I tried this whole “cooking” thing that everyone keeps
talking about.
Well…I didn't quite make it that far.
Shall I begin by setting the stage?
It was a stifling hot afternoon; the kind of hot that makes
a body exclaim the obvious (“Man, it’s hot!”), and then, exhausted from
attempted exaggeration, seek the nearest shade – sure to be at least ten
degrees cooler. I was looking especially
village-chic in my usual rural wear consisting of long pants, a dri-fit shirt,
and a sweatshirt over that as I wandered, sweating bullets, down the road to
purchase the orange vegetable I had been craving for a few days: pumpkin. I was feeling pretty good about myself,
changing up my lunch routine by tossing the whole “peanut butter sandwich” deal
I had been eating for the last year-instead I had begun going to road stands
and buying vegetables to cut up and eat, and that day I had even gotten eggs to
boil. I walked down the road to the next
village over, purchased my goodies, and meandered back to my house to set up
the cutting board and get a knife.
You know how your mom always tells you to put the vegetable
on the cutting board and cut down, while she holds it in her hand and expertly
chops vegetables in the air in the time it takes you to manage a cut in half?
That’s me and my host mom. That day I
tried to be her. I held the pumpkin in
my left hand and cut down with my right.
In this situation, I think it’s fair to say that I don’t know my own
strength (and what strength it must be!) because I cut straight through the
pumpkin to my index finger. I pulled the
knife out of my finger and bright red blood gushed from the slice. Jumping up, I jammed my finger into my mouth,
trying to reason that any iron lost would go straight back into my body while I
ran up the stairs to my bedroom where my med kit was stashed and pulled out
gauze and band-aids because I couldn't find any medical tape. With mad medical skills, I managed to wrap
the finger and then assuming that the blood would stop soon, went back
downstairs to finish cutting the pumpkin.
I was still hungry and still craving pumpkin and it seemed like a
rational idea. The cutting took 2 more
minutes during which time 6-year-old Man Kheang came over to me and asked what
happened to my finger. “Kut miriam die?” I said to him, which
sounded to me like ‘cut finger.’ He
corrected me, “moot kambut” (cut with
a knife) and thus my Khmer lessons continue.
Soon I was back upstairs putting pumpkin into the toaster oven and eggs
into the water heater holding my bleeding finger up and wondering why pressure
and gauze wasn't doing the trick of halting the bleeding. So I did what anyone does when they have a
medical emergency and their mom isn't on hand: I called my friend, Amy, in
Kampot – the next province over.
“Hello?” she answered the phone.
“Amy, I cut my
finger.”
“Amaaandaaaaaaa,” she said to me (in the voice she always
uses when I call her from the city after chugging chocolate milk and making
myself sick. “You know what milk does to
you” she scolds, exasperated while I groan in agreement and over the
following few hours, curled in the fetal position on the bathroom floor, swear
that I will never again eat myself sick with dairy after weeks of lactose-free
food in the village; a promise that I know, even as I make it, I will inevitably
break at the next available opportunity.
Milk is just so good). Luckily though, she was sitting next to
Hayley and handed the phone off to her, “Amanda cut her finger” I heard her say
with a resigned air. Hayley (the
ultimate nice girl) sounded appropriately concerned, “Whaaat?!” and then I
heard her clearly through the phone, “You cut your finger? What happened?”
I explained the pumpkin debacle and followed it with a
description of my still-bleeding finger.
“I am not really sure what to do,” I said, and she answered promptly, “you
should call Medical Duty.”
(In PCCambodia we have two medical officers and the ‘medical
duty’ is a phone number of a phone manned 24/7 by one of the two doctors on
staff. They o answer no
matter what-kind of like an ER on the phone.)
Hayley was right. I
had started pacing in the upstairs outside of my room at this point and it had
been twenty minutes since I cut my finger, blood still pouring out, me burning
through gauze (not literally). I dialed
Med Duty and waited for an answer trying to frame a question out of my cut
finger. The phone was answered. “Hello AHmenDah” I heard on the other end –
the Duty Officer was Navy, the Khmer half of the medical staff. “Hello Navy (pronounced Nah-VEE),” I answered
in the most cheerful voice I could muster, “I have a problem.” “Yes, what is it?” she said to me,
patiently. “Well, I cut my finger...not
on purpose.” And proceeded through the story yet again, explaining how the
bleeding had not ceased for 20 minutes.
