We left Siem Reap on an airplane headed for the neighboring country Vietnam, and arrived an hour later. Hochiminh city is filled with shops and hotels lining the streets. Motos are still the primary transportation, however, no tuk-tuks. 🙁 The city is much more advanced than that of Phnom Penh or Siem Reap. The adventure started when a monsoon rain took over the city, flooding the streets. Eventually it let up a bit, and we decided to set out to find somewhere to eat dinner—surely we wouldn’t have to go far. At least 30 minutes later, we arrived at a restaurant, and the hostess even spoke English! We all devoured our very delicious meals, and enjoyed the music playing in the background.
The next leg of the adventure was getting a taxi to take us to a tour-arrangement place, and then to our hotel. With no one speaking Vietnamese, and the driver not speaking any English (which made for a very humerous ride around the city) we eventually made it to an area to book a tour for the next day. The driver, traumatized I’m sure, let us out and we arranged another taxi to take us back to the hotel. I’m very thankful for our group members and how we tend to handle crazy situations—instead of stressing out completely, we try to always just laugh at the adventure we’re in. Being in a country where no one in our group speaks the language is a very humbling experience—we are fully reliant on the individuals who choose to show kindness in a circumstance where it would be much easier to leave us wandering. God bless those kind people.

it is getting closer and closer to our return home to the states. i have been thinking about how it is going to be transitiong back into the swing of things back home. air conditioner, faster internet, traffic rules, paved roads, advanced medicine…that is just the tip of the iceberg.
we havent been here that long. two weeks. but i feel like i have been here a lot longer. i think now that is because every day we see so much and learn so much that each day feels like a week. after a while it becomes overwhelming. i knew before i came here that i would see misfourtune, sickness, and poverty. i knew before i cam here that i am lucky in a lot of ways to have been born in america. i knew before i came here that this would be an eye opening experience. i knew all of these things. but being here. being submerged into a culture that is not only foreign in language, but foreign in living is much different than hearing it from some one else. all of the books, movies, and stories could not have prepared me enough. yes, they helped. they helped me understand the history and culture. but no, they did not help me prepare for the feelings i personally would experience. and i can comfortably say that for the whole group. though we have all had different emotional roller coasters for different reasons, we have still had them.
i look forward to going home. but leaving here only inspires me to return as fast as i can. there is something clensing about constantly being away from luxury. there is sometyhing humbling about living amoungst people who have endured and perservered through so much hardship. it is a feeling i dont think can be replicated back in the states.
on that note, we are on our way to vietnam.
“lee-ah-howie”
(good bye!)

Here I sit in Siem Reap on Saturday afternoon. This is where Angkor Wat is and we have finished a tour of the main Temples that began at sunrise this morning. This is an incredible place and there are many other foreign tourists here. I would love to talk about Siem Reap but my day to post a note was for last Tuesday. Between our busy schedule and a fickle internet service this has been my first opportunity to post a note.
Before I came to Cambodia I was told the hospital does not have ventilators, I could not comprehend how the system would work without ventilators, and on Monday I found out exactly what that meant. A 15 year old girl was brought into the emergency room by her family with severe respiratory problems. They had kept her at home in the countryside (the Province) for four days trying to treat her with traditional Khmer medicine. I arrived in the Emergency Department just after she went into respiratory and cardiac arrest; an ER Dr. from California was able to resuscitate her. In the States we would use an Ambu-bag (to breathe for the patient) during the code and until we connect the patient to a ventilator. In Cambodia where ventilators are rare, the responsibility to continue “bagging” the patient is turned over to the family. I was thinking of how emotionally wrenching it must be to be responsible for breathing for your beloved family member. The father was there at her bedside, and another nurse and I were setting up a couple of procedures that needed to be done for her, when she coded again. She did not make it. I tried to communicate my sorrow to the father, he understood but I felt terrible to have the language barrier when he was suffering so much. The meaning of not having ventilators was brought home more vividly than I could have imagined. The solution of having a family member bag the patient may be practical, but incomprehensible to Westerners and the level of healthcare that we take for granted. I don’t mean to sound so depressing but I think it’s important for us to know what it is really like here.
The day ended a little better when Kelley and I branched out on our own and took a Tuk-Tuk to an “expatriate street” to go shopping. Some things never change…

In all my life I have never seen people, especially those so recently oppressed, smile as much as the people in Cambodia. Being here, it is impossible to keep from smiling back at them. These are truly among the friendliest people I have ever met. Along with that, they seem to have something that a lot of people in America are missing, strong families. I think that most people in the US, including myself, get so wrapped up in our own personal lives or things we have going on, that family somehow gets left behind.
Being in the hospital really shows that great side of Cambodians. I have seen family members care for patients in much the same way that nurses do in the US. Family members constantly watch over the patient, change bedsheets, feed the patient, assist with ambulation, assist with manual respirators, and provide continual emotional support. One of the supervising nurses at the hospital asked me one day while I was in the ED (Emergency Department) how many people were allowed to go into the ED in the US. He was so suprised when I told him that for the most part no one is allowed in the ED because if the injury is bad enough then the patient will be taken to the “medical ward” and the family can visit them there. That sort of suprised him, because in Cambodia the ED is chaos filled with doctors, nurses, patients, and all the family members that accompanied the patient to the hospital. The nurse then asked me how many family members usually visited patients’ in the US once they are moved to the long-term care. I told him that it really just depended on how far away the family members were or how close the family was; I told him that sometimes no one visits the patient. After I told him this, he just stared at me blankly trying to comprehend what I had just said. Then I gave him the best response I could. I told him that “most families just aren’t as strong or important to people like they are in Cambodia. Families in the US don’t depend on each other the way they do in Cambodia, so most families tend to drift apart”.
Thinking about that made me wonder how a country with so little materialistically can have so much more than us overall. We replace love with presents and toys. We reduce communcation between family members to emails and sticky notes. And we replace quality time with TV and movies. Something is just not right with this picture…

