The Emergency Room

Can I just say that health emergencies were one of my greatest concerns/fears in moving here? In part, because of an experience on my mission, one of my companions needed emergency care in Croatia, and the whole thing was a little frightening. I was terrified we wouldn’t be able to get decent care. Well,  Tuesday, we ended up in the ER.

I had just started making dinner when Clara started screaming her head off.  Her right pinky got smashed in a door jam, on the side where the hinges are. Her finger had been in the way and Juju had shut the door in a hurry to prevent Logan from going into the laundry room.  It was not pretty.  It had completely dislodged the nail from the nail bed, and sliced her finger open too.  All I knew at that moment is that it was bleeding quite a bit.  I wish I could say that I was the very picture of calm.  But when it comes to blood and my babies, my ability to brain disappears.  In that state of mind,  I had no idea what to do.  ‘Oh my gosh, I’m alone with three small children? Do they have 911 here?  Even if they did, I am not calling it, nobody yields to ambulances here…. Where is the hospital? What about insurance?  How do I even get to a hospital? (I had momentarily forgotten that taxis exist here…and that they would probably know how to get to the hospital. I’m telling you, I wasn’t quite thinking straight.) 

One thing I knew is that we would need to leave the apartment.  So, I grabbed the bare necessities. Juju was only wearing big guy underwear. So while we were waiting for the elevator, I handed him some shorts and told him to put them on. Meanwhile, Clara is still howling.  And then Juju got both legs in the same hole and nearly fell, and he started crying, too.  Now, it’s funny, I can laugh about it.  At that point,  I was really concerned about trying to navigate a foreign ER with three very small children.  Still panicking a little bit, I ran down to the apartment of our friends the Ormonds. (They give us a ride to church on Sundays.) I figured I’d just go ask them to point me in the right direction.   However, I wasn’t even sure they would be there because they have been moving to a building just across the street. Fortunately, they had an employee who was between apartments, and they were letting her stay there.  She told me that she would call them.  At this point, I just needed to get on the road.  So I told her not to worry about it.

So, I went to the front desk and told them that my daughter had really hurt her finger and we needed a hospital.  They calmly (and oh, so, slowly) pulled out a first aid kit. Obviously there was something lost in translation… Then I showed them the finger and they realized that a first aid kit wasn’t going to cut it.  By this point, I think Clara was going into shock a little bit, she was really not looking so good.  But my girls camp training hadn’t completely abandon me.  So, I laid her down on the couch, put her legs on Juju and started fanning her.  Logan crawled around on the floor.

Meanwhile, the bellman went to try and flag a taxi down for us.  Unfortunately, it was rush hour.  Not a single taxi.  None.  We waited for 5 maybe 10 minutes. Fortunately, Clara was starting to get some color back (see image below). And then Joann Ormond came into the lobby.  And I nearly burst into tears.  Seriously.  I have never been so happy to see anyone in my life.  The girl in the Ormond’s old apartment had called them and told them that a crazed woman with three crying children had shown up on the doorstep and they came anyway!

Fortunately, they knew exactly what to do.  And where to go. And the amazing thing is that it was only a 10 minute drive, even in traffic. Manila traffic.  We arrived, immediately went to triage, and got sent over to the trauma section.  At this point, Jo and Pat took complete charge of the boys. They fed them and took care of them the whole time.  I was and am so grateful to them.  It was such a blessing to focus exclusively on Clara, and not worry about the boys.

They gave her some pain medication.  And asked me questions. So many questions. Medical history. Family medical history.  What kind of door? Was the door sharp or rounded? Vaccinations? What time did it occur? Allergies?   After a little while, the general surgeon on duty looked at her finger and said that he was hesitant to just stitch her up in case the bone had been broken too. We did a light bandage for the time being and went to radiology to do x-rays.

Here’s Clara, about to get some x-rays done. She had a sweet ride.

After the X-rays, we waited for a while, and then they took us into a room to stitch up her finger. The poor little thing was pretty scared at this point.  She wouldn’t let them even take off the bandage. So, we had to hold her still.  And then they needed to give her the local anesthetic so they could stitch her up.  And they injected it right into her poor little finger, without any previous numbing.  And I had to help hold her down, and it was just awful.  She screamed and screamed.  And I hated every millisecond of it.  🙁

After that ordeal, she was really freaked out.  So, before they started stitching I asked if we could lie the bed flat, and pull the pillow out from under her head so that she couldn’t see anything.  I really think that being able to see what was going on contributed to how scared she got. So, we laid her flat and I got up on the bed with her and laid down next to her.  Then her finger started going numb and she started calming down.  And I told her a couple of stories. She was sleepy during the first.  And during the second story, she really started drooping and then fell asleep. It was her bedtime after all. I was so grateful that she passed out.  Pretty sure the medical team was too. #tendermercy

I heard Logan crying out in the waiting room, so I carefully got off the bed and went and checked on things. Fortunately, Pat and Jo are old hands with little critters.  They are grandparents after all. I chatted with them for a moment, and then came back into the room, and they were finishing up with the stitches.  She ended up with 4: 2 dissolvable stitches in the nail-bed and 2 regular stitches on the side of her finger.  Initially they’d hoped to salvage the nail, but her finger was way to swollen to allow that.  She woke up shortly before they finished.  Here’s Juju in the waiting room, with Pat in the background.

While we were waiting on paperwork, I asked the Orthopedic surgeon about the x-rays.  He said that they were kind of blurry because of the bandages that she’d been wearing.  But, they were clear enough that he was able to see the growth plate, which looked fine.  Any breaks would be in the very tip of her finger,  and nothing additional could be done even if there was a break.  So, he recommended just keeping an eye on it and not bothering with any more x-rays. So, that’s what we went with.  One thing that is very interesting about the medical system here is that you are required to settle your bill before you leave the hospital. Even if you are dead… Jo was telling me that the hospital can hold a body until payment is made by the family (and she knows of people that have experienced this).  Crazy!  Anyway, the bill was 7500 pesos.  or $150.  Can you believe that!?! Xrays and stitches?  It would easily be 10 times that much at home.  And really, the care was pretty comparable.  Our doctors were all competent and helpful.  And they all spoke English really well (which was a great relief to me, I think that was one of my greatest concerns: navigating a hospital where I don’t know the language.) And despite the fact that we had an injury, it was a positive experience.