July 15, 2009

• Nepal Project’09 – Hospital work in Lamjung district

  July 14, 2009
  11:12PM Nepali time

  Sofia, Dan, and I are staying in the
  mountain village of Bershiadia tonight. 
  This is the location of the Christian-managed government hospital that I
  mentioned in my last entry.    We woke up
  at about 5am and got into a taxi at 6:10am that took us to a micro-bus location
  where we were picked up by our friend, S.P., who is the current manager of the
  health organization.

  Originally, the trip should have only
  taken approx. 5 hours, but several complications arose.

   

  1.  45 minutes into our journey from the bus stop,
  we encountered what we originally thought was a traffic accident along the
  mountain road.  However, after two hours
  of getting some tea, crawling up and down the mountain road as traffic moved
  very slowly, we finally discovered that the traffic delays were caused by
  protesting construction workers who decided to block one side of the road with
  mounds of sand and cement materials. 
  This obviously would cause a bottleneck and only began to be freed up
  b/c of Nepalese policemen who arrived on the scene to facilitate the traffic.

  2.  15 minutes later, we were stuck again because
  of a construction vehicle had blown a tire and then broke its front axle, on a
  bridge.  Needless to say, that took a
  while to get through the bottle neck there. 

  After those problems, we were able to go
  straight to the hospital without much interruption besides getting some lunch.

  When we arrived, the hospital staff
  showed us our accommodations for the next couple of days.  Though they believed that these
  accommodations were very minimal, for us, this was a luxury! The rooms had
  western-styled bathrooms, ample space to put our luggage in, and overall a
  decent place for us to sleep. 

  We then took about a 2 hour tour of the
  hospital facility.  As they showed us the
  many patient rooms they had, the type of hospital equipment they possessed, I
  could tell Sofia look a bit concerned. 
  It’s very hard for us westerners, admittedly, to remember that we had
  been truly blessed by God.  We take a lot
  of things for granted, and in a sad way, we lose touch with how to deal with
  situations that don’t have the best conditions, especially in the medical
  arena.  In many ways, practicing medicine
  in Nepal is practicing frontier style medicine; make due with what you have and
  try your best to help those who are sick.

  We’ll be staying here for at least
  another two nights.  Sofia will be
  shadowing the doctors tomorrow and she is looking forward to when the pre-natal
  doctor comes in on Thursday and speak with him/her about child care and
  pregnancy care.  Dan & I will
  probably explore and document the surrounds as much as possible.  There is a lot to do, but until then, time to
  get sleep.  Night!

  • 4:59 am
  • 1 Comment