Emergency Room

5:45 am. The alarm goes off and we have to get up and carry water again. The last time was roughly 6 hours ago. Half asleep, half awake we get the first bucket of 60 L, only 4 more to come. I suddenly disrupt the nice & quite morning: “Good morning” – “Morning”, Hagen replies, this should be sufficient for the next few hours. Second bucket done. We see one of the cooks sitting on the jetty, which happens once in a while. He walks towards us after we are finished. Still a little bit dizzy from too few hours of sleep, we still see a chance to improve our Bahasa Indonesia skills and try to start a little small talk. It’s usually quite brief, our vocabulary is still very limited. Franky, the cook, showed us his finger. My first thought was: “Outsch, he must’ve got it stuck in a door frame or something similar. A little bit swollen but nothing too bad.” He stays around for a little longer and I am wondering whether he wants some painkillers from us, but Hagen tells me to get some disinfectant. I have a closer look: His finger is basically fully open, big pieces of flesh sticking out and unfortunately everything is full of sand. We will find out that he had an accident with his bones sticking out the finger – an open fraction. Later Hagen tells me, that he initially thought to get him a plaster, which is, considering the injury, fairly a joke.

Coming back with disinfectant Hagen runs past me to get some clean water to rinse his wounds. Quick exchange: No, for sure not tap water, drinking water might be a better option. While he is away, I prepare our “hospital”. Quickly cleaning some surfaces, preparing sterile bandages, getting the disinfectant ready and putting on some gloves (we ran out of gloves and just bought new ones the day before in Manado!).

With little experience with open wounds, we tried our best to clean his finger without making anything worse or to hurt him too bad. He was super brave; he let us do without turning a hair. Our mission was: (1) Clean from dirt and sand to hopefully prevent serious infection, (2) bandages to keep clean and stabilize the broken bones, and (3) send him to a hospital as soon as possible. Some professional should definitely have a look at this! He needs some professional wound cleaning.

Aim (1) and (2) were quickly achieved, at least within the bounds of our capabilities. Soon after we finished we saw him leaving the island and felt some relief: He is going to the doctor. Later, we found out that he only went to the next island – the hospital, although being insured from CoralEye and some additional money, is thought to be too expensive. We tried to communicate with other staff members that we would cover the expenses if needed. But I think this got lost in translation….

Next day we had to go to Manado anyway. On the way, we tried to get some more information about Franky but he changes his number as other people undies: Nobody seems to have his latest phone number. In Manado, we bought some more bandages, disinfectant. If he won’t got to the doctor we might have a chance to help him (although this is – for sure – not our preferred option!).

The medical equipment is untouched in our drawer. We haven’t seen him since. Nor have we heard any updates from him.

++++++ UPDATE ++++++

We just received some information, that Franky did go to the hospital. They were even able to save his finger and stich him up properly again! J