Clinical and Movies

Today (Tuesday) I was assigned to my nurse preceptor. Her name is Sho Wei and she is absolutely adorable! She hardly speaks any English though so it’s so hard to communicate with her! Most of the time we just laugh because neither of us knows what the other is talking about. I will be with her out in the community until the end of next week. It was also my first time being on my own throughout the day (well other than my doctor and nurse). I felt like a parade animal. Every house that we visited the entire family would crowd around me babbling and squealing about me (none of which I could understand). They would grab my hand and pull me into their nicest room and sit me down and feed me! They would then proceed to talk about me and point at me. It’s so funny! I never know what to do because I can’t talk to them or understand them so I just sit there and smile. And I get stuuuuufffed. Luckily they serve fruit most of the time. They eat lots and lots of melons and papaya. It’s so yummy!

Most of my patients today were very wealthy! It's interesting though because even the wealthiest people aren’t very wealthy compared to most people in the U.S. The extremely wealthy businessmen are probably equivalent to middle class in America. One patient was devastating. He is a 52 year old man that owns a number of factories in Taiwan. He’s very wealthy and he lives in an actual house (a really nice house) and having a house is very rare in Taiwan. One day he was walking to one of his factories and he fell off of a four foot slab. He just happened to fall on his head and he is now brain dead. He’s slightly aware of everything around him but he is completely paralyzed and can’t speak. It is so sad. He’s been like that for an entire year. It Taiwan families will rarely put family members in nursing homes. Instead they hire caregivers from Indonesia and keep them in their homes. Most of my patients have been in comas for 10 years at the least and they’re still living in their homes. It’s very impressive. In the U.S. most families put their members in facilities even when it’s unnecessary.

When we arrived at this man’s house his traditional Chinese therapist was there working with him. It was crazy. She was twisting his body in all sorts of painful looking ways and literally slapping him all over. She was so excited that I was there and she wanted to teach me all about it. She then offered to provide some therapy for me free of charge. It’s rude to refuse anything here so I reluctantly agreed ( I was so scared! Lol). She jumped behind me and began digging into my back. She then grabbed my head and whipped it both ways (I’ve never felt it crack so much). Then she stuck her foot on my spine and yanked me backwards and it cracked in ways I’ve never known it could crack! I was so afraid I was going to be paralyzed ha ha Sho wei and the doctor were laughing so hard. The woman then got my e-mail address because she wants her daughter to e-mail me because she’s learning English.

Also at this same home I went into the bathroom with Sho Wei to wash my hands. Without thinking I reached up next to the sink to dry my hands on the rag hanging up. My nurse started laughing so hard and shaking her head saying No. I was confused but then a terrible smell reached my nose! I smelled my hands and they smelled terrible. My nurse then made a hand motion around her behind inferring that that is the rag they use to wash their private parts. I guess in Taiwan they have a designated rag to wash private parts because they don’t want it to contaminate the rest of their body. And they aaaalways hang it up right next to the sink?? It was absolutely disgusting! But I guess it was kind of funny…..not.

Another one of my patients was a 54 year old man. He once had a brain tumor removed but then got in a moped accident on his way to the hospital once. It completely crushed his skull and damaged his brain. He is now basically a vegetable and half of his skull is gone. His head in just dented in where the skull is missing. It was another sad case. He has been like that for 6 years now. While at this house the wife wanted to buy us lunch because I mentioned that I was hungry. So she went out and bought me 7 of these rice jelly-cake things! It was hilarious. I can’t believe she really thought I would want all of them. I took a couple of bites and I was fine but then I got to all of these chunks of random things spread throughout it and I couldn’t get myself to. I started gagging so I had to secretly pretend like I was done but that I wanted to take it home. So….i left with a whole sack full of rice cakes. Ha ha


Then afterwards sho wei took me out for Cua Bing (the shaved ice with fruit). It was delicious. It had all kinds of fruit that I’ve never had before including star fruit, sweet melon (kind of like a mix between mango and peaches) and these blackberry looking things (but they weren’t blackberries). It was soooo good!

My last patient was an extremely poor woman. The household had about 8 people including brothers, sisters, aunts and uncles. Last year they had a terrible flood that ruined the house but they are too poor to clean it up or remodel so it’s completely run down! This gives you kind of an idea. There were dead flies all over and it was so dirty. I couldn’t believe it.

Overall the day was a really good experience. I learned a lot about the Taiwanese culture. What really impressed me is how personal the nurse/patient relationship is. In America nurses are always in a hurry trying to get things done so they don’t spend time with the patient to actually be with them. Here the nurses will spend hours at one house. They will sit down and talk with the family and spend one on one time with the patient even if the patient is unconscious. Nurses will even go home for dinner after their shift is over and then head back out to a patients house to finish everything. That would NEVER happen in the U.S. Once a shift is done nurses head straight home. They would never sacrifice their time for a patient. It’s also interesting because they serve hot water in their homes. They will never offer you cold water or ice. A couple of the patients offered me boiling hot water! I also got to practice a lot of nursing skills. I inserted a ton of NG tubes, catheters, and I even got to change PEG tubes, tracheostomies, and cysostomies! I’ll spare you the details of other things I did because most of you would just puke ha ha
The nurse also sent me home with Toooooons of stuff. Here’s a picture of all of it. And this was all for one day!

After clinical we were supposed to go to a baseball game but we found out it’s actually tomorrow instead. So we went to a movie! We went to see Iron Man. Here they show movies in English but with Chinese subtitles. It was a lot of fun. I almost forgot I was in Taiwan…till the movie ended, I stood up, and realized I was surrounded by Asians.