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Akha Chronicles Medical
Stories Medical
service is one of the most clearly missing factors of care that the Akha
don't have enough of. Here
I discuss my medical experiences with the Akha, first aid, and working with
doctors and hospitals in the low lands which unfortunately often treated the
Akha in the most shabby fashion. Akha
Traditional Medicine Though
this chapter is not about missions, the discussion of Akha traditional
medicine can not be started without commenting that the mission practice
first targets and destroys their traditional medicine system leaving the
converted village in a horrible way. The
first line of destruction in the missionary process is to eliminate the
traditional healers, which includes the women who take care to the village. I
have talked to many who told me that the missionaries would not LET them
practice their traditional medicine. While there are few people who will
openly fight the missionaries, it is noteworthy that western women will not
step into the frey about how Akha women healers are treated by the
missionaries. Akha
Doctors Ah
Gaw, the blacksmith in the village, he said they didn't go to the doctor
because the doctor would cut off a limb if it was injured. I checked it out
and it was true. I got photos of people involved. Ah
Gaw's wife made good jeeh bah dah bpeh, the sweet rice mash used to make
whiskey. They had one son. He liked the little brown skinned Booh
Dzmm for a while. Father
Pensa He
said that there were some Akha women who could not bear children, but he did
not speak why. Gneeh Pah Meeh Cheh She
was a Gneeh Pah who was known by many of the elder men in different villages
to be able to help women to have children. She could ask them what it was
that they wanted to have, a boy or a girl, and she would do the ceremony for
that. Meeh
Meeh was her daughter whom the doctors at Mae Chan hospital sterilized
without her permission. She did not want to be sterilized. But the
hospital said that her husband gave permission, this is doubtful and I
confronted the hospital staff about it. Anna
to Chiangrai Dec.
3, 1991 I took
Anna to Chiangrai hospital. She is severely bloated of the abdomen and
possibly septic. I have to stay with her at the hospital because her
mother couldn’t come down. My
visa run postponed due to not enough money and this. In
her condition she had already been to Maesai hospital and they sent her back
to Burma. I guess she would die if we didn't come here. They
took blood sample and xray but action seems slow. Lots of
waiting. I sleep on the floor on a mat as the style here, next to the
bed. Mosquitos all night long. Turns out that she had tuberculosis of the
abdomen. They removed some cysts and drained her abdomen of fluid. Then I
gave her shots each morning for a month till she was cured, that way she got
to go back home. She came over each morning to the Guest house with her
father t get the shot. Anna
lived, married and now still lives on the Burma side though she works in
Maesai some. Her
step father is an heroin addict but quite strict. Drives motorcycle
taxi himself, and works very hard. In the end the girls told me that he
earned nearly his entire supply of money for heroin from the taxi motorbike.
The kids did their best. In
the end he died. His leg was bad. His wife brought another man home
while he was still kickin, and would have at him in the other room. Now
that would be the death of a man. Like your face shoved down in the
dust on the floor. Her sisters are Tah Leeh Chah, Ah Meeh Yoh, Meeh Chooh
and another who is the oldest one is gone to Japan, and doesn't
contact home. A couple of younger sisters too. Winter
Takes The Babies The
winter had take two children in this family already. Adjews son and
Dolo’s mother’s son of a year. Besides Dolo she had had ten children
more which never lived past one year yet she didn’t stop for all this.
Now there is a divine woman. She knew she had to bear the lineage. So
after each child died, she would have another one. So the first lived, ten
died. It was sad when you saw it first hand and up close. The kids would tell
you after it happened, they didn't always ask for help, maybe cause they
never got it. Different
times of year have different effects. The cold takes the babies but
also the heart of the rainy seanson in August, when lungs are under the most
strain of moisture and pneumonia. Baby
Dies At Maesai Hospital Which
reminds me of the time that I stood by at the hospital while my wife’s
brother and sister in law waited for the verdict on the health of their
seriously ill infant son of less than a year, in Maesai, Thailand. Money
changed hands in good amount that day for the Thais to try by some feeble
effort to keep this infant alive. Yet I knew the baby really needed to
go to Chiangrai. The baby had a sore throat, was a healthy baby boy of nearly
a year old. He lay there, with a small oxygen cover over his head, but
there was no real action going on to keep him alive. I didn't realize how
corrupt it was, but if they were taking money for 'good' treatment on top of
the bill, this was another economic level at the hospital an outsider would
not know of but explained what did and did not happen. The hospital would get
paid once, then the nurses would pile on and ask for more on top of
that. This
grieved me greatly as I had no money and thus would have to stand by while
the inevitable happened which it did and the baby died. Meeh Poh,
always so sweet, so beautiful a heart shone from her strong, beautiful
face. A year later she had another child. In
years since then I came to find this a common trait in the hospitals,
disregard for patients who end up dying. I
wasn’t sure but I think now her husband has ended up dying also. Without
good food and nutrition, nor people to help them, the Akha die young from
hard work and fever. Seldom have they been left alone, often moved by
war between bigger players.
