So as a background, I’ll say this: Cambodian people love to party! It seems like they try to take public holidays whenever the opportunity presents itself, and Khmer New Year is no exception. For three days (April 13-16), the entire city shuts down so people can visit with their families or pay their annual respects to the temples.
Of course, it goes without saying that the hospital never completely shuts down.
Originally, I, too, was planning to take time off. This plan soon changed when I learned that B, the ID fellow from Brown, was also planning to be at the hospital during this time to familiarize himself with the place. I agreed to tag along...partly to see if I could help out, but mostly to make sure I wasn’t missing anything.
My first day of holiday was botched by my getting yet another about of food poisoning the night before. Don’t ask how I managed to get two bouts of food-borne illness in the span of 12 days, but in any case, I was fairly incapacitated for most of the morning. I was brave enough to go to a local pagoda with Dr. C and the residents around noon—which, between the heat, my nausea, and my aching belly—was pretty much a set up for disaster. Luckily, I made it back to my room without public incident.
Whether I was dedicated or simply delirious from volume depletion, I forced myself to go back to the hospital for afternoon rounds. This was, of course, before learning that there are no official attending rounds during Khmer New Years. For better or worse, M and B decided to do their own teaching rounds, which were greeted with a fairly lukewarm response by the residents. It's becoming clear to me that they are used to a more "hands off" form of rounds, where there's not as much interaction or teaching from the attending. So it was rather amusing to me to see the residents squrim and try to look attentive as M and B attempted to dole out clinical pearls. Not that I was in particularly top form myself, with my visible bouts of abdominal pain and trips to the bathroom.
Thanks to the hospital's skeletal crew, I was able to help out more than usual. In fact, I was able to do my first semi-H&P in Khmer, since neither M or B speak much of the language. Unfortunately, the patient whose family I spoke to was in very bad shape. He was a little boy, just over a year of age, who was admitted for acute gastroenteritis. When I examined him, he was malnourished, very lethargic, barely responsive, and extremely dehydrated-looking. His mouth was coated with gentian violet (an antifungal agent), indicating that he probably had significant thrush. B leaned over as I was examining him and said that the child probably had HIV. He also said that in the U.S., a doctor would be watching over that child like a hawk. Indeed, this was not the case in this ward, which was currently being watched over by one single resident who was ignoring the child while taking on another admission. We will see what happens over the course of next few days of Khmer New Year celebration...
But enough serious stuff. Tomorrow will be a day of fun and pleasure--the start of my own personal holiday. I'll be watching the famous sunrise at Angkor Wat, doing some more temple trekking, and paying a visit to a butterfly garden.
That is, if I can get my own gastroenteritis to stop. :-(
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