Crushes

My saviour has come. I should have known, he makes the lame walk! He is an orthopaedic surgeon at Choray, a ginormous hospital in Saigon town. He is tall and quick-eyed and is a man of action, which you can tell from his gait - I practically have to run to keep up with him. He's married and is, um, "friends" with my mum's (also married) cousin. Is coveting thy neighbour's (wife's) ass genetic?! My family is McWeird.

BUT, the good news is....drumroll, ladies and gentlemen...Mr Ortho has agreed to be my new supervisor!!! Get this. My old supervisor tells me to come in at 8am. I drag myself out of bed and go by xe om to the hospital, only to find out he's out at breakfast. So I pull out my laptop (having learned that long waits are to be expected). Finally he comes back, only to sit there twiddling his thumbs, deep in thought. So I sit there doing more laptop crap, breathing in more iatrogenic smoke, waiting til he decides to do something with me. Finally it clicks when he starts folding up his white coat...he's actually quitting his job TODAY! He takes me home again.

Compare this to Mr Ortho. Once I get back, we call him at around 10am. At 11.30, we meet him at the hospital. He asks what I want to do. On the spot I decide on Emergency, since that's where you get a bit of everything, plus I'm sure to see crazy stuff that I never would in Oz. He takes me there, introduces me to a guy who I'll follow around in ED, asks the lady in charge for permission, and takes me to the staff caf for an iced tea (yeah, I didn't follow my own advice about the ice and will probably pay for it! DIY oral rehydration, woot) while we wait for the training office to re-open. By about 1.15pm, it's all set, I just have to get an introduction letter from uni. Three hours after we started the ball rolling. You can understand why I walked around stage-whispering "I LOVE HIM!" and grinning.

This means I have accommodation, I have exciting stuff to do, I have a trustworthy supervisor, I don't have to breathe in any more slack doctor smoke, and I'm far away from a certain Shakespearean crackpot. I get to stay in the comfortably uncouth South, with the familiar accents and frank manners and plenty of contacts to rescue me if anything happens. All because Mr Ortho fancies my second cousin! Heh.

This is a REAL VN hospital, unlike the cushy semi-private one I was at previously. We arrived by taxi and could hardly even get off - it took ages to get to the curb because of the throng of motorbikes, bikes, pedestrians, peddlers, officials and other sundry bodies. Across the street, there's a booming side trade in quick meals to feed the hungry relatives (and indeed patients, because they often rely on outside food - not sure if they're even fed in hospital). You walk in and there are people on almost every available horizontal surface - there was a woman lying down on some newspaper right at the entrance, centimetres from being stepped on by the entering and departing crowds. It's often hard to tell the patients from the relatives. When trying to find Mr Ortho, we went on the scenic tour of the hospital as we were directed and misdirected all over the place. On the ortho clinic side, patients sit or lie in the coridoors, surrounded by anxious relatives, clutching whatever limb they've damaged. To go up or down a level, you have to brave the chaos of the elevators - the battle between wheelchairs, stretchers and doctors in a rush - or else take the stairs, which are also packed with people. In the ED, there aren't six beds as in Barmy or twelveish as at the hospital I was at previously - there are dozens and dozens of beds in rows like those shots of maternity wards, except instead of gurgling babies there are people in various states of silent distress. My home for the next seven weeks. Scary? Hell the frick yeah. Am I up to it? Errr....probably not. But who cares. Bring it on.