Doctor or Dentist???

***This photo below is my friend, NOT me!  I've had a bunch of letters from people thinking it's me.  It even fooled my parents for a few minutes.

Here is a letter one of my colleagues wrote to her friends last week.  I wanted to share it to give you an idea of what we do when there's a medical issue here:

Today,  around 8:45 AM,  I went to our teacher's house to water her plants and misjudged where her new air conditioner unit was located and got a big cut to the bone on my forehead

 Mia (her 5 year old daughter) was with me and thought I was dying by the amount of blood gushing from my head and started screaming.  Everyone came running out to help me and I was able to walk home (about 200 meters) and wash up a little before throwing up and almost passing out.  There were other missionary ladies here to clean it out and decide where best to go.  We don't just run to the ER.  So, it was decided that we'd go to a local dentist.  She had sewn up a head wound about 20 years ago just beautifully.  When we got there she looked at us as if we were crazy and called around to her other doctor friends and found one that is known for her fine stitching.  The only problem was was that she was on a different island but was boarding the plane in Jakarta and would call us around 2 PM.  When she finally arrived, she had us drive to her house and she proceeded to stitch me up.  I was very thankful for the shot(s) to numb it!  The doctor, at some point, showed Doug (her husband) and a co-worker who'd been with me the whole time the actual skull. The doctor put in 8 inside stitches and about 10 outside stitches.  All costing the equivalent of $70.  Doug called the air conditioner men right away and they reinstalled the a/c unit about 7 feet higher.

Other than that, our family is doing pretty good.  Jensen (another daughter) may have a mild form of Hand and Mouth disease so we are watching that closely.

What my friend didn't say is that they did try to go to the place where Spencer had his stitches done a while back and it was a horrible experience - very busy, disorganized and a bit scary, so they left, concerned that any treatment they did get would not be good.  While my friend did get good treatment from this doctor (in the back room of her home), we discovered that she's moving to another region shortly, so she won't be a long-term person to go to for stitches.  Apparently she's a plastic surgeon - something she's done a lot of is creating eyelids for Asian women who want them!  That's why she's so good at facial stitches!   Praise the Lord she was there and was available!  My friend's wound is healing up really well and you can tell she did a terrific job.

Another thing that I do (not everyone does this but I love doing research) is that I go online to a number of web sites and see what there is to learn about the problem.  I also have a number of friends in various disciplines of the medical field so have some resources to email or call if I need to.  

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