Health Care, Thai style

You can't expect us to have been here eight months without encountering medical maladies. (Keeks has actually grown attached to the parasites living in her stomach and has recently allowed Mac to name a few of them. How does "Spidey" sound?) After three months of trying to replace her contacts locally ("These eyes same as bat.")Mac thought she was finished with health care professionals for a while. Little did she know, there is an unspoken code when traveling to Chiang Mai that at least one person in the group will be admitted to the hospital. Such was the case when Keeks gashed her leg on a rusty seat lever on the bus ride to the airport. At first, it just bled. A lot. We would have diagnosed her with hemophilia, had it not then scabbed over. And turned green. We were worried that playing water for Songkran wouldn't be the best way to heal it, but we played anyways. After several days of pus draining, and when her leg began cramping and she had trouble breathing, we did what any intuitive travellers would do--we called Say.
"Hey honey, how are you?"
"Huge."
"Uh huh. Could you do me a favor and Google the symptoms for tetanus?"
About twenty minutes later, we hailed a tuk-tuk bound for the nearest hospital. The resident doctor saw us within minutes, after performing the completely irrelevant, but fascinating, task of weighing Keeks in the middle of the waiting room and shouting out the information.
"Hello? How can I help you."
"I cut my leg on some metal and I need a tetanus shot." (Imagine these words spoken slowly, enunciated, and with plenty of miming.)
"Hmm? Are you sick."
"Uhhh...I think I need a new tetanus shot. You know--tetanus." (Keeks jabs her arm with a fake needle.)
"Hmmm? Uh huh. I don't understand."
"You know.. tetanus... when you get a cut... on metal...you need a shot...for tetanus."
"Ohhh!!! Tet-a-nus!"
"Yeeeees."
"Okay, I will send for to the vaccine."
Minutes later a nurse walks in, ready to save the day...except she heads right for Mac, whose dramatic obsession with needles sends her squealing behind Keeks. The doctor chides her in Thai, saying, "No, it's the other one."
"They look the same to me," she replied. (To be fair, it was Monday, and we were both wearing our yellow King shirts.)
Tetanus shot renewed and armed with plenty of antibiotics in a nicely decorated shopping bag, we were ready to pay...nothing. It turns out our health insurance provided by the school is nothing short of amazing and we walked out of there with only the taxi home to pay.
Fast forward to last week when Keeks and Mac visited the dental clinic for their bi-annual check-ups. The cleaning was quick and relatively painless, and everyone was excited to see the farang out and about and speaking Thai. The cost? Twenty US dollars. That's right folks. And that's without dental insurance.
In summary (and for those of you who write the VISA ads, we are copyrighting the following):
Trip to the emergency room in Chiang Mai: 75 cents
Vaccination and prescription: 0
Dental cleaning: 20 dollars
The satisfaction of great medical services for a fraction of the cost: priceless.