For me personally, I’ve grown up in church, knowing the ins-and-outs of Christianity from a young age. I am certainly blessed to have been introduced to God at a young age, not having to experience much outside of God’s grace and mercy. However, this situation can easily lead to an idle Christian faith in which nothing is new. Of course, this is completely wrong—there is always SO much to learn, it’s just that I’ve allowed myself to be content in not actively pursuing God’s will. The message at church was a very simple and ‘back-to-the-basics’ type of message about the great commission, and our responsibility to make that part of everyday life. Savahn (sp?) the pastor of the church, shared about a few opportunities that were placed in front of him on Saturday when we traveled to the village. 1. He gave a man a ride out to his village which was further than where we were going. In conversation, Savahn asked if he had ever been to church, or heard about Jesus. The man answered, “No, never.” This lead into deeper conversation about Christ and Savahn’s faith. 2. When introducing all of us foreigners to the people of his village, he told them about our concern for them, and that we brought supplies. He boldly explained that we loved people because God first showed his love to us. He followed a very short statement with a couple verses from Matthew. ….

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For two semesters now I have entered a hospital on a weekly basis. This week I have stepped into a hospital but a completely different hospital. It is hot for one thing, there is only one room in the medical ward for eleven people, and the patients have been through so much to get there. The patient that stands out in my mind and probably always will, is an 18 year old boy (who looked about 12) that was laying restlessly in the corner of the medical ward (bed #6 I believe).His mother was at his side and she looked like she was suffering as much as he was. I was told that the boy was experiencing conjestive heart failure and that his mitral valve was no longer able to open. His lungs were filling with fluid and he was slowly suffocating at 18. In addition to having TB I was also told that even an operation at this point would not save his life….
I tried to listen to his heart with my stethescope but all that I was really able to hear was his voice moaning. My eyes filled with tears as I listened knowing that he probably would not see his 19th birthday. There wasn’t anything that I could do but think. I wondered if I would even be alive if I had been born in a providence of Cambodia. Conjestive heart failure at 18. I know that I will never forget his face, or his mother’s face but what I really hope that I never forget is just how lucky I am. I will never know the rest of his story but I know that my story will be different because of this different day at the hospital.

Not many bloggers took notice of this mission trip but this one did.

Mary and I just got out of surgery. we stood in on the removal of a breast mass and a oral mass. none were believed to be cancerous. it was not my designated day to post, but hearing story after story of the people here wears on me after a while. i need to share.
saoly, an CNA in the OR answered many of our questions. he also shared with us his experience from the khemer rouge. he talked of how he witnessed starvation and cannibalism. he told us of how his father died at his side from starvation. though saoly surrvived, he experienced much pain throughout pol pot’s regime. he showed us his scars from coining. coining is a traditional cambodian pain reliever. many people here in cambodia still do it today. they take burning hot coins and rub them on their bodies to distract them from the pain they are having in another area.
saoly’s story is just another example of how strong willed the cambodian people are. they have persevered through so much misfortune, yet still manage to live and be happy. or as the cambodians would say “sok-sop-bai”, (well and happy)
oh, and a special shout out to Go Gold Battalion at vandy. thanks for staying updated on my super high speed hooah adventures. and thank you Mrs. Shelby for commenting. your patho class has come in handy here. i feel very prepared assessing the different diseases 🙂 i hope you come to my commissioning too!

Kelley and I went to the AIDS hospital today. It was quite an experience since we do not have much experience with AIDS and HIV patients in the US. Many of the patients arrive at the hospital in the later stages of AIDS and in critical condition. They are placed on anti-retrovirals that are now available to any HIV patient that requests them. The drugs frequently allow the patients to recover to a level that allows them to return to the community and to their former lives. We were introduced to most of the patients, and heard their stories from the social worker that knows them well. The stories are of such incredible hardship and yet the patients were friendly and happy to see us. To hear the stories of survival that are so commonplace here are heartbreaking and definitely giving us a new perspective on what we consider “hardship”. Kelley and I gave lectures, with the help of an interpreter, to nurses that do not speak English that well. It’s interesting because they use English in the hospital and learn in English.

so, this whole past week we have been doing the tourist thing. we went to the markets, and went out to eat, discovered the glory of sticky rice and mango, rode in the infamous touk touks, played in the rain, and shopped shopped shopped. however, considering cambodia is quite different than what we all used to, i think all of these activities were vital. It allowed us to get a feel for the culture before entering the hospital and interacting with patients.
wednesday was our first day of “work”. a few of us woke up early for a morning run through the busy streets, the group met for a quick breakfast and then it was time to leave at 7 am for the hospital (which really means 7 30 am in cambodian time) after a tour of all 25 beds it was time for the group to split up. half went to go visit the HIV patients in their homes, and the rest of us remained in the hospital. those of us who stayed went on rounds with the doctors in the medical ward. it was nice because the rounds were done in english. we got to ask a lot of questions and learned a lot from the doctors. one thing i noticed is that what they see here in the medical ward is MUCH different than what we would see in our medical wards back home. diseases here are often left untreated for long periods of time, so that when the patient finally comes to the hospital, the disease is in its extreme stage.
it is great getting to work beside these amazing people. many of them have incredible stories on how they survived pol pots regime and why they are here now working at HOPE. they have all been been so willing to teach us and so thankful that we have come to help. it has been very rewarding and inspiring. and there is still more to come.