February 22nd, 2010

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Monday Feb 22nd. A hospital visit in the Socialist Republic of Vietnam

Monday, February 22nd, 2010

The vicodin pain killers were  not doing me much good last night and the tooth ache kept me awake for the early part of the night. I ended up going to the local Khanh Hoa Hospital, dental division. This was quite an experience. The halls were crowded and gurneys and wheelchairs where squeezed through Saigon traffic style. It would make a perfect movie set for a Florence Nightingale script. The dentists and a bevvy of dental students got right with me but then I had to take my turn in the X-Ray section. I had the X-Rays with me on a USB key that were taken of the teeth in question, last month in Saigon. But the hospital only uses the antique PC’s for their in house program. And they would not have shown the infection/abscess. I had to wait for a couple hours to get X-Rayed and the pictures developed with a long line of, mostly, traffic accident victims. The dentist prescribed the very same antibiotics, Rodogyl, which I bought over the counter, last Saturday. For the pain he prescribed “Tatanol Codein” ( 500 mg Acetaminophen 30 mg Codein) and they are working much better for the pain than the Vicodin. The 10 day medication cost me $ 10 and the hospital bill for the doctor and X-Ray came to $ 10.00……. Hooray for the Socialist Republic of Vietnam!