[DO YOU SPEAK THAILAND?]

I could probably write a novel with all of the things that I have experienced since the last time that I updated my blog. Sorry its been so long my days are soo packed and once I get home and eat dinner and shower I am so exhausted and I gotta head to bed. Anyways today is Sunday and it is the first day this entire time in Thailand I have not had a single plan so I am going to play catch up. I am sitting at the kitchen table eating delicious pomelo and dragon fruit and lovin' that I have nothing else to do today! (okay lets be real I'll probably head to the market later on) 

Okay anyways...I have 1 more blog post about my trip with our travel company but that will come later. For now I am going to update about my volunteer program...

I have been in the volunteer guest house since last Saturday and I have been having the time of my life. My work site placement is at Charoenkrung Pracharak Hospital right outside of Bangkok. My mentor/coordinator is a nurse named Pi-Toy that has been working at this hospital for 33 years. She is one of the sweetest women I have ever met in my entire life. She really makes sure I am taken care of and that I feel comfortable. Being thrown into this hospital in a developing country is such an eye opening experience. Health care in Thailand is nothing like health care in the United States and it is so interesting to be able to compare the two.

I walked into the 15th floor female surgical ward (which is where I will be for my 3 weeks) and it took me a moment to take it all in realize I was at a hospital. Now that I look back I am really not sure what I was expecting but I was taken back by the entire appearance of the ward.

 When you walk in the first thing that you see is 30 beds in about 5 rows all in one huge room. I am not really supposed to bring my camera to work but I am going to try and snap a few pictures before I leave. Absolutely no privacy at all in here. I do have to mention that this is a government run hospital so I think it is a little less nice than the others but still a lot of people in this country get health care this way. The beds are probably about 3 feet apart and there are 30 of them in this one room. Could you imagine this every flying in the United States? I don't think so. We are way too concerned about our privacy and space. It also makes me worry about contamination though. Everyone is so close to one another I don't know how they don't have more people getting sick.

There are some private rooms upstairs but they are not really affordable for the Thai people who use this hospital. The rooms run about $30 a day and include the doctors fees and supplies. With a yearly average income of about $8000 this makes a private room like this very unaffordable. I got to see inside of one of these rooms and it looked much more like a hospital room at home but still not up to what we would expect to see.

On my second day I got to follow around an orthopedic surgeon who was working in the outpatient clinic at the hospital. He sees each of his patients for about 5 minutes because there are so many people he has to see every day. They come in tell him what is wrong and he either gives them a prescription, refers them to Physical Therapy, recommends surgery, or many other things. While I was observing him he would interact with his patient and then explain to me in English what they had said and what he was going to do for him. His English was a broken but enough for us to be able to communicate. All of his patients bring him fruit from the market, food, drinks, etc. He eventually told me that they bring him gifts because he provides them surgery for free. The government covers all surgeries and medical care for these people so they bring him gifts to thank him. As a surgeon at a government hospital in Thailand he makes $1000 a month! I think some surgeons in the States make that in a day! Everything is hand written and charted here in this hospital. They do not enter anything into computers at all. I don't think I have actually even seen one yet?

Seeing this made me so appreciative of what we have in the United States! It would be interesting to see what a private hospital was like here and compare it to what we have. I think that the private hospital may be a lot nicer than this government run hospital. I enjoy seeing this hospital though because this is how a lot of the country receives medical care. Just being in this country makes me wonder if everything we have is so excessive? These are some of the happiest people and they really don't have much of anything.

I met the Director of the hospital on my first day of work and it was quite embarrassing! Well stupid me being from the United States went to shake his hand to say nice to meet you. He in return bowed (like they do to everyone here) and so I ended up looking dumb and he realized what I was doing and shook my hand. He didn't say anything and was really nice about it but I was kinda embarrassed.

Anyways I still have two more weeks left at the hospital and I am hoping to get to observe a surgery or two while I am here! Now that I am a little caught up I will try and update more about my job placement!