It’s good that they make you buy insurance when you buy a motor scooter here. They must have lots of experience with inexperienced drivers, like me. Last Sunday afternoon I tried to cross the street and turn, while merging into fast-moving heavy traffic. That was more than I was ready for. As a result I got a first-hand look at Chiang Mai’s emergency medical care.
Getting up after crashing into the curb, and noticing my left arm was weak, I felt a pointy bone poking up near my shoulder. That point made me realize I didn’t have the choice of going on to church with my dirty shirt. A lady had stopped to help me. When I showed her my shoulder, she called an ambulance. I wondered how much that was going to cost, but felt unable to do anything else. Gary had taken our visiting daughter to Cambodia, so I called my resident “mother”, our housekeeper, Hok. She had given me her number on Saturday in case of this kind of event.
Hok spoke to the Thai lady who had stopped to help me. Then she came, arriving just before the ambulance. This was all near my house, so Hok was able to take the motorcycle there and then join me at the hospital.
The ambulance was a pick-up truck with a high cover over the bed. It didn’t have as much medical equipment in it as ambulances I’ve seen displayed in the US. I sat on the tailgate and then moved backwards to the stretcher that was its bed. That was good enough for them, since Thais are used to hard beds. Because of my injury, they let me sit up for the ride. It was kind of cool seeing how we drove around the traffic with the siren on. It probably wasn’t as different from a regular ride as it would have been in the US, though, since most of the drivers here ignore sirens, and many of them do what this driver was doing anyway.
At the hospital they made me lie down after I moved myself onto the gurney. Then they rolled me to just inside the door of the emergency room. The checked me over, took my blood pressure and temperature (BP & T) and decided they needed an x-ray of my shoulder. It was good we had seen doctors there before because our registration was in their system. All they needed was my name to find it. They washed and bandaged my road rashes and then rolled me to the x-ray room. All the equipment was the green kind I’d seen in the US 20 years or so ago. This was the oldest hospital in Chiang Mai, after all. Everything seemed to work fine, though.
Soon after I was back in the emergency room, Hok arrived. She made sure all my things were together and safe, including the necklace I had to take off for the x-ray. The emergency room doctor looked at the x-ray and asked if I could stay in the hospital. I thought that was kind of strange. In the US they don’t give you a choice, they decide. Since it was about 5 pm by then and I didn’t know what else I was going to do, I said, “Yes.” A few minutes later they brought a form and asked more questions.
“Do you want a shared or a private room?”
I tried to ask how many people would be in the shared room, but they just took that as a private room choice.
“Do you want a fan or air conditioning?”
“A fan,” I answered. We hadn’t used the air conditioner at our house for a few months. They were a little surprised, though, and asked again to make sure. Then they had me sign the admission papers. They took my BP & T again and gave me a sling for my arm.
Before too long they were wheeling me to my room. It was up a few floors, so the orderly rolled my gurney up several ramps to get there. Then we went down a bare hallway to the room. It had a bed with hand cranks, a couple of folding chairs, a cushioned bench seat with a back, a fan on the wall, a rolling tray table, a nightstand table, a refrigerator, a TV, and one other small table with drawers. The cushioned bench seat had a pillow and a blanket on it. Some nurses took my BP & T again and gave me some loose pants with a drawstring and a shirt that crossed over and tied. After they left, Hok helped me change clothes. In that process we found that I had a large lump on my left hip. We joked, in Thai, about that being black, purple, and green soon.
Hok began to ask me if I wanted her to stay the night with me. I wasn’t sure because I didn’t know what they were going to do with me yet. My Thai and their English weren’t quite good enough for me to understand everything. Then Chiang, another friend I called, came with her husband and son. They used their Thai and English skills to help the hospital staff and me understand each other. All of us together got the accident report filled out accurately. We also learned that the orthopedic surgeon had not made his rounds yet and he would be the one to decide my treatment.
