this isn't a picture that i took at the hospital. i'm sorry if it's misleading. i just don't feel like posting a picture of my sister in her semi-conscious state with a busted lip and black and blue arms is appropriate.My sister V has been seizing all day. She goes through spells like this--where she can seize up to 13 times in one day. Each seizure that V has suffocates her brain and kills thousands of brain cells. V is only 34 years old, but has over 70% brain damage. Everyday she takes two different types of medication, three times a day to keep her from seizing. She's been doing this for as long as I remember. V doesn't like taking her meds because they make her feel like she's sleep walking but she knows that if she doesn't, she'll keep on seizing and that her condition will only get worse.
My sister wasn't born disabled. She was, in fact, born perfectly healthy and able-bodied. When she was a baby, the car that she was in was thrown from a bomb that fell from the sky, emptying its passengers and killing every person except for my sister and mom. She went into a coma that lasted for 2 weeks and had a fever so high that it should have killed her. When she came out of the trauma, she immediately had a grand mal seizure that started in one part of her brain and then traveled and took over the rest of her, causing her whole body to convulse and shake like a rag doll in a rabid dog's mouth.
We had just gotten to my mom's house when she fell into another seizure. I remember hearing glass shattering, seeing her body keel forward in slow motion. The crack of her mouth hitting the concrete floor, the sound of flesh splitting and the burst of blood that splattered against the tiles and bled out in all directions underneath her face. Afraid that she would choke on her own blood, we sat her up and stabilized her, cleaned up the broken glass so that she wouldn't get cut up even more and grabbed some ice to hold up to her rapidly swelling mouth. We walk her down the block to a clinic that is luckily on the corner of the street that my mom's house is on and was instructed to bring her to the surgical unit.
As I walk into the room with my sister's arm slung over my shoulder, I look up at the one hanging light in the room, my eyes slowly adjust and notice the worn down and ripped hospital bed and the plastic tarp that is on it. Before laying her down, I ask the nurse to get a new tarp and she tells me that it is the only one they have. I ask her to spray down the tarp with alcohol and wipe the blood off. When they wheel in a tray full of medical supplies, I tell my cousin to inspect the equipment to make sure that it's not used and dirty.
Welcome to a clinic in a third world country.
The doctor comes in and injects some local anesthetic into her lip. When he pulls out the needles, he accidentally spills some of it into her eye. He quickly threads a hook and starts sewing her lip together. Throughout the procedure, V goes in and out of consciousness and has three more seizures. Every time she goes into a seizure, she rips out the stitches, her teeth biting down hard on her tongue and her lip.
The doctor finishes stitching up the outside of her lip, peels back her bottom lip to take a look at the inside--it's bleeding dark red blood, mashed and mangled from glass and teeth. Her eyelids flutter open, only the whites of her eyes showing. I ask the doctor to wait for a few seconds because I know that she's going into another seizure. When her eyes start to focus and I know that she's becoming slightly aware of what's going on, I call out V's name so that she can hear my voice and maybe feel a little safer, maybe a little less scared.
In these moments I feel like I am 8 years old again. All the collected and stored memories I have of V, her seizures and countless visits to the emergency room, merge together. I relive holding ice to my sister's swollen and bleeding eye after she fell out of bed and gashed her eye open on the corner of an end table, I break the bathroom door to grab her after she fell in the shower, I yell for my mom when I hear her breathing pattern change and I know she's about to seize, I explain to the doctor, every single doctor that helps her, that she has had epilepsy for most of her life.
I am abruptly pulled away from my thoughts when I notice that there are people coming in and out of the room and standing around and looking. A medical assistant makes a joke about how incredibly swollen my sister's lip is and then tries to get a better look by nudging me out of the way and reaching for her lip with a gloveless hand. I grab his hand, look him straight in the face and tell him to leave before I beat him so bad that the only way they'll recognize him is his dental imprints.
After the doctor is finished stitching her up, V falls into a deep sleep. I ask the doctor about V's meds and ask him when I can have her take her next dose. Not quite understanding me, he replies that whatever meds she takes isn't available in Cambodia. But before I can clarify my question, another patient is rushed in. Her head is bleeding and I overhear another person saying that she was run over by a motorcycle. The doctor shoots her up with anesthesia and starts examining her wounds. I notice that he's using the same medical tools that he just used on my sister...
The hospital visit ended up costing us $70 US. That doesn't seem like a lot of money but that is what a Cambodian person makes in almost 4 months. When I left the hospital with my sister I couldn't help but think about the lack of infrastructure in Cambodia. Though Cambodia's landscape is rapidly changing from all the urban development that is going on (there are new high rises and skyscrapers being built every day) the infrastructure of the country is comparatively very underdeveloped. There is no health insurance that exists in Cambodia and a lack of funding for hospitals and clinics. Most families will only go to the clinic when they absolutely have to because they cannot afford it. I was told that the most common reason for land and asset loss in Cambodia is due to debt from health related treatment.
When V was finally settled, I sat down next to her to give her her meds. As terrifying as her experience was, I'm grateful for the fact that we have access to the meds that she needs and the funds to pay for her medical treatment. And though she'll have a gnarly scar from the accident, at least she'll have a pretty awesome story that she can tell to go along with it.
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