Touring in Bangkok and Milly goes Home

My family met the group of volunteers who hadn't toured Bangkok yet at the Grand Palace. 

It was such nice weather- overcast and breezy. I will never stop being amazed at how beautiful and intricate all the architecture is.

Afterwards we took a ten minute walk to Wat Pho. The temple was so gorgeous and huge. Milly and I can't believe this is the last temple we'll get to see before we go home! 

Last on the days agenda was shopping at a huge weekend market. We bought more gifts and said goodbye to the rest of the volunteers and P'Air and P'Mick. We really hope they will come visit us in Maryland!

After walking around for an hour, we found a cute shop to have some much needed drinks. 

Milly and I went back to the hostel to pick up our things and join my family at the hotel. 

We ate dinner, visited a bakery, and showed my parents all the elephant pants we have purchased. Somehow, Milly was magically able to take home all of my families gifts as well as her own. She is a packing wizard. 

Around 4:40 am, my mom and I sent Milly off to the airport. I'm so grateful we got to spend so much time together traveling around Thailand! 

Nicole's last day in the NICU

I got to spend my last day in the hospital in the NICU. 

The nurses thought I was lonely without Brooke, so they kept feeding me constantly. I had juice, water, and half a cantaloupe in the three hours I was there. 

The nurses also let me feed the babies in the incubators. They were all very hungry and cute. They either had feeding or breathing tubes or both. Most of them were underweight premies and seemed to be doing well despite how tiny they were.

For lunch, I joined the doctor interns at their conference and learned about septic shock causing joint complications. 

I had to say goodbye to P'Bow and Brooke and I were able to say goodbye to P'Mui in the ER right before we got on the van. 

When we were going to get our luggage out of P'Job's car, she gave Brooke and me two presents each. We can't believe she got us gifts after letting us be part of her family and opening up her home to us. 

On the van ride to Bangkok, we found out she bought us each a body glove t-shirt, which is a popular brand here, as well as a purse. 

We will never forgot our time here in Lopburi and are so thankful to all the people who made our experience so amazing!

Milly's Thursday

Thursday, we joined the freshman nursing students' to celebrate and welcome them to AngThong Hospital. 

In the morning, we took two buses to three different temples. At each, we received a lotus flower and incenses, and prayed for the students, wishing them good luck as they start their training. 

On the bus, we got mini water bottles and sticky rice with dried shredded pork, wrapped in leaves. We also played the baby powder game. The concept is similar to musical chairs. We passed two bottles of baby powder around the bus, while music played. When the song stopped, the person holding the baby power had to draw a piece of paper from a bag. On the paper had instructions for who had to get a handful of baby powder in the face, sometimes the individual themselves, a person of their choice, the person sitting to their right or left, etc. It was really messy and scary, but also lots of fun and laughs! 

After we visited the temple, we went back to the hospital for scenarios and games. 

We got herbal drinks and bun for snack. 

Each person got someone else's name tag and then had to find the person who had theirs. The scenarios were meant to be a more interesting way to teach the students things that should and should not happen at the hospital and how to handle such situations. 

With P'JOie. We love her and are going to miss her a lot. Also for the games, they separated us into six groups. I was on team, Red Ribbon. Our slogan was a cute hand gesture that we did while saying "lol-jai-zai-chow-bo-ran-na-kha"!

The first game we competed in required everyone on your team to line up, an arn's length between each teammate. Everyone got a straw to put in their mouths. The first person on each team has to pick up one rubber band from the chair in front of them, put it onto their straw and pass it along to the person standing behind them. You are not allowed to use your hands. The goal was to try to get as many rubber bands as possible to the last person on the team before the music stopped. It was stressful, but really, really fun! 

The second game involved tying a rope around your waist, the string was attached to a rubber band. Together, as a team, you had to open and stretch the elastic to go over the neck of glass bottles, then relax and tighten the rubber and to grip the bottle. The objective was to pick up as many glass bottles as your team can and bring them to the crate. 

After that, we did a scavenger hunt around the hospital, so that each department could meet the new interns, At each, they had us play more games. The baby powder game, embarrassing dancing, lipstick and more! The damage after twenty minutes of cleaning.

We went back to wash up, then came back to have dinner. After dinner, we did karaoke, but all the songs were in Thai! We had a good time nonetheless and participated in the prayer bracelet ceremony. 

As we went around in a circle, all the doctors, nurses, and staff prayed for each of us and tied a white bracelet around our wrists, wishing us good luck and a happy, healthy life when we return to the States. It's hard to believe a month's time has already passed and this is my second to last day in Thailand. While I'm excited to be home again, I have been blessed and lucky to have met such wonderful people during my trip, both my host family, the nurses, therapists, doctors, and students at the hospital, as well as our beloved coordinators, P'Aor and P'Mick. They have touched me with their overwhelming kindness, and for that I am incredibly grateful. I am going to miss them a lot when we leave, but hope we'll keep in touch and that I can visit again in the future. Kop khun kha, kop khun kha! Sawasdee kha. ❤️

Nicole's Thursday in the OR

On my second to last day of work, I was lucky enough to be in the OR shadowing Dr. Gong again. My ability to color coordinate my outfit is pretty amazing. 