Years later I found Meeh Yoh in an Akha village up the Wiang Pah Pao way. Hernia
tale Aug
97 I
was leaving this village and this couple called me right as I was about to
go, this is a characteristic in the villages, can be there for hours and then
as you leave they stop you with a serious problem that it would have helped a
lot had they told you earlier. Not sure why, maybe embarassment. Anyway,
this occurred and they showed me their one year old boy and he had a huge
swollen scrotum turning black. I asked them why they had waited so long
and they said they didn’t. They had taken him to the doctor twice but
were sent home with fever medication. They
showed me the paper. I
drove to Maesai and got a van taxi and came back and moved them to Overbrook
in Chiangrai where they operated immediately. The
boys hernia was repaired. When
I asked the admission doctor in emergency what kind of doctor would send a
child home like that he noted that it was ‘probably because the boy wasn’t
vomiting yet’. Incredibly stupid excuse. And it cost me plenty in cash.
Stolen
Baby? The
baby got left at the hosptial, disappeared. This was a story that Phillip
Prendeville researched. But
then I heard it from a family in Som Pah Sak Akha as well, told the mother to
leave the baby there, Chiangrai Hospital, then when she came back they said
the baby was dead, yet couldn’t provide any records of when they had cremated
it or not, the mother only gone three days at their instruction. There
was the baby There
was this baby. Well the mother was put in detox, then she was going to have
the baby. It was a volunteer program they said. But when the baby was born,
the doctors took it, and later they brought it back and the mother said the
baby was very upset, and then that night the baby died. She knew of nothing
wrong with it. But then the hospital said that the baby was sent to Chiangmai
for an Autopsy, Very strange. When it came back after many stories and lies
by hospital staff later on, the brain was gone as were all the organs, the
baby was wrapped solid in a towel, frozen. Dogs I say, dogs. Epilepsy What
are the possible causes of epilepsy among the Akha? Heriditary?
Toxins? some nurses say a brain cyst from eating raw vegetables that
have it on the leaves. I know of cases, some of them died. Like the one at
San Chai Mai. Infant
death Problem
There
is a problem that too many Akha infants die of fever, a few days of
cough and then they are gone. They are robust and healthy but get this
minor cough that goes all night, then fever and then death. I wonder if
in reality it is not strept. That would go along with not eating. More
than one baby at bridge died from this. That is where many babies were, cause
the parents stayed there while sister and brother begged. People complained
about this. But they got a LOT more money than their parents earned, so it
helped the families a lot. They were not stupid, it was hard for any of them
to survive, and if they could get the food money they did it. One woman
brought me her baby. It was dehydrated, died too, it was too late. She
couldn't come over every day, but that was what was needed. The babies didn't
die due to complicated reasons, they died cause no one was there and no one
cared. Why should babies die? People act like, well poor people don't need
babies anyway, so big deal. I didn't buy this but sensed the
attitude often. Yet is is so sad when babies die. When anyone dies. But
especially when children suffer, cause they are so helpless, and when babies
get sick it is even their parents that get feeling helpless. In
all my work, I saw that a doctor to help the babies was very needed, that
there wasn't much expertise at this. But this was where to bring an end to
the suffering, by saving the babies. The
case of the hospital and the baby and what they did. Isaac
There
You Were There
you were there in your tny little body, so small, so clear to every
vein. A tube sticking in your throat to pump the bile out, and IV in
your tiny leg, and your guts all sewed up in an infection now, caught in the
Mae Chan hospital they say. I can't say, but I don't know if it
matters, everything here is mostly sad, and I was most sad for you, born a
month early to a battle for your life, loooking up at me, to live or die, to
wait there while it all tried to kill you. My
son, I went to the ICU every day to make sure he was alive, had to move him
again to a third hospital, and finally he healed. Two months. He had been
born with all his intestines out, via a big hernia in his abdomen. Hard,
things like that, was the worst case I ever saw, I was there when he was
born. It was my son. My first son. The Thai nurses kept saying
"abnormal". Fuck them. Then the ambulance took him to Chiangrai
where I met him again, only when they brought him out of the ambulance, he
was in a black plastic garbage bag. Fuck those people. They are dogs. Worse
than dogs. Vaccines Lack
of informed consent An
attitude of disregard, that the Akha are not capable of sorting out their own
health needs. Something
was going on with the Tetanus Toxoid vaccine. Babies were spontaneously dying
and aborting right after the vaccine, within 24 hours. The
vaccine damaged village Investigate
this case. Aug
97 About
the Akha and Hospitals My
experience with the Akha and the hospital is that sometimes they get treated
poorly, especially if they are from Burma. Furthermore
they are often given superficial diagnosis and have to return a number of
times, all which costs them much more than had they gotten a proper diagnosis
the first time. Among
the Akha there are a great number of difficulties, and getting the most basic
medical care for them is one of them.