“Ok,” Navy said, “You are in Kampong Som? I will call the clinic and we
will see if we can get you an appointment. I will call you back.” I thanked her and hung up, still pacing,
though now in a circle, while I waited.
She called back right away.
“Amanda,” she asked me, “are you in the city or are you in a village?” I
told her I was in my village and reminded her which one it was. She knew it. “Oh,” she responded, “so you are
not so close to the city then.” I’m not.
“Maybe you will come to Phnom Penh instead,” Navy said to me and I
thought to myself, well, we just jumped
from a little over an hour to my provincial town to 6 hours to Phnom Penh, but
in light of the 10% of my digits still pouring blood, I was okay with heading
straight to the capital. She told me she
would call my health center director and see if he would take a look at it to
determine if I needed to come in and get stitches. I went downstairs to wait for him as he made
his way via car to my house and I remember thinking as he got out of the
passenger seat, “Who is driving?”
He unwrapped the gauze and observed the bloody mess while
telling me to hold it up and attempting to wrap it up again (I was out of
band-aids) the whole while I was sitting next to the now warm pumpkin. Then he asked me if I had been crying,
because Navy had told him I was crying.
“Bong yoam?” Man Kheang said
to me, (Bong crying?). I don’t remember
crying…but if Navy said I did, maybe it was all in my voice. I looked at him and smiled. My health center director left me with
instructions to keep my finger up and pressure applied and I sat with Man.
“Bong,” he said to
me in a 6 year old serious voice, “When Mea cut his finger, he didn’t cry.” (Mea
is his 10 year old cousin)
“Oh, Mea klang.” I
told him, (Mea is strong).
He nodded in agreement.
“But when I fell and my nose was bleeding, I cried. It’s okay to cry.” And he looked at me again with
a serious face – possibly the most precious moment I have ever encountered.
I headed upstairs to my room and got a phone call from
Navy. She told me that my health center
director (whom I lovingly refer to as my ‘HCD’) thought I would be fine, but
there was a lot of blood and he couldn't quite see how deep the cut was. “Come to Phnom Penh and we will just to make
sure it is OK.” I told my host mom, she called my HCD who was
heading there (so I wouldn't have to take the bus) and then ran upstairs to
throw some clothes in a bag while I re-wrapped my finger.
Out of band-aids, my eyes tore wildly around the room for an
adhesive agent, finally coming to rest on the ultimate of bonding materials:
Angry Birds-themed Duct tape Supermom had sent in a care package. One handed, I tore off a piece and did my best
to wrap it around the gauze, unable to help the smile materializing on my
face.
Minutes later I was in the passenger side of the HCDs car,
on my way to Phnom Penh. He sat next to
me and chuckled – I’m sure he thought I was a complete idiot to be going to the
hospital with moot kambut but in my
defense, at this point I was just following the doctor’s orders. About half an hour into the drive, rain
pouring down steadily, he pulled off the road and motioned to a muddy path in
front of us. “Sam-sup nea-tee” he said to me, (thirty minutes). I nodded.
Am I not always up for the adventure I never see coming? We mucked through the mud to a
house off the beaten path where his son received a blessing from a man who must
have been holy (I didn't ask any questions), and then trekked back to the
car.
About a week earlier my HCD had mentioned that he was
teaching his son how to drive. This
didn't really connect to anything that was going on until he pulled over again
about half an hour after that, and his son climbed into the driver’s seat. I double checked my seat belt.
I hadn't met his son beforehand, and though HCD told me that
his son was 20-years-old (or roundabouts), he looked to me more like 14-years-old, 15 if I was being really generous and accounted for some serious failure-to-thrive in childhood. So when he got
behind the wheel of the car and started driving at half the speed his father
was driving, passed by semi’s and tuktuks alike, I wondered if I would have a
finger left at the end of this journey…or if I would even make it to Phnom
Penh. All of the sudden the blessing made sense, (“Maybe I should have gotten
one” I thought to myself) and I realized I was holding tight to the door – to do
what, I don’t know. Maybe tuck and roll
if I foresaw something dramatic happening in advance.
