Yesterday I took a friend of mine to a couple of hospitals to get some weird discolorations on her skin checked out. It turned out to be nothing, but I had yet another interesting Vietnamese hospital experience to add to the list. First we went to a hospital near campus and my friend waited in line while I sat outside and worked through some vietnamese reading exercizes. After my friend waited for about 45 minutes, the doctor took a look at her hands, didn't ask any questions and immediately diagnosed her with da xam -- which basically translates to gray skin, but isn't actually a condition. The doctor then wrote a prescription for about 10 different kinds of medicine and sent her packing.
Unsatisfied with the first examination, we went to another hospital on the outskirts of town for a second opinion. This hospital was in a beautiful area near a small canal and the hospital itself was a converted French Villa. Evidently there's been a lot of TB in the area so my friend bought a little blue mask for me to wear which was barely big enough to cover both my nose and my mouth at the same time and which gave me George W Bush like protruding ears. While my friend got examined at this hospital, I sat in the waiting room and talked to an old woman who was amazed that I could speak any vietnamese and used her amazement as a way to ensnare me in a 45 minute conversation (of which I probably spoke a grand total of 5 minutes). As far as I could tell, she was telling me about her younger sister who married an American man but has only come back to America once in the past 5 or 6 years. She asked me a bunch of questions about how much money you could make in America and wanted me to tell her why I thought her sister didn't want to come back to Vietnam. She then told me that she came with her father (who must be quite old) to the hospital because he had benh lao. I misunderstood her and thought she was saying benh lau which sounds almost exactly the same but means sick for a long time. When my friend finished her exam we left. As we were leaving I noticed she was carrying an x-ray with her. I asked her why they x-rayed her because she only went to the hospital to check on a small discolored area on her hand and not for any other reason and she said she didn't know why. Then I asked her what they x-rayed and she said her lungs. Now I don't know why the hell they x-rayed her lungs. Maybe they thought that she had TB, but I do know that you should not get an exray, especially one that will expose the thyroid to x-rays, unless you absolutely need to. Terrible. On the way home I was talking to my friend about this old woman and I told her that her father had been sick for a long time and friend said not Benh Lau, but Benh lao. . .tuberculosis. . .
Unsatisfied with the first examination, we went to another hospital on the outskirts of town for a second opinion. This hospital was in a beautiful area near a small canal and the hospital itself was a converted French Villa. Evidently there's been a lot of TB in the area so my friend bought a little blue mask for me to wear which was barely big enough to cover both my nose and my mouth at the same time and which gave me George W Bush like protruding ears. While my friend got examined at this hospital, I sat in the waiting room and talked to an old woman who was amazed that I could speak any vietnamese and used her amazement as a way to ensnare me in a 45 minute conversation (of which I probably spoke a grand total of 5 minutes). As far as I could tell, she was telling me about her younger sister who married an American man but has only come back to America once in the past 5 or 6 years. She asked me a bunch of questions about how much money you could make in America and wanted me to tell her why I thought her sister didn't want to come back to Vietnam. She then told me that she came with her father (who must be quite old) to the hospital because he had benh lao. I misunderstood her and thought she was saying benh lau which sounds almost exactly the same but means sick for a long time. When my friend finished her exam we left. As we were leaving I noticed she was carrying an x-ray with her. I asked her why they x-rayed her because she only went to the hospital to check on a small discolored area on her hand and not for any other reason and she said she didn't know why. Then I asked her what they x-rayed and she said her lungs. Now I don't know why the hell they x-rayed her lungs. Maybe they thought that she had TB, but I do know that you should not get an exray, especially one that will expose the thyroid to x-rays, unless you absolutely need to. Terrible. On the way home I was talking to my friend about this old woman and I told her that her father had been sick for a long time and friend said not Benh Lau, but Benh lao. . .tuberculosis. . .
posted by D. White at 7:22 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home