Doctors and NGO's are more concerned with their money, or getting off work on
time, than whether the kids lives or dies. The
Death of Meeh Sah: After
Meeh Sah died I was having a harder and harder time starting my brain.
I felt increasingly frustrated over not having a vehicle, that more than
anything else. I tried endlessly to find ways to get one going, get
other people motivated to help. The
husband recovered. He was more quiet now. Before she died I had
often heard him say that she was a no good wife. I wonder what he
thought now?
I have a story about this, a long one. I will have to put it here. Meeh
Sah, that really hit me when she died, cause I took her to the hospital and
did not expect it, but in the morning she was in a bad way and the Maesai
nurses only laughed about her lying there, I went and asked them because she
looked at me and was frightened. I was really concerned when I saw that. So
the nurses blew it off laughing. So I moved her to Chiangrai and a day later
she died. That hit me in such a powerful way, I always gave the Akha the best
care I could get them, but that was to etch my brain for a long time. I took
her back to the village. I buried her. Was really sad. Boy
with pneumonia He
went to overbrook, but he was braindamaged after that. A girl had this happen
too, she died. I got the impression, and someone mentioned it to me, that
they were injecting too much antibiotic, or something like that. Plant
burn on face
Mae
Com village girl goes to bangkok. Took
her to doctor. Then she went off to bangkok and her mom said she didn’t have a clue why. But
she came to me because she touched some plant to her face, the leaf brushed
her face in the jungle, and her face all blistered there, clear fluid coming
out all over her cheak. Doctor had no idea, but it sure looked toxic. Ajinamoto
in everthing
Food
and health are important. In Thailand MSG is really pushed, the govt. doesn't
take any action about this, too much money, its a big time item in
households. Cheaper
drugs ch rai Cheapest
are in Huai Krai Pharmacy. But you got to check the dates. Maesai is
expensive cause the Burmese can't go further south, so they have to pay the
prices. Thai Govt pharmaceuticalI
went there a couple of times in Bangkok to buy many different things I needed
that were hard to get or expensive in Maesai. Fungus cream especially. American
family planning international was
said to sponsor Lewis’s sterilization program. I have the whole book on line. Medical
Care Now
is a perfect example because it is a recurring example. There
is this girl of seven who I took to the hospital. She needed to have
her eye removed and it bothered me that she sat out there in the village, the
eye protruding so far she could not close it, so I up and went to the village
and picked her and her older brother up and took her into Chiangrai to the
hospital there. I knew going in that it would be complicated but what
could I do. I still owed a bill from last year. But I took her in
anyway, having some kind of unmeritted feeling that good things should just
be done and that they more often than not do not pencil, least not initially,
and certainly not on the surface. Well, all went well, the eye came out and
so forth, but the money still wasn’t there. I had to pay it in the
morning and I was still looking for my way out. There was no money,
some was on its way, but would not come in time for the people at the
hospital, or the older brother who was extremely impatient. This was
the reality of my life here, opposite and opposing situations that I just
could not win against. Not when they happened at the same time. But
when the brother went in alone, the price was much lower and I gave him the
money to pay it off. She came from the flat sand village. I checked on her
repeatedly, she needed a new artificial eye, but I had no way to arrange or
pay for that. My
medicine list What
I used most of, needs to go here. Akha
and appendicitis they
don’t seem to suffer from it, I never saw one case. I wonder if it is related
more to western diets, cause I knew Thais that got it. Baby
is no good, blotches on skin This
was the Burma orphanage. But then there was also this baby in Huai Krai that
had skin that scaled all the time, and I heard this was a neuralogical
problem. Need
for Akha hospice How many
Akha die alone? I asked the Akha about this, cause when Ah Soh was in the Mae
Chan hospital, I could see how many others were there, some old, no one knew
they were there, they walked in or someone dropped them off and it looked
they would die, and no one was even there to talk to them kindly or hold
