06/30/2017
Hello
my friend! How are you? I hope you are doing well. I am doing pretty good
myself here in Vietnam. Today was my last day volunteering at the Orthopedics
and Rehab Hospital in Ho Chi Minh City and I just wanted share with you about
what I’ve seen and learned here.
If I were to describe my experience
here in one or two words, I would say it is eye-opening. I suppose I’ll need to
talk a little about my daily life here in Vietnam you can get a sense of why it
was eye-opening. Every day, my alarm rings at 600 in the morning. I get up quiets
and tip toe to the bathroom so as not to wake up the other volunteers that
shared the room with me. I put on my blue scrubs and dark brown Birkenstock
sandals. They aren’t as pretty and feminine as the sandals the nurses at the
hospitals wear, but they will do. I grab my bag with about 40,000 Vietnamese Dong—$1.75
in US dollars—more than enough to spend for the day, a tiny tube of hand
sanitizer, and a generous pack of tissue. Toilet paper at the hospital is rare
so tissues are an absolute must to bring! Before heading down for breakfast, I
often climb up and sit on the rooftop of the six-story dormitory I am currently
staying at and watch the sun rise. There is something quite special to be in
that very moment, quietly observing the sun rays bouncing over the landscape,
hearing distant rumbles and honks from motorbikes, and watching the city slowly
wake up. After dozing off for a good half hour on the roof, I head down for
breakfast. Breakfast is freshly made by the volunteer staff. My go to is always
“trung opla voi banh mi” or essentially fried eggs with a French baguette. I
like to spread liver pate on my bread as well. Downstairs, volunteers gather at
the entrance to walk to the bus stop together. A group of loud blue cladded
foreigners must be sight to see for sure! Bus fare one way is 6,000 Dong and it
takes about 40 minutes to get to the hospital. Traffic here in Ho Chi Minh is
an experience of a lifetime. Let’s just describe it as a sea of helmets on
motorbikes with no lanes and an occasional sprinkle of cars and buses.
At
the hospital, the volunteer coordinator splits the volunteers up into pairs.
One pair each for each pair of nurses. Each pair of nurses has about 3-5 rooms.
Each room is filled with 10-16 rusted old metal beds. There are rarely empty
beds. Our morning task was to either help the nurses mix medications or do
wound care. Nursing students like me also have the option of administering
medications. Since it is primarily a trauma associated rehab hospital, the
patients are almost always given only two main medications: an antibiotic
(usually Cefepime) and a pain medication. Occasionally, patients also receive a
proton pump inhibitor or a prophylactic seizure medication. All main
medications are given directly through IV pushes or IM injections. Saline bags
hang from pumpless poles; fluids run by gravity with a single controlled clamp.
Nurses keep track with mainly paper and pen. Now you might be thinking that is
a lot of patients for just a few nurses, but family involvement here offsets
the high patient to nurse ratio. There is always at least one family member
attending to each patient every day and at all hours of the day. They stay in
line to collect medications for their loved one, wait patiently as the nurses
come by one by one to administer the meds, and generally take care of all the
patient’s daily activity needs. They sleep on the ground next to their loved
one’s beds on thin bamboo mats. They are polite and move aside quickly when I
approach to give an injection. Such dedication brought up painful memories in
me of taking care of lonely patients at the hospitals back home.
There
is no such thing as privacy here; it is just not logically possible with the limited
room available but that might not be such a bad thing after all. The other day,
I was assigned to perform wound care on a patient with a large swollen open
wound on his left upper arm. He grimaced as I slowly unwrapped the previous
day’s gauze. Chunks of his flesh was missing. Muscles and a bit of the bone
exposed. To clean wounds properly, you’ll need: clean, sanitized forceps which
are preferred over gloves, iodine to cleanse the skin, a salt solution for
large open wounds, a gauze wrap, plenty of cotton balls, and a large white absorbent
underpad. The patient turned to me and explained that he did not have a pad
since he couldn’t afford one for that day. No problem. A neighboring patient a
few beds over heard the dilemma and offered to share his pad. He then proceeded
to rip his large clean pad into four pieces and handed a piece over to me. What
a kind gesture! Lack of privacy in this case elicited communal empathy and
understanding. Later that day, I also thought to myself, I will probably never
look at a hospital absorbent underpad in the same way again.
Medication preparation,
administration, and wound care only lasts a couple of hours in the morning.
Some volunteers also get to go observe the orthopedics surgeries while others
follow physical therapists. Lunch break
is normally two hours long and for good reason. The other volunteers and I
usually go to a popular local rice plate lunch spot right next the hospital. Meals
cost $1 for a meal set. I had curried frog legs with rice and cabbage soup with
cold iced tea today. After lunch, I regularly sit at a little quiet café
further down the street and indulge in 5,000 Dong fresh sugar cane juice. With
an hour left to spare for break, I have found the custom of afternoon naps here
quite relaxing. Volunteers nap side by side on a matted floor in a large room with
other Vietnamese nurses, physical therapists, and an occasional stressed out doctor
who needed a break from his busy schedule. We developed a sort of bond through
our naps together. After that, volunteers are then assigned to either caring
for children with cerebral palsy and other disabilities or assisting the
acupuncture doctors with their work. Today, I had a hard time saying goodbye to
the sweetest little Vietnamese girl at the hospital. Her mother brings her to
the hospital every day to receive physical therapy, so they were in contact
with many volunteers frequently. Though she had severe cerebral palsy, a
condition that results in an inability to control one’s movements or muscle
coordination, she was still always full of life and smiling whenever I had the
chance to work with her. My favorite activity to do with her is play ball. She
loved it when the other volunteers, kids, and I toss bouncy balls to each
other. Catching the ball wasn’t always that easy for her but that didn’t stop
her from having fun. I felt a lesson can be learned from her demeanor.
What can I say? After being in
Vietnam for over a month, I feel as though it has already become by second home
and I do not want to leave. I’ll miss the food stands on every corner and the
plentiful exotic fruits. I’ll miss watching the sunrise every morning on top of
the dormitory building. I’ll even miss the warm moist humid air that gives me
an urge to shower every other hour. I’ll miss the sight and sound of motorbikes
and the chaos of no lanes on the roads. I’ll miss riding a motorbike down a
long dirt road surrounded by nothing but rice paddies and distant rainforests—wind
in my hair, freedom on my mind. I’ll miss traveling with other volunteers every
weekend. A comrade in a stranger while traveling is indeed a special one—a
unique experience that cannot be found in the hustle and bustle of a busy daily
life. I feel we’ve shared so much together. I’ll always remember walking down
the fairy stream with a baked purple sweet potato in one hand and a rice hat in
the other. I’ll remember sitting next to a giant white sleeping buddha in the
middle of a forest in the mountains, contemplating on the peacefulness nature
of simply breathing. I’ll remember cruising through Ha Long Bay, a UNESCO World
Heritage Site, surrounded by bodies of water with large isolated mountains and
plenty of floating jelly fishes. I’ll remember the moment I kayaked through
those mountains and was hit by a sudden storm. I have never laughed so hard in
the middle of a storm before.
My friend, I’ve seen
and learned so much here. Wouldn’t you agree? I’ve learned to truly slow down, be
present in the moment, laugh through difficult times, and appreciate the small things
in life. I think this skill will surely be useful to bring back with me. Just
like how I will never look at an absorbent under pad the same way again, I will
also never take for granted how much we have in the US again.
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