We were planning to leave Sihanoukville the next day to Kampot, a nice sounding town by the river a few hours away. Anni had been having stomach problems for a few months now and it was getting more and more annoying, so we thought it would be a good idea to get it checked before moving on to the rural areas. You never hear anything too good about Cambodian health care, after all. All the guide books recommend an instant transfer to Thailand in case of an emergency, so we thought finding an english-speaking doctor would be impossible in small towns.
In the afternoon we walked to Sen Sok International University clinic, one out of two clinics in Sihanoukville who should have english-speaking staff around. After a few questions and a call to the doctor, who was in Phnom Penh at the moment, the nurse said that we should take blood tests. Terrified, because of not knowing anything about the quality of health care, Anni agreed after seeing the needles taken out of new bags. The nurse laughed a little and with a lovely smile she said "Single use. Don't worry." Anni felt ashamed.
We returned the next day for results and after some more questions and some basic checks with the doctor, he explained that Anni had salmonella and needed treatment and more tests right now. Ben had to go to the grocery store to buy orange juice, which was according to the doctor much needed to hydrate and to fight the infection, while Anni was lying in the hospital bed, getting bag after bag of liquids containing electrolytes and antibiotics pumped into her veins. Few hours later a guy came in. We had seen the same guy happily walking on the street only a few hours before. Apparently he had the same problem, though he was screaming from pain. Didn't sound too good. Anni started to be happy that her condition was relatively good.
It was a bit of a different kind of experience. The doctor was yelling from the other side of the room "are going for stool?" each time Anni got out of the bed. He also kept us well informed about why the other people were there and how they were feeling. But it wasn't embarrassing, it was just different to home, where doctors can't talk about this stuff to others. Actually we had an okay time with the nice nurse lady and doctor cracking unexpected jokes all the time. While waiting we had some long chats with him. He was interested in cultural differences, school systems and health care in our countries. He also told us that he had got his education mostly in Thailand and that in addition to his own language, khmer, he also spoke fluent french, english, thai and vietnamese. At the end of the conversation, he promised that in a week Anni would be fit enough to explore the temples of Angor Wat. Seven hours later we were let home to sleep, because the doctor had to leave for Phnom Penh with the screaming guy. The facilities in Sihanoukville were not good enough to treat him. We had to come back the next day to check again if everything was getting better and to get more results from new tests.
The next day we found out that Anni did not only have salmonella, she had also been collecting parasites in her intestines. More treatment and antibiotics again. We felt like Anni was in good hands, and instead of getting not enough treatment, we felt like that it was even a bit much. After all back home you are taken into a hospital in an absolute emergency and more often you're sent home after a quick inspection with a prescription for medicine. But this guy seemed to know what he was doing, and all the costs would be covered by insurance anyway. You can't blame anyone for treating you too good, can you? More important than the lost time was of course to get Anni feeling good again. This time we were released after about three hours and two bottles of fluids. Anni got a 130 dollar bill and a bag of medicines with instructions about how to take them.
We were ready for Kampot.
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