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Chab Chroub thought she had tried everything to heal her wound. Chroub, 48, had stepped on a nail on her farm in Kratie Province. For two months, she tried to treat her wound with traditional medicine – soaking her foot in a water bath with special leaves and barks of trees. When it wasn't working, and the wound began to worsen, she visited a local pharmacist who gave her several boxes of expensive medication and injections in her hip. Chroub wasn't sure of the usage of those tablets or injections because the pharmacist never explained them to her. All she knew was that they cost her $300 and realized that it didn't work. At her wit's end and now struggling financially, Chroub sold two (2) of her cows and traveled with her niece to Phnom Penh to seek care at the Sihanouk Hospital Center of Hope (SHCH).
Once at SHCH, Chroub received the first thorough medical examination of her life and was diagnosed with diabetes and hypertension. Chroub underwent two (2) surgical wound debridements and was fitted with a wound vac for five (5) days. Now the wound vac is off, and thanks to the attentive wound care and diabetes education team from the inpatient nurses' ward, Chroub is nearly ready to go home.
"The staff here told me that if I had waited any longer to come, I could have lost my foot or even my life," Chroub told us, promising to take her diabetes seriously. "I am thankful to be here, and I've never experienced care like this in my life."