Throughout the day, I got to see Dr. Gong release a tied tongue, remove tonsils, conduct a tracheotomy, remove nasal polyps, and inject fluid into a patient's inner ear. 

Dr. Gong is very good about explaining everything he is doing and letting me see the operation site thoughout the procedure.

So far, I think the anesthesia and ENT equipment is the most similar to the machines in the hospitals I've seen in the U.S. 

Another thing that is really different here is how involved the surgeon is in moving the patient to and from the operating room and making sure they are comfortable. Dr. Gong always helps with the patient's pillows and taping their eyes to protect them during surgery. 

There is always music videos playing in the OR and between patients, the nurses were having dance parties while cleaning up and setting back up. The nurses are so friendly and would hug me or pat my arm every time they talked to me.

The nurses and I also tried to have conversations over google translate. I thought it was working really well until five minutes in, the question was "what haunted house do you live in?". I guess this is why language teachers tell us not to use online translators. 

After work, we went to dinner with P'Job, Tam, and Stop, since our host dad works late on Thursdays. We had a delicious meal and two huge deserts with toast and ice cream. Brooke and I are so sad this is our last family dinner here!

When we got home, we gave our host family our thank you present consisting of coins, an Arizona plate, caramel candy, and bracelets for our little sisters. Stop tried to read our thank you note out loud and it was really cute. We are going to miss this family so much, they have taken such good care of us and truly gave us a second home. Hopefully, they'll come visit us in America!

Nicole's Tuesday and Wednesday Trying Out the Thai Healthcare System

Just to be thorough, I decided I would try to see the King Narai Hospital from a patient's perspective- by getting a stomach virus.

Although I felt fine on Monday night, I had a fever and was nauseous all of Tuesday. I stayed home from work and was awake for 30 minutes the entire day.

Since I felt worse on Wednesday, my host mom brought me into the hospital. The ER was extremely crowded so P'Job found another doctor for me to see. 

I wasn't really able to communicate with the nurses beyond figuring out I had low blood pressure, which is normal for me, and learning I look like I'm from Myanmar, which is new.

After waiting for a bit, I finally saw the doctor who prescribed me some medicine that seems to be helping a little so far. 

P'Gok, the pharmacist who brought us to dinner before, helped me fill my prescription in the outpatient department.

Being seen by the doctor and getting my medicine cost 60 baht or $1.81. Everyone here was very worried about how much it cost so they even printed me a receipt in English so I could send it to my insurance when I get home. 

While walking around, we saw the head nurse of surgery. After describing my symptoms, she told me, very seriously, that I have Mers... before starting that to giggle.

All and all, I would not recommend going to the hospital in a foreign country where no one understands you and you can't read anything to fill out the forms and paperwork. I am so grateful that my host mom helped me so much. I wouldn't have known where to start without her.

Milly's Tuesday and Wednesday in the OR

When I first arrived at the OR (operating room), the nurse told me to change into hospital scrubs and sandals. Super excited to finally get to wear the oh-so-fashionable green scrub dress with crocs that everyone has been raving about in our Summer A volunteers' group message. 

In the morning, I observed two surgeries. The first was a knee replacement operation. The nurses first scrubbed the patient's entire right leg throughly with an antibacterial foaming solution and then liberally wiped the patient's leg with betadine, an antiseptic and disinfectant. To further prevent contamination and reduce risk of infection, they wrapped the patient's leg with a giant "sticker". Here, the OR begins at nine and there are five operating rooms. The nurses spend a lot of time prepping the rooms and equipment before the operation, making sure everything is sterile and keeping count of the number of gauzes, rolls, scalpels, tweezers, and others. 

After they finished preparing and the doctor (as well as all the nurses were scrubbed in), they began the operation by making a vertical incision down the patella, cutting to reveal the bone and using the cauterizing equipment to stop bleeding. It was startling at first to see how vigorous and "rough" the doctors were being, as they hammered metal pieces and sawed into the patient's kneecap to form a flat surface to glue the replacement onto. 

Next, they mixed up two reagents to form  cement to adhere the replacement to the bone. The doctor let me see what it was like, by telling me to take the extra cement and roll it in my palm. The cement started off sticky and soft, but as you rolled it longer began to turn hard  and warm, and then hot. The doctor then told me to drop the ball on the floor and listen to see if it made a "clack-clack-clack", which is the correct sound it is supposed to make. I threw it too hard and it ended up ricocheting around the room, which made him laugh. It was fun. 

After the replacement pieces were in place, they surtuted the patient's leg back up, layer by layer. 

The second surgery was removing the replacement and putting in a metal bar. 

Wednesday, I got to see a hemorrhoidetomy and cholecystectomy. It was a difficult case, so they did not have as much time to answer any questions, but it required patience and throughness.