I live with lots of children.  Lots of children means lots of trips to the hospital specifically because of 13 little boys between the ages of 5 and 9 (I won’t mention any names) who spend their days pretending to be acrobats, action heros (spider man) and monkeys hanging out 15 ft up in the air in the tree canopies swinging from the branches.  All of these things specifically correlate to ME and a TON of trips to the emergency room. 

So when I get there and I’m like freaking out because my child’s head is split open and he has just fallen 15 feet from a tree and I’ve just driven him there on my scooter so that he can get his little head stitched up, do you know what I want the nurse or the doctor to do?  I want them to douse my child’s in iodine and stop the bleeding.  I want them to comfort me and tell me it’s going to be okay.  I want a sterile environment and I want to know that we’re not going to walk out of that hospital with something worse than we came in with. 

But that’s not how it works in Nepal and in most hospitals in the world I’m sure too.  If you walk into the E.R. hospitals or clinics around Surkhet, you are lucky to find a doctor and since I have never once actually found a doctor in the E.R. let’s just say IF you are lucky enough to find a nurse or a health worker or a breathing human trained professional they point you out the door and tell you you need to pay the emergency service charge fee.  

So I’m like “okay okay” all panicky and I run out the door and push myself to the front of the line and pay it, and the girl sitting behind the counter usually doesn’t have change so I tell her to screw it and write up the slip I need, and she’s asking me the child’s name, age and address so I give it to her and politely remind her that my child is in the E.R. all alone with his head bleeding and yes, I am his guardian and then she finally hands me the slip of paper I need and I run it back the guy in the E.R. who’s supposed to be stitching up my child’s head.  Then do you know what he does?  He starts looking for a pen.  He starts looking for a pen so that he can begin to write down every single item he will need to do the work he needs to do.

It looks something likes this:

gloves

iodine

cotton

lidocaine

razor blade

2 syringes

stitching

needle

tetanus

sterile gauze and bandaging

And no I am not kidding you.

But it gets worse.  None of these things are available like you know, in the hospital so you have to go out the door to the separate pharmacy one or two shops down or across the street and wait in line again.  Then you hand them the paper and wait while they prepare all of your items from around the shop and write you a bill and give you your change so that your child can finally get his head stitched.

So here’s what I’m suggesting.

Can we please come up with some kind of system here so that people are better taken care of in hospitals? I get it.  I understand that this is a poor country and that people don’t have money, that if you didn’t charge them right from the very beginning they might never pay and that if you just treated them without being sure that they had money, for the doctors gloves, and the iodine, and the stitches than you might never meet your costs as an institution.  

I’ve been blessed to have money in my pocket every single time I’ve gone to the hospital and I have someone who generously supports treatment for my children but what if we didn’t?  Does that mean that this child’s head should just keep bleeding?  Or if they’re like Buday, that because they are mentally disabled and dirty they shouldn’t be touched?  Isn’t that what doctor’s gloves were invented for?  Or does he need someone to buy them for him? 

Should the mentally disabled be left to sleep outside of the hospital in the Himalayan winter?  Without a blanket?  Because no one wants to wash the bed sheets if they soil them?  I know there are exceptions.  I know that not every single hospital in Nepal is this way and I know there are applications that you can give to the government so that poor people can sometimes get free treatment.  But generally I think we Nepalese can all agree that there are major improvements that need to be made.  What about just starting with basic human care and kindness in hospitals everywhere?  Nepalese are said to be the kindest people in the world so why not let’s start demonstrating this in our medical system and specifically when dealing with the mentally and physically disabled please.  Because if you ask me, Buday’s illness isn’t what killed him, our society did.

In the meantime, we will be building a clinic of our very own to help other children like Buday in Nepal and I will be working on keeping the boys out of the trees.