Well they hauled me off to the hospital for a couple of days of tests. However We did manage to tour the royal castle before they did, and I got out on the King's Birthday Dec 5. Some notes on the hospital. On Dec 2 we visited the royal castle. More in another entry.
I noticed some things about the roads- everyone drives "British style" - ie on the left. However they have gone to great lengths to minimize traffic jams. The Thai have installed this ingenious "left and a u turn" system instead of right turns in a lot of congested areas. The only problem is you have to figure out which blocks have left and a u-turn and which have only right turns. The left and a U-turn are also weird in that they make you u-turn on a less busy street right in the middle of the block. It causes no end of near cursing and mild consternation.
ChaoPhya hospital is a private hospital with many specialties from prenatal care packages, plastic surgery, spinal surgery, heart care, cosmetic surgery, dentistry and opthalmology. All staffed by well trained doctors who have spent a lot of time in other countries- like US and Britain and such.
The room rates are extremely inexpensive-- ie if you want to be in a 4 person no air conditioning ward you pay about $18 a day plus another $18 for the nurse. It turns out that the room they put us heart patients in is the grand poobah suite. Costing all of 4000 bhat or about $110- a day. It has 2 bathrooms, roll away bed for a guest, private dining area, microwave, mini-bar stocked with juices etc, automatic air conditioning, and cable tv. its like a suite at the Ritz!
The practices of the hospital are using older technology but good technology nonetheless. For example they don't have indwelling catheters or butterflys- they just use old fashion needles and thread it very accurately- seems to work well- I have no bruising from all the pin pricks and at home i get bruising from people that almost find the vein. Also there is only one MRI in the region and they run it day and night - a much better use of resources I think than having one in each hospital used once a day. People fly in, taxi in and ambulance in to get MRIs. No one has to wait for more than a week- much like Canada- except Canada has a population of 34 million and Thailand has a population of 67 Million- amazing.
Unlike hospitals here- they actually leave you alone to rest and only bug you infrequently for temperature ( always maxillary- ) and wight, and blood pressure and the like. I mean your door even has a lock on it if you don't want to be bugged!
They insist you shower twice a day - hold over from common practice in Thailand during the hot season. In the hospitals at home i couldn't even get a nurse to show me where the shower was! I think when you got ripe it was time ot leave the hospital.
One interesting curiosity is that when they take blood or take vital signs- they descend on you in droves-- 3- 8 peopel at a time all buzzing around and then out.
I haven't figured out whether its training or curiosity or mutual support. I do sorta look like Gulliver in the land of Lilliput. Average size of one of my nurses is about 5 feet even at a whopping 90 pounds. I think that's just my left leg!
I keep on noticing cultural differences that are not as unnerving as i thought they would be, and have developed a tangent post on cultural observations i will hang in here some where.
TO cap it off here are some other pictures of me getting vampired, These are pretty bad since hte picture taker didn't realize they were movies~!!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment