to get Ari ready to be seen. After a bit, we were brought into a ward like area…Typical ER, except no curtains. No privacy. HIPPA surely doesn’t apply here. No it wasn’t John Muir or Oakland Children’s Hospital, but it was just fine. Afterall, this was just for a cold… Sara said she was leaving as her shift was ending. She said we would be in good hands and pointed out several of the Volunteer Docs that were seeing other patients. And in the end we were in great hands…We were seen by a local Lao Doc and then by a Doctor from Scotland. They both decided that it was just a virus and he would be just fine in a few days. Phew. We could go home. They handed me Ari’s “chart” and I asked where I was to go to pay. They said it was free. WHAT??? FREE?? I said I had insurance and they can surely bill me. They said we could “make a donation” if we wanted.…Try to get that in the US!!! That trip to the ER would have been several thousand dollars!!!!!!

What got me though, wasn’t that it was free. It was one paitent. A little baby, maybe a year old? She had an oxygen full face mask on. She was lying on a gurney with her father right next to her. He looked like he couldn’t have been older than 19? The look of pure fear was so visible on his face. Before she left, I overheard Sara speaking to a Lao nurse, asking him if anyone had told this dad that his daughter was going to be ok? You could tell that this young father had no idea what was going on. He was just so scared. Imagine being somewhere with your baby, not having the knowledge of what is going on, much less what to ask. No one else was there with him…. Just him and his baby. I wonder where the mom was? Was she in a village far away with other kids? Why didn’t she come? Had something happened to her? Was he the only one able to come? How did he get here? When did they arrive? My heart went out for him. It was this moment that truly woke me up to why I was here and what my role is. To provide that patient outreach people that I will be working with have the knowledge that things will be ok. That it is ok to trust. If I can help even just one young Dad, then that will be more than enough…..