January 16th - Day Eleven in Thailand

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Today we went on three home visits through Donkeaw Health Center. The first home we went to was of a lady in her early 60s. She had been in a car accident about 20 years ago and was pulled out of her care without precaution. She had a spinal injury which lead to paralysis due to mishandling during rescue. She lived at her son’s house, who worked during the day, as well as with her home helper from Myanmar, who had been working with her for 17 years. I was amazed by this length of time. At my home, we can barely get someone to stay 3 months with my younger sisters. It is also so amazing to me that the community helps the disabled out. During transfers, different people from the community volunteer to help lift her from place to place so that she can get up out of bed during the day and rest in the bed at night. The community oriented attitude here still blows my mind. I hope to get better at working in groups and becoming more selfless as these people have shown me. I am also impressed by the ingenuity in these homes such as the makeshift pulley system a neighbor set up for this woman so that she could do exercises while in bedrest.



The second home we visited was a much tougher experience for me. The patient was a 35 year old man who had been in a motorbike accident and was experiencing severe head trauma because he was holding rather than wearing his helmet. The hardest part was seeing his mother and 12-year-old daughter take care of him. Mother’s should never be in this position. It is heartbreaking to take care of a grown son. I could not imagine how tired she must have been. When asked about preventing bed sores, she stated that she turned her son every two hours, including during the night. She would set an alarm on her phone to wake up every two hours to turn him. She never gets a good night of sleep, and she is taking care of the house and grandchildren. My heart also went out for the daughter. I was trying to show empathy not sympathy, but this situation hit too close to home. At a young age, she was taking care of her family. Many voices suggested that she would be a great nurse when she grows up. Is that even what she wants to do? Life changes so quickly. We are so much the product of our circumstances and other peoples’ choices. It was very frustrating to not be able to talk to this family due to language barriers. When asking the girl how she was handing everything, she just said she cried a lot when it first happened, and she was very sad. I wanted to offer her emotional help because I could tell through her nonverbal that she still felt this way. Since it is rare to discuss feelings in Thai culture, she probably has not received a lot of emotional help. Unfortunately, I did not have the words to have this therapeutic conversation. I prayed as I left this house and dreamed of how I could help family members in a similar position in the future. It helped confirm for me that I really do have a heart for counseling and therapy, a drive that was confirmed later on in the day when discussing personality types.



The last house we went to was of a patient who was dying from bladder cancer, though he was unaware of the cause. The family decided that they wanted to keep it a secret from him because they thought it would make him hopeless, but the exact opposite was happening. He was extremely hopeless, asking why he was being punished. He wanted to know what was going on. Through tears, he let us know that he was looking for answers. It was frustrating to met that this man would die without his family offering him what he requested. Isn’t it his right to know what is going on? It would be different if he did not want to know, but he begged for knowledge. Perhaps, the family was just afraid of acknowledging the truth. It was also frustrating to me that there were 13 students and 1 professor, all of who are Christians, and none of us offered the hope we have of from the Lord. I could have discussed with him that he was not being punished and that there was hope for him, but instead I felt nervous to stand up and say something in front of my peers ugh and afraid that I would be disrespecting the culture over someones mental well-being and life after earth.



So after that, I had a lot of process, but we did go to the most wonderful noodle place for lunch. It was brand new with clean white walls and dark wooden open windows. It was paradise. There were plants everywhere, and it influenced me to dream. It has always been in the back of my mind to open a coffee shop and natural foods restaurant. I would want it to be small like this place but homey, beautiful, and sleek. I have always wanted a place that celebrates the artistry of food design and natural, organic foods and modern but earthly architecture. This place was perfect, and I got to slurp up noodles and drink the best natural iced tea I’ve eve had while in it.



The afternoon was filled with class hours. We discussed personality tests (Meyers Briggs) and spent some time with teamwork activities. I have continued to realize how hard it is for me to get a long with certain personalities. This comes out so much with teamwork activities and being in large groups of people for a prolonged amount of time. I easily shutdown and go into my shell. I spend all my time trying to stay positive and not get annoyed by the voices that talk over all the other ones. This is an area I definitely need to work on. I’m glad that I have allowed myself to step out and have independent time when I need (since I never used to do that since I thought it was so looked down upon), but I also need to find a better way to interact with large groups though it is not my tendency. I quickly get bored of surface-like conversations and want to retreat to something more deep and maybe overly meaningful.





In the evening, we had pork pan and s’mores with our buddies which was an absolute highlight of my time here. My day is always so much better when I see them. We just click. They have grown to be some of my closest friends on this trip despite our language barrier and soon to be physical distance. I have learned so much from them — how to laugh nonstop, how to smile constantly, how to make more silly faces, and so on. We laughed so hard tonight, I was crying. Pork pan is such a good way to have community time and conversation, as we sat around a fire and cooked together. We made lots of videos and took way to many scary pictures. We ate too many sweets and got way too hyper, but it led to even more laughs, screams, and funny memories. Definitely a night I won’t forget. This is definitely an activity I want to take home to my family and friends.

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