Wednesday Jan. 10

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January 10



Hump day! I’ve been here for almost a week and it actually feels like a month. I am absolutely loving it. The hospital staff is so welcoming and the doctors are willing to ask and answer questions (super different from USA). I observed a spinal surgery in the OR today. The surgery is called a laminectomy, and it’s where the doctor removes the herniated disc. In this case, it was in the man’s lumbar spine. He was sedated, but I found out later that most people do not get put under, only for spinal surgeries. This is super different from America, where you get put under for everything. The surgery took about 3 hours. 10 screws were placed in his back and the nurse cut up parts of his spine for a bone graft (autograft) so the bone could regrow. For the most part, the OR looked very much like the ones in America. Except, they all wear sandals! After the surgery, we visited alternative medicine, which is very big in Thailand and has its own wing in the hospital. Alternative medicine includes acupuncture and Thai massage. We all got to experience a short Thai massage (don’t worry, you keep your clothes on) and your body gets moved in different positions and they push down on different pain areas and pressure points. It was amazing, especially for my feet. We also talked to the doctor who does acupuncture and he actually performed it on one of my friends Sarah. Acupuncture is all about energy lines, we learned, and a lot of Thai people choose this form of medicine over medication or surgery. It makes sense, but it can be dangerous because there are instances that they choose this in life or death situations and the doctors cannot talk them out of it and into taking medication or going into surgery. This is very different from the US because normally what the doctor says, we do, especially in life or death situations. After the hospital, we came back to the college to eat dinner and have class. This is when I started to not feel so great, so buckle up. But for class, we talked about the differences in Thai and American hospitals and healthcare (because there are many). It is important to remember that not one country does it better than the other, they are just different.

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