HCD sat in the backseat, giving instructions in Khmer to
his son who generally responded in a like manner. Soon enough they started bantering and listening
in, I wasn't sure whether I wanted the conversation to continue in favor of
entertainment, or cease in favor of attention on the road.
“Slower, gentle. Do not try to pass now, I will tell you.”
“The truck just passed me. What does that sign mean?”
“Don’t worry about it.”
Eventually we made it into Phnom Penh and headed toward the
HCDs house where I met his daughter and her husband who ran a pharmacy
nearby. “We will wait for a bit, and
then go to eat rice. After that I will take you to the hospital,” HCD told
me in Khmer. I nodded. He said we would
make it by 6pm (about 15 minutes afterwards).
Twenty minutes later I climbed into the car and he told me to call my
doctor. “We will go eat rice and then I
will take you to the hospital. Maybe 8pm.” He said. I called.
She disagreed. He took me to the
hospital.
They asked me immediately how they could help and then for
my passport, which I promptly handed over, filling out hospital forms with
English translations. Then I was taken
back to the doctor who eyed my Angry Birds-Duct-tape wrapped finger. “I ran out of band-aids” I said, by way of
explanation. He just smiled at me…I
don’t think he hangs out with kids much.
Taking off the tape and gauze was a little challenging since
by the time the blood finally stopped gushing out of my finger, there was so
much of it that it glued the gauze to my wound which promptly reopened upon
gauze removal. They got to work cleaning
so that they could examine my finger and once they did, proclaimed me not in
need of stitches. Then the jokes
started. “Are you left handed?” they
asked me (what should be a simple question).
“Well,” I answered, “I usually write with my right hand,” which is the
truth. “O good, then you don’t need this
finger, we just take it right off.” (chuckle-at-a-joke-well-completed-while-overtired-and-American-little-me-smiles-weakly,-protesting-while-bringing-out-my-best-“no, no!”-laugh-and-joke-along).
It was examined, cleaned thoroughly, and Navy arrived just as the last
piece of tape bandaged it up. She assured
me that we would take a look soon, and possibly go to see the hand
surgeon.
Two days later I was sitting back in the doctor’s room in
the Peace Corps office, watching blood flow from my reopened wound. “I think we will call the hand surgeon” Navy
told me as the blood continued to flow, and made an appointment for the following day. She tried to be reassuring about it, “Just to
make sure there is no lasting damage.” But she kept saying, "hand surgeon," "hand surgeon."
So to the hand surgeon we went.
He was very pleasant. “You are a Peace Corps Volunteer, what
are you doing in your village?” he asked me as I sat down, and I thought that
he must see a lot of us, the way he was talking it seemed like he knew a lot
about our organization. Then Navy walked
in and sat down.
“Do you see a lot of
Volunteers?” I asked him. “No,” he said
to me, “not many.”
“Oh, you know a lot about Peace Corps.”
“Yes,” he responded, “I am Navy’s husband.” And Navy looked at me, nodding and
smiling.
Whammy.
Navy, you could have just said, ‘my husband’ instead of ‘the
hand surgeon’ every time you mentioned him.
He took a look and explained to me that Navy brought me to see him because of the location of the cut. Had I moved my finger a bit when I had cut it, or the knife, and cut a little bit lower on my finger, I would have been in danger of severing the nerve ends for good and lose the sensation in my fingertip (which at the moment, was gone). "Maybe you will not get 100% of feeling back in your fingertip" he said to me as he held my finger gently between his own, "but maybe you get 98 or 99%". Good to know. I settled my expectations at 98%-99% sensation returning in the following few weeks and thanked him for his expertise on my poor digit.
So I was sent back to site and here I wait for maybe 98% or
99% of sensation to return to the tip of my finger.
And I am still just dying for anything pumpkin flavored.
Happy Halloween!
xo-Amanda
