Full Immersion

---

Today was a day of Thai full immersion between our first day on our set wards at the hospital, a Thai cuisine for both lunch and dinner as well as a Thai ceremony in the evening. To start off the morning, we had garlic chicken wings, mushroom and tofu soup and rice with morning glory which is similar to sautéed greens. We attended the morning ceremony again, this time I thought it went quicker and I expected what was next to come in the ceremony proceedings. Our time at the hospital was fascinating! I was in the male medical unit which is a 45-bed unit. To my surprise, a lot of the patients were extremely sick, many of them had multiple severe co-morbidities. Quite a few of these patients would be placed in the ICU in the US however, to be placed in the ICU here, you must have around 4-5 extremely severe co-morbidities. There were many alcohol withdrawal patients as many men drink heavily in Thailand. Some other cases that I saw today were tetanus, hydrocephalus, CRE precaution, septic shock, cancer, pneumonia, and stage 4 pressure ulcers. Nine of the patients were on ventilators and four of the patients were on birds. A bird machine is like a step-down from a ventilator, it has no screen and is a manual setting. Overall, I thought this unit was extremely interesting to learn about. Mainly I followed the physicians on their rounds and I watched the med nurse pass out her medications. I was able to spend some time on the Neurological ICU for a little bit. This unit was very different in several ways. First off, it was air conditioned, that was a nice change. But more importantly, the unit size was only 10 beds and your shoes were to be changed into their sandals and you had to wear a cap and mask. The patients were very routinely taken care of as turning, bathing, mouth care, and medications were all performed at set times. This was different as the male medical floor were set at times yet seemed a bit more chaotic due to the unit size. At lunch time, we had the Thai food the hospital provided which was very tasty! I ordered Pad Thai as I knew I couldn’t go wrong with that dish. I also tried Thai tea with boba in it, that was delicious! I chugged that within 5 minutes (seriously), my stomach turned into a knot afterwards and I regretted it but luckily that feeling wore off. After our time at the hospital, we headed back and our Thai buddies came over to our apartment and helped us get ready for the evening Thai dinner. This was so fun as they brought their traditional Thai garments and makeup for us to wear. After getting dressed, they had a fun time decorating our hair with fresh flowers. After taking many pictures together we went on our way to dinner at KhumKantoke. This place was beautiful, everyone was dressed up in traditional garments and we sat on tables that had seats on the floor and our legs went underneath the table. The food was brought out on a platter with several dishes of Thai cuisine. After the meal Thai dancers performed on the stage and invited the crowd to go up and dance, this included us. After a great evening of fun and new experiences, it is nice to reflect back and look at all the wonderful opportunities and adventures I had today between the Thai hospital, culture and cuisine!

---