their hand. Humans, such great need. My
Medical Experiences I
had serious problems here (moist tropics) with tiny wounds infecting from one
village. My
diet is sometimes not so good, low funds, more diesel than food, so I
figured it was that but I only got these infections of pimples in one village
and they would not heal and went to the size of coins in a few days, leaving
nasty scars. I
had to take amoxicylin to stop them, had to do that about three times, then
one day i just took one capsule apart and poured it on top and it stopped the
wound right away. I know that this is only topical compared to a
surgery, but the bugs are nasty these days and the drugs do not seem to
deliver well in the body. Woman
with hole in back, died Bah Gah Akha? Yes, this was
the place, what a nasty wound that was. Not sure what caused it. I treated it
and it healed completely, I saw, about a month it took, her whole back had
been open, then later it came back and she died. I had been gone on some
other problems in other villages and knew I needed to check again, but it was
like that sometimes. A lot of villages, a lot of problems, long roads. Snake
Bite There
was a guy who was bitten on the arm by a snake. Back in the days when I
took Anna into the hospital. He lost all the flesh down to the tendons
and lower muscles, they nurse kept the huge section of his arm where all this
flesh was missing covered with a wet cloth pack when she wasn't busy
cleaning it. Was nearly the length of his left forearm. Nov
4, 1999 The
Sick Baby - Isaac I
have two people coming from the US soon and then a group from
Singapore. The moneys needs for preparation are not here so I must
compensate and improove the system for next time. There
is my infant son in Chiangrai hospital, born with opening in the
abdomen wall and the intestines and other organs outside the
body. A mess to see. Never saw so horrible as that and the
hospital nurses kept saying "abnormal" and put him in a plastic
garbage bag in the ambulance to Chiangrai and his body temperature dropped
and he almost died. Surgery
on monday to place intestines back in his body, they then build a tower over
to move them back in slowly. He was born Oct 27, 1999. Anticipate
3 weeks to breast feeding, food tube now. Rice
harvest was stopped by the rain. Much rice destroyed in villages north
of and next to the Chiangrai River, like the catholic villages. Much
rice destroyed in the mountains too. Cut and sprouting in the fields
before it dried or was stacked up. This
happens sometimes. Makig
trip to Chiangrai Prov Hospital to see infant son plus numerous village
stops, plus taking the mother in to see the baby. Visit
child at chiangrai hospital many times late at night. Then he
started looking yellow and I looked and he had a big staff infection and
would have died so I moved him then to Overbrook. He was there a month
then two and they would not let him out till I paid the bill but the Embassy
in Bangkok said that they should not do this way. Meanwhile
I had to replace the rear brakes on the truck. The
mother was from Som Pah Sak and they told me that now there were some 200 Thai
soldiers staying near her village to guard the border area. This is
very close to Maesai. Tetanus
Toxoid Tetanus
toxoid vaccine given during pregnancy in THIRD world countries had a history
of suspicion as to what the true intentions of this vaccine were and/or were
combined with. The
vaccine had been suspected to have a link to causing miscarriages and I
in fact could identify cases where it had done that immediately upon its
administration. It
looked like they tried to give the vacine in each pregnancy. Giving
Birth The
Akha women say that the Thai nurses are very bad to them when they have
babies. Having seen it first hand I know it is true, despite the fact that
the Akha woman are faster and much less trouble than the Thai women
who may be fat and lay around for hours on the bed in labor. Meeh
Meeh had her daughter and then the doctors at Mae Chan hospital sterilized
her. This was common. It happened to Ah Baw Tsah's daughter in Loi Chang too.
Amoxycillan Taking
a capsule apart and sprinkling the powder on a wound was more effective than
taking the pills for 7 days. Medical
Education Medical
education for the villages about modern health concerns, health advocacy,
health care rights and procedures. Sanitation,
scabees etc. Keeping
faces clean. Some
villages they need more help than others depending on what kind of stress
they are under. Medical
Big Books For
villages in color End
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