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Today was our first day of placement! I got to shadow doctors in the surgical orthopedic and traumatology departments at Buddhachinaraj Hospital in Phitsanulok. Also assigned to these doctors were Annie and LIana, who were so much fun to be around!
When we went into the OR, we had to change from our Gap Medics scrubs to sterilized scrubs. They were very worn and had all kind of different lengths of pants and such. We wore sandals into the OR. Yes, sandals?! Never would have thought that would be sanitary enough to do, but thats how it works at this hospital! We also had to wear a hair net thinger and a mask.
The first surgery we saw was a knee replacement in an elderly man. In this surgery, the head of the femur and tibia were shaved down. The doctor then drilled holes in the bones and inserted the artificial joint. He sealed it off with cement that gradually hardened. He allowed us to play with excess cement. It got super hot as it hardened.
We also got to see the doctor remove fixation hardware from the thigh bone of a patient who got in a motorcycle accident.
Our third surgery was a biopsy of a tumor located in the entire fibula. This case was a 24 year old male who came in with leg pain. They were trying to figure out if the tumor was cancerous or benign. The doctor allowed us to take a bunch of pictures and videos. It was absolutely amazing!
Our mentor briefly took us into a couple other ORs which included a heart bypass surgery and a brain surgery. Both looked super cool but they were really intense so we didn't stay in there.
We then went to the inpatient portion of the hospital where our mentor rounded on his patients. In this hospital, there were probably about 40 patients in one room, one bed next to the other. There was a curtain that could be pulled around the bed in case a patient briefly needed their privacy. There was no air conditioning in there, only in the ORs. It was a very different set up than in the US.
After placement, Imani, Phe, Kristyn, Emily, and I went to the caves. Jimmy drove us around 1.5 hours via songtheaw. Once we got to the national park, we traveled through 3 caves. All of them were filled with bats and who know what else. I was the brave soul who led everyone else to the bright light at the end of the tunnel. I even got to bring out my inner Tarzan by swinging on vines!
At the end of the second cave, there was a little community set up where monks lived. There were supposed to be monkeys for us to feed but they were sleeping by the time we got there. We did make friends with the dogs though! One even liked us so much he chased our songthaew to the next cave and showed us the way. At our third stop, we saw monkeys sleeping high up in the trees.
On the way back to the house, we stopped at some street vendors to buy some food since we had skipped supper. I got some grilled chicken on a stick and pineapple. It was delicious! We still had supper when we got back though.
That night we decided we were going to go to Phuket this weekend so we planned for a while before we had to prepare for placement the next day and go to bed.
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