What did we do there? Medical work

For the first two days, our team travelled to different villages around the Baray district since the youth camp had not started.

The CMS (Cambodia Methodist Services) actually employs a doctor 3 days a week. They also have a dispenser and medication. It's really very well organized.

We would normally stop at a village, step up "clinic" underneath a person's house. The patients would register with a pastor, get a number, see the doctor, get a prescription, go to the dispenser's table, and after dispensing there would be another pastor there to pray for the patient. The rest of the pastors would talk to the patients while they are waiting and share the gospel. So in a sense the medical work, is a platform for the pastors to get to know people from villagers that have not heard of the gospel.

Doctor, operating from the space beneath someone's house. In the back is firewood for cooking.

Dispenser

The doctor would be really busy. In 3 hours, he would normally have to see 70-90 patients!
Well, since I was there, they asked me to set up a table, as in, I would become the 2nd doctor. Of course there would be a translator with me.

For starters I really didn't want to because I am just a 3rd year medical student. And I can't read the medicine labels or know what medication they stock because all the medication labels are in FRENCH. (Cambodia was a former French colony, to study medicine, you need to know French). The only French I know is Bon Jour, Petite, Amore. Ha, hopeless.


But the crowd was just to big! And so, I stumbled along. The 1st case was some UTI case. When you start seeing the patients, you realize how desperate is the need for healthcare in Cambodia. There are government hospitals but again because of corruption, the doctors won't treat you unless you pay a significant amount of money. So most people go to "pharmacists." Which aren't really pharmacists because a lot of them are not qualified. And they sell to the patients, antibiotics; IN THE AMOUNT OF 2 TABLETS! Meaning, each time you think you are sick, you go to the "pharmacy" and get 2 tablets of antibiotics and hope to get well.

Then there are patients with scabies, and for the life of me, I don't know what to prescribe. Next was a woman 5 months pregnant who has not felt her baby move and feel pain in the night. It's bad enough that I don't really know how to palpate a pregnant woman, added with the fact that there's no bed, you must try to palpate while she's sitting and you have to rely on a translator. The sad thing is that she went to the district hospital and the doctors can't do anything because there's no ultrasound in the district, she would need to go to Phnom Pehn 2 hours away if she wants an ultrasound.

Then a guy with TB, and we don't have any TB drugs. Next someone with suspected malaria.

In the end the dispenser also couldn't figure what I was writing as all their drugs are in French, so I told them, never mind I'll just help take BP for the patients.

Ah, I look so garang here....! Concentrating la..haha
Surface to say, I've never taken BP for so many people in 1 day, and it sure triples or quardaples the number of times I've taken BP in CSU, clinic or every other senario in my whole life. I think it must have numbered 130+ and it's really good training because you learn to hear for Korotkoff sounds while chickens are squacking at the back, and 50 other people crowd around you, punctuated by the moos of cows.

It can be hard to hear the Korotfoff sound especially among women because some of them are so aneamic and have low pressure with the added medly of background sounds. In Cambodia, it's either your BP is normal, too low (around 70/50) or too high (hitting 190/140 or 200+/170)!

Something interesting is that, most of them have muscles! Even the women have biceps muscles. It's because of the hard labour they do in the fields. And in the midst of hearing and hearing and hearing for BP in the heat, something came to mind. I felt, that God was saying "hey Sarah Ong Kai Li, don't just hear mechanically to record the BP and make it like a task okay, but hear with my ears.... the heartbeats of the people...beating to know me, to know of my love and my gentle touch for their wounded hearts."