Common Sense

Hey everyone! I´m tired of writing about the political crap here and I realized that I haven´t yet told you about some of the cool, creapy and gross things I have seen and experienced here at the clinic. One of the things we were told before we left was to expect the unexpected and accept that things are the way they are and there isnt much to be done about them. I know that I am not here to change the world or to change peoples way of being/thinking, but I did manage to give out some common sense. I can just hear my friend Noel back home saying, "who the hell died and gave you common sense?" It´s hard for me at times to accept how things are done here because my North American brain wants to scream at these people, "Are you freaking kidding me?!?!". But I know that everyone is always doing the best they can with what they have and I definitely learned a lot about patience and acceptance. Might make life a bit less stressful for me back home. I have started to learn to just let things be; I cant control everything and that´s always been hard for me. Here are some examples



I believe I have mentioned before that vaccinations here are mandatory and also free. But still parents arent getting their kids vaccinated. Its only down to ignorance and laziness. I know that back home some people think that vaccines hurt kids or may cause autism or whatever, but here they dont think that deep. Mostly its just that the parents dont want to bring their kids to the clinic, wait for an hour or two and have to deal with their kids screaming up a storm and then being slightly sick for a day or two. Well I dont have kids and you all know how much I love screaming sick children, but isnt it better than having to deal with your kids having polio or typhoid?? Polio is an issue here. I thought it was all but erradicated in the world, but I guess not.



The food here is hard for me to deal with as I am not used to eating so much fat and oil and salt. But people here are brought up on it and wont give it up for anything, their health included. We saw a lady who had a blood pressure enduced stroke at 41 years of age because her cholesterol was over 300. The doctor tells me that 300 is high enough to kill most people. When the doctor told her she needs to cut out the fat and salt she looked at him like he had slapped her. So she risks heart attack and further damage because she cant possibly cook eggs without oil and salt.

This isnt about common sense, this was just cool and gross... a lady came in a couple months ago with half of the top half of her left index finger missing. She was butchering her cow and her hand slipped and she took off part of her finger...ew!! She of course had to go to the hospital in the capital city to get it surgerically fixed, but she came here first and asked if we couldnt just stitch it and bandage it cuz she had to finish her husbands dinner!!!! You could see the bone and everything!!!!! EW ICK!! Loved it!

Ever see the movie Brokedown Palace? It´s about the girls who get thrown into a Thai prison for smuggling drugs? One scene involves one of the characters having a beetle fly into her ear and infecting her, making her sick. That happened here! Poor little girl about 4 years old came in with a bad fever and a terrible ear and headache. Turns out she had a dead beetle in her ear. It must have crawled in while she slept and got stuck. Once it got stuck it couldnt retreat backwards so it burrowed further into ear and scratched into her ear drum before it died. She had to go to the hospital to have it removed safely... and will have received a good dose of penicilin. I sleep with ear plugs...