January 11th: Morning Ceremony…Nakornping Hospital…Thai New Years Party

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Today started off with morning ceremony again and my buddies picked me up and again told me they were up until 4am the night before setting up for the New Years Party. I felt so bad because they both looked very tired, but they were still very sweet to me and asked me about my experience at the hospital the day before. I have heard similar things from other students that their buddies tell them they were up very late the night before and we all feel so bad. I can definitely tell that the Thai people are hard workers and that they do not get much rest or time off. After morning ceremony we went to the hospital and I was in the female medical ward for about an hour before going down to visit the dialysis unit. Today on the female medical ward, we looked at some patient charts and were able to find a good case study for our presentation and we rounded with the doctors and heard updates about some of the patients. We observed our first wound dressing on this unit and saw that the nurses used normal saline to clean the wound and then used silver nitrate and then used sterile forceps to dress the wound with gauze. We then talked to one of the nurses and asked her how we could help and she instructed us on which patients needed to be fed so we fed the patients their ordered amount of feeding with the glass syringes as we had done the other day. After feeding the patients, we went down to the kidney center to hear about the hemodialysis and peritoneal dialysis. It was very similar to the treatments we do in the United States. After the kidney center, Carrie and I went to the labor room to try to see a birth, something I have been looking forward to seeing all week! We were able to see one which was awesome! The mom was very quiet throughout the birth. She did not make much noise and the birth was very quick! From the time the mom started pushing until the baby was out was probably only about 10 minutes. The baby was a boy! It was interesting to note the differences between the U.S. and Thailand because in Thailand there was no expression of emotion after the baby came out. No sigh of relief or excitement mixed with exhaustion after the baby came out and was placed on the mom’s abdomen. The mom had a neutral expression on her face pretty much the whole time. I noted how involved the nursing students were in the delivery and how there was no doctor present at the birth like there would be in the United States. They also used a clear bag to collect blood from the birth to see how much blood the mother lost. The whole thing was very different from what we see in the U.S., and it was cool to note these differences and be excited about seeing a new life enter this world! After the labor room we went to lunch and checked out the walking street market nearby the hospital. They had a lot of cool shops, but I sadly was not able to buy anything because we had to head back to the college. My buddies picked me up and took me to their auditorium where we played games and performed our American dance, the cha cha slide! It was very fun and I even won a game of musical chairs. The Thai fashion show was beautiful and I think the buddies and the other students enjoyed our dance. ? We had dinner at the college and there was a lot of different delicious foods including mo ping (fried pork), some pork dumplings, sticky rice, spicy noodles, ice cream, a sugared pastry, and more! All the food was delicious and it was nice to be able to spend quality time with my buddies after not seeing them very much the past few days. We had lots of different conversations about the Thai culture and they taught me some new Thai words. We laughed together and made memories at the New Year’s Party! I enjoyed the party and was exhausted by the end of the night!

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