August 14

Scott taught my Doctrines of the Gospel class tonight.  He is such a knight in shining armor.  I just could not prepare it while in the hospital, and today I was too tired.  Watched the first two hours of Emma. 

I want to comment on the hospital here.  I was in Suva Private Hospital which is nicer than the public hospital, Colonial Memorial Hospital.  CMW is basically a free hospital paid for by the government.  It is really necessary because most people here do not have money to pay for medical services and no one here but those employed by the government, or by foreign private companies have insurance.

The hospitals here look and function much like the hospitals in the United States looked and functioned in the 1940s and 1950s.  Sister Limburg, the mission nurse, is the one who made the preceding statement.  In CMW the wards are just long, long rooms with between 30 and 50 beds on both sides of the rooms.  Sometimes there are curtains between the beds and sometimes not.  You bring your own clothes to sleep in.  Your family brings you food to eat.  Both times I was in CMW I did not see one nurse--not one.  At CMW you are sent home fast.  Jimmy Narayan had major back surgery and was home from the hospital in less than 40 hours.

In Suva Private there are no wards, but most rooms have four beds which are divided by curtains in them.  There are nurses everywhere.  The specialists that serve at Suva Private also work at CMW.  An appointment with one of these specialists means a hospital visit after 5:00 p.m.  Stays in Suva Private are longer because most people who use this hospital have insurance.  Before they would admit me, the hospital calculated the cost of my stay and Scott had to give them enough money to cover the entire cost.  If the costs ran less than expected we would get a refund.  Once they had the money, we were admitted.  If you have insurance, it is up to you to submit your bill to the insurance company.  There is only one room in the entire hospital that has only one bed. I had that room.
We did see a few rooms that had only two beds, and there was a critical care room (two beds) near where our my room was.

I do not think they used ether for my anesthesia, but they did use something that was administer with an mask. 

I have never met more compassionate nurses ever.  They did everything they could to make my stay a good one.  One of them even gave me a foot rub to ease the pain.  I did not have to argue with anyone when I refused to take any more pain meds.  They just said they would inform the doctor.