First Day in Theatre
I had my first day at the hospital - fairly bureaucratic as expected. But I think that with the schmarmy letter that I just tapped out it should mean that things are fine from here on. Apparently I needed separate letters from the powers that be to allow me admission into the ICU and theatres. But otherwise the ward provides many motorbike victims, they all have x -rays that you just look at and wince.
I have been in theatre all day today. There was this poor farmer who came in after stepping on a mine this morning while widening his paddock for his farm. Bloody American war leftover still active, 30-40 years on. Another guy had a broken femur that we fixed up. In Welly there just weren’t that many broken femurs - over here everyone rides around on their motorbikes and the crashes are a mess. Helmets are discouraged in the cities as they impede the vision at the peripheries. So that’s a good system huh?
Currently the caesarean rate in Province hospital rumoured to be between is between 50 and 70%. Whenever I am in theatre there is a baby entering the world just a couple of metres away - they have two surgical cases going simultaneously in the theatres here.
The personal space and touching laws are very different. There is no male-female touching in public - except when holding onto each other on a motorbike - the young couples motorbike a lot. There is plenty of girl on girl and man touch though. It is normal to walk with an arm around a friend when on the street. Also there is much thigh stroking when talking to each other or to emphasise a point. When I come back to NZ I will be drinking beer with ice and touching everyone all the time. I think I will have to have a diamante suit made while I am here to go with this new attitude.
I spent the morning drinking iced coffee again with the doctors and then after a bit of a ward round (read,look at wounds and poke at legs) we just sat around and talked orthopaedics and then some political discussion.
Apparently the senior consultants at the hospital have a salary of $70 US dollars a month (one million dong). Not a lot considering the ATM just let me get out 2 million.
It’s my common mistake - people say ” How….are you?” to which I answer “I am fine today thank you. How is your day today?” This gets very confused looks. The Vietnamese don’t care how I am, what they really want to know before names etc. is how old I am. I have also been asked “how odd are you?” I decided not to tell them how odd I am because I need to stay here for another 3 weeks or so.
Yesterday I spent most of the day in theatre doing some skin grafting. There is a burns ward managed by the orthopaedic doctors (it’s a plastics specialty in NZ - no plastics here though). There are a couple of guys with horrific electrical burns which are needing a lot of surgery. One of the guys has had to have the arm that touched the wire amputated and his feet are burnt pretty badly where the current left his body. It’s pretty similar to NZ as far as the jigsaw puzzle of skin grafting goes - shave it off here and fit it across the biggest area of exposed viable flesh.
