Fully Mended

Clichéd sayings don’t really feel validated until you experience them.  You know that popular one about valuing your health (especially when you don’t have it?)  I've never been so happy to feel healthy again.  After two bouts with flu-like fevers, food poisoning, infections, allergic reactions, and strep throat, my list of fun added another teacher favorite – pink eye.  Recognizing this really sexy infection the moment I woke up, I knew that I wasn’t going to spend the $60 to see a Western doctor.  I knew it was pink eye.  That left one other option: the Vietnamese hospital.  I figured I’d do it at some point, why not now? 

My very lovely Vietnamese teacher assistant went with me to the hospital that day. 

Big, white, and bustling with people even during nap time, the hospital visit felt like a field trip.  I was experiencing health care like VN residents.  I waited at the receptionist counter while several women in white processed paperwork and took my insurance card.  Then, I turned around and had my blood pressure and heart rate checked by machines right in the lobby.  After paying a small fee, we got into the elevator, but not without two technicians and a young girl, maybe 17, laying on a stretcher with an IV drip.  In the eternity it took to ascend four floors, I listened to this girl with her eyes closed and a barely-there labored breath, wondering what her condition was at such a young age.  My laundry list of recent illnesses suddenly seemed so trivial.

The square-shaped building allowed for a ton of doctor rooms in the middle and perimeter of the floor.  Outside almost every room, family members and patients waited in plastic chairs.  We walked around until we found a door with the number that matched the piece of paper I held.  We were welcomed into a tiny room by a very friendly older doctor and I instantly felt at peace with her kind smile and gentle concern.  I sat on a stool as she looked into my eyes with an optometry machine and within one minute, all of my peace and trust in this woman dissipated.  Before I knew it, she whirled around the machine and had my swollen eyelid pinched between two ungloved fingers, inspecting my very contagious lids.  Images of her pre-exam computer typing flashed through my mind.  She said a few things in Vietnamese to my friend and we were done.  Four intense drugs were scribbled onto paper and I picked them all up on the same floor as the exam. 

There was no way I was going to take two steroids, an antibiotic and some other drug that wouldn't translate to English.  I google researched everything before beginning any prescription.  There is no malpractice here, so if any drug interactions or dosage mistakes are made, shame on me.  I ended up taking two of the four suggested mega drugs and everything cleared up within a week.