Cancer Girl

A girl returns from the local hospital with bad news. She has an ovarian tumor. It's her fourth. She had three operations already but the tumor always returns...

Cambodian hospitals are places to avoid. The biggest problem are the doctors. Degrees of Cambodian Universities require first and foremost money (and not necessarily knowledge). The profession tends to go from father to son. Never mind skills or intellect. As long as daddy pays, his sons will get a doctor degree. So entering a hospital is like a reverse lottery. You can't win but random factors will decide how badly you're fucked. They charge whatever they feel like, they love to play with fancy equipment and sell brightly-colored pills but, most of the time, it looks like they don't have a clue what's going on…

Anyway, Cancer Girl doesn't freak out (like I would) when she gets the news. She just goes on a little fundraising tour along friends and family. Then she makes Skype-calls to a ex-, current- and future-boyfriends worldwide. She collects at the local Western Union office and books an operation in a remote hospital north of Phnom Penh.
"Good price and good doctor", she reasons.
I nod and I offer no opinion at all. Getting involved is something to avoid. Entering a hospital with my white face and a sick girl in my arms is every Khmer doctors wet-dream. I'll observe this tragedy over a cold beer but that's all I do. I'm not here to save the world, let alone to pay inflated hospital bills…

The morning of the operation Cancer Girl goes to the market to buy a big box of fresh crab. A little gift for the doctor to make sure he does a good job… Then she travels all day to the remote hospital. I heard it was after dark when the doctor was ready to see her.

Only two days later Cancer Girl is back in town. She would have liked to stay in the hospital a few days more but she ran out of money so they kicked her out. With a fresh wound in her stomach she travels all the way back to Sihanoukville by bus. In her family-home, she lies in bed for days. No one's really sure what to do. They feed her rice soup and hope for the best.

Two weeks later I meet her on the beach. She's smoking a cigarette and drinking gin-tonic, looking stunning.
"How's your stomach?", I ask.
"It hurts sometimes but I don't want to think about it. I'm scared if I go to hospital they will say the tumor still there. I don't want to know. No more money. I don't make operation again. I just want to enjoy life and help my family. Forget...Hey, why don't you buy me a drink?"