Monday, August 13, 2012

Snakey Sunday Medical Madness AKA Worst Time EVER

Ok, so I've finally gotten time to mention Michael's lovely trip to the hospital. I wanted him to write it but he hasn't had the chance and now it's been 2 weeks since then, so yeah.
Anyhew, I may abbreviate the experience as I would really rather not repeat it, even in memory, so here are the basics (my first draft attempt was a little long, but has a lot more details, if you want to read all of the details let me know and I will send it to you):
- I nap Sunday afternoon, Michael goes to swim with some friends.
- Phone call, he says he picked up a snake and it bit him, he's being taken to the hospital, it didn't seem to have fangs, just a small scratch, but it could be poisonous. He says it looked like a garter snake to him and he didn't think, just acted, but it really had bright colors - thank you color blindness.
- I try not to freak out, I grab oils, paperwork, go get money, go to hospital.
- Friends were amazing, brought us phone charger, food, a Nintendo DS, and a Timmy plushie from Timmy Time.
- Hospital is crazy, 12 beds to a room, hot, just ceiling fans, mosquitoes and bugs, no bathrooms.
- Doc says we have to stay at least 1 night for observation and blood tests, if tests are good we will go from there. Some snake bites have no symptoms for days, then you have brain hemorrhage, so we agree to stay.
- Blood tests take 4 hours to come back, they are fine, have to stay overnight and if they are good in the morning we can go.
- Michael has to pee, nurse gets me a plastic "boy" container from one of the other patients and I hold up a sheet for him. After he's done I have to empty the container in a bucket in the hall, luckily it had been emptied before. At least I didn't have to get a baggie for him and then tie it and throw it away like all of the other families were doing.
- After waiting as long as possible, I asked where the bathroom was. I was shown out to the worst bathroom I've ever seen. Sink broken, water running everywhere, shower with pee-bags in it, no toilet seat, walls moldy, the only blessing was that it flushed - and it was quite the nice blessing.
- It was impossible to sleep. I had a small plastic stool, we used our bags as pillows. Doctor said not to leave your bags unattended because it wasn't safe, people might take them. Time passed slowly, so slowly.
- Blood tests came back ok, thank goodness. The doctor left and didn't come back to let us leave (we waited an hour). Then Michael tried walking out until someone came to take out his IV and we were able to leave.
- A night in the public hospital - roughly 1.2million Vientamese Dong, about $60US, at least it was cheap, but you get what you pay for.
- After we left the hospital, everything was beautiful, even the litter-scattered street shops, anywhere that wasn't the nightmare of where we just left.
- After we got home around 9:00AM or so we showered, I left my shoes to soak in disinfectant, and we went to get Michael's scooter from the resort. After resting and eating some breakfast Michael actually headed into work, and life returned to normal.
I am so grateful for the protection that we were given through this, and for the love of friends. I used my essential oils on everything, we used them to disinfect all of the injection sites on Michael as well as the snake bite, and we also used them to clean our hands and under our noses to help prevent inhaling anything infectious. And I am so grateful that we haven't had any negative repercussions from the visit, no complications, at least that we can tell so far, and we are very thankful. We are very blessed, and I am grateful for what we have back home as far as hospitals go, very very grateful.

2 comments:

Sherri said...

Oh my goodness...there are no words. I will be more grateful for my hospital from now on. I might even be grateful for the bill!! :)

So glad Mike is okay! Glad you had oils to protect you both from something worse.

Donna said...

oh that would've been awful. Glad all is okay