A busy week

This is my last full week at work. It has been a busy week with lots going on at ACH.

Photographer, David, and his wife, Anna, have been at the hospital this week taking pictures of us treating the children and anything else that they spotted of interest. A quick preview of the photos looked amazing and I am looking forward to seeing the final few selected for Angkors Kinder. I was of course very reluctant to be photographed at first but was soon enjoying myself and nudging the children out of shot!

David and Anna are presently at the Lake Clinic as part of their schedule.

I have been treating babies in ICU with Danny, a visiting Respiratory Therapist. His regular job is working full time in the ICU in the USA, where they provide 24 hour chest and respiratory care. As well as doing chest physiotherapy he advises on best practice use of ventilators and other ICU paraphernalia. I have really enjoyed working with him and have learned a lot.

We have one special baby that we have cared for together, a tiny premature girl who is special as unlike all the other patients, has no carer with her.. She had a heart defect which has been repaired but following the operation needed mechanical ventilation. Ten days later she is now breathing for herself but still needs a lot of support. There have been some sad losses recently in the Unit so her doing so well is extra special.

As a fundraiser, a shadow puppet show was performed in the grounds at ACH. It was traditional Khmer and well attended. There were a lot of children present many of whom I am assuming were siblings of the patients. They delighted the audience by sitting themselves down amongst them.

Yesterday evening my daughter and I took my colleagues out for a farewell dinner. I shall miss them all so much.

I will write my final Blog next week so don’t tune out just yet!

Four weeks to go!

Alison Brown 03/11/11

Sorry that there was no Blog last week. For some reason I couldn’t get a strong enough connection to even open the page but now like magic, all has returned!

Work wise we are all kept very busy. I have been to the Satellite clinic today. The clinic is so much more than that, a mini hospital really with in and out patients. It’s purpose is to avoid making the families travel such long distances for medical care. It’s not just the inconvenience, it is getting the right treatment to the children within a reasonable time. This way for example a chest infection does not become life threatening pneumonia and meningitis can be treated with antibiotics before the brain is irreversibly damaged.

I always treat the inpatients but today was also able to see one of the outpatients who came to the clinic to see the Doctor. How helpful this would be to the families in the future.

There are around eight medical volunteers at the hospital at the moment and we are all very friendly and supportive of each other. Some are just here for a couple of weeks whilst others stay well beyond the year. Theresia, who left ACH a couple of months ago returned for a visit. So nice to see her and looking so thin! The expat life of eating out three times a day must eventually take it’s toll on all of us.

I continue to enjoy my stay except that  too much swimming in a hotel pool has turned my blonde streaks into green ones! I have just looked it up on the Internet and apparently have to douse my hair in tomato or lemon juice. I think I will go the lemon!  Watch this space and I will tell you next week if it works!

Finally I think we all feel for the people of Thailand with the floods.  Here’s hoping that the loss of life and damage can be kept to a minimum. Here in Cambodia the activities that accompany the annual three day water festival  next week have been cancelled so money allocated can be distributed to those who lost so much during our period of flooding.

Alison