Chiang told me it was Thai tradition for a person to stay overnight with someone in the hospital. They helped me tell Hok that I thought I could stay by myself unless the doctor decided to do surgery. The nurses had left a sign in my room saying, in Thai, no food or drink for me. That indicated they thought surgery was still a possibility that night. Hok decided to stay until the doctor came and made his decision. Chiang and her family left to get dinner and their other son.
Hok told one of the nurses who came in to get my BP &T about the lump on my hip. One of them must have told the doctor because he looked at it without my saying anything. He also ordered an x-ray of that hip and showed me an x-ray of one that was broken in just a fall. I guess that was because I moved my leg around to show I didn’t think it was broken.
I thought they would take me back down to the x-ray room, but instead the technician brought the x-ray machine came to me. Hok helped me stay in the right position for the first shot. On the second, the technician made her move toward the backside of the machine. I guess one shot of x-rays for her was enough.
The doctor came around again to say my hip wasn’t broken and my collar bone could be fixed with a brace. They would put the brace on in the morning and I was to sleep sitting part way up. Then a nurse took the “no eating” sign down, pointed toward the nightstand with the hospital phone and my cell phone, and said I could call “the woman” to get some food. I didn’t understand what woman to call on which phone, so I waited for Hok to come back from getting her own food. When she returned, a few minutes later, I told her what I could. Then she went to check on the hospital kitchen. It was after 9 pm. She found it closed.
Hok volunteered to get me something, so I gave her some money. She came back with some mystery sandwiches, sweet rolls, milk, and water from 7-eleven. Even after eating one of the mystery sandwiches, I couldn’t say what was inside the bread. It didn’t make me sick, though. Some of the milk and rolls we put in the refrigerator for breakfast. I said goodbye to Hok, assuring her I would be ok. She said she’d be back at 9 am.
The room was very quiet. No sounds came from the hospital except the nurses who took my BP & T a few times. The few other noises came from the apartments across the alley from my room. We had found a Gideon Bible in the nightstand with both Thai and English in it. I read that before I tried to sleep and again in the morning. My shoulder ached some since they hadn’t given me anything for pain. They had given me an antibiotic.
A nurse brought me a pill for pain at about 6 am. She said something about taking it before or during breakfast, so I took it with some of my milk. Breakfast came about 6:30. It was rice in a brown broth, some mild spices and onions to sprinkle in it, and a small carton of chocolate milk. I was glad I still had milk and rolls left from dinner.
At about 8 the doctor and some nurses came to put on the brace. They had me sit on the edge of the bed with some of the women nurses in front of me and the doctor behind me with the other nurses. They said, “Sorry,” as they took off my top to put the brace on. It is a thick, padded, cloth-covered strap that goes around the front of my shoulders and crosses in the back. Velcro holds it together in the back. The doctor said not to take it off for anything and to see him in three weeks. He also said not to lie flat or to lift anything heavy. He did want me to let my arm out of the sling to exercise the lower part of it, but not to lift the upper part away from my body. He didn’t say anything about changing the gauze pads over some of my scrapes.
Hok came at 9 with a change of clothes for me. She also had the documents about the motor scooter insurance to show the man from the hospital business office. He wanted a copy of my passport too. Since I only carry copies, Hok had to go get it from the house.
In between the visits of the business office man and the nurses taking BP & T and giving me another antibiotic, Hok helped me put on my clothes. Everyone was gone when the orderly delivered my lunch. It was rice in a thicker broth with bits of meat in it and a bowl of steamed greens. The lady poured some water for me to drink. It tasted good, but I added another roll and the cookie left from dinner to the meal.
Some other friends came to make sure the hospital bill was covered and to take me home. The insurance ended up covering all but $10 of the hospital bill.
I was surprised that they didn’t come with a wheel chair after I was cleared to leave. In the US, hospitals don’t let their patients walk out, as far as I know. My friends suggested I ask for a wheel chair anyway, so I did. It was kind of a long way down the ramps, or the stairs, after all. Soon I was on my way home with another piece of my Chiang Mai experience over with. Now I can’t wait for the brace, the sitting-up- sleeping, and the sitting around at home experience to be over too.
:J
