The Hospital

The care Juliet received from the doctors and nurses at the children’s hospital was wonderful. They spoke great English and helped make a very tough situation as good as possible. Unfortunately, it is a VERY old hospital and the facilities themselves were not exactly what we’re used to.

Upon arriving at the hospital, we mistakenly stumbled into the local section where we waded through hundreds and hundreds of very very sick children and their parents. It was the most eye-opening experience we’ve had since we’ve been here. Children lined the halls with IV bags hanging from the walls or being held by their parents. Some children were naked. Several children were wandering aimlessly holding their urine samples (with no lid). It was a quick dose of reality.

We made it back to the foreigner’s ward and were shown to her room. What we saw was much better than the local facility we had just seen, but it was still very substandard compared to the U.S. There were two beds in the room. One was a bed that could double as a crib – Juliet referred to it as her cage. There was also a twin bed for Annie and Scott to sleep in. The walls were very dirty with writing and lots of brown marks. The bathroom was extremely old – there was a place with no ceiling tiles in order to let the hot water tank (mounted in the ceiling) vent. In addition, there was a very slow leak at the base of the toilet that led to Juliet getting at least 3 pairs of pajamas wet and prompting a change of clothes.

Some of the highlights of our stay:

• We were able to play about 25 games of “Uno.”
• The first afternoon, Annie went home to pick up clothes, toys, etc. While Scott was with Juliet, her fever spiked again. He called the nurse in and she asked if he had brought any medicine with him. He said no, so she went and retrieved some children’s Motrin. However, after this, we just administered all her fever-reducing medicine ourselves that we brought from home – we can honestly say, we never expected to “self medicate” in a hospital.
• Outside the hospital grounds we were exposed to many different vendors hawking their wares. Most of these vendors were selling very cheap toys or balloons for people to reward their children after being good in the sea of humanity inside. One guy was selling a wide array of small animals. “The Critter Man” as we called him had a good assortment of turtles, bunnies, chicks, baby ducks, gerbils, hamsters, and squirrels. Annie even swears she saw a baby raccoon in his inventory.
• The hospital serves Chinese food for its patrons, but they did not bring us any because they didn’t think we’d want it. Thus, at 6 pm the first night, Scott was left scrounging for some dinner for his family. He was able to rustle up the number for Papa John’s and we had pizza delivered to our hospital room door – both Wednesday and Thursday night.
• Annie and Scott were able to get up close and personal sleeping together in a twin bed – nothing helps light the fire of a marriage like sharing a bed meant for an 8 year old.