The Mountain....

On Tuesday, my first patient was extremely poor. His house was blistering hot and it didn’t have any running water. The patient was once an alcoholic and lost all of his jobs so his family was very poor. He then had a stroke and lost most of his brain function and is now completely immobile and cannot speak. His wife has to work all day long every day and they cannot afford to hire a caregiver. Instead, the man is left alone all day without any care so he is now literally skin and bones and has pressure ulcers all over. It is so sad but it is amazing how happy his wife is. She was joking around and laughing and just loving life. That’s how most of the Taiwanese people are. If Americans (even if I) lived in conditions like that it would be impossible to be happy, but this way of life is all that the Taiwanese people know. Life is no different anywhere else according to them. It is very humbling. The rest of my patients were pretty typical, nothing that I haven’t talked about before.

Sho Wei and I had a little bit of time before we had to be back at the hospital so we stopped at a temple. It was a Daoist temple and as soon as we walked inside we heard bloodcurdling screams and crying. As we got further inside there was a woman crawling around and yelling things. My nurse explained that the woman was taken by a spirit and that she was giving prophecies. It was an interesting experience and even gave me cold chills. Sho wei went on to explain that some Taiwanese people find things like this unlucky and that this brings bad spirits. After we walked out she brushed herself off and shook out her hair (to rid herself of spirits). My nurse is very spiritual. At every temple that we go to she “by by’s” (prays) to every idol. She always tells me about her beliefs and rituals!

At the temple my nurse wanted to get me a bracelet to take home but they didn’t have any so we went to another temple right next to it. It was a type of temple that I had never been to before. It was gated and it was extremely nice and surrounded by beautiful gardens. There were women walking around in robes that had shaved heads. My nurse asked one of the women where she could find a bracelet to buy for me so the woman led us up to her house above the temple. She had us come inside, sat us down, and brought us drinks. Sho Wei and her talked for a minute and then she left and came back with a handful of beautiful bracelets and necklaces! She put a bracelet on me that had a dragon and explained that it meant protection. She then gave me three other bracelets and then handed me this beautiful necklace with a little gold statue in it (all as a gift to me). I couldn’t believe it. It was so generous of her. Later on my nurse explained that these people were very wealthy and that the necklace the woman gave me was made of real gold. She herself couldn’t believe that the woman gave it to me.

Afterwards, the rest of the students and I got to attend an ethics committee. It was so interesting! (it was all in Chinese but the doctors interpreted for us).

All throughout the morning at clinical the nurses kept telling Hayley and I that we were going to go to "the mountain" in the afternoon. We had NO idea what that meant and no one understood when we asked. After the ethics committee, Sho Wei signaled for me to go with Hayley, another nurse I haven’t had before, and Dr. Huang. Dr. Huang is younger and he is an intern at the hospital. He’s really funny. He speaks English fairly well but he has a very strong accent. He did an impression of Titanic that got us laughing so hard. Just imagine a cute asian man reaching his hand out to you saying…”jawk…dan’t dlown…neva let gooo…..” (Chinese people can’t pronounce R’s) ha ha

As soon as we all got into the car they told us that we were going to “the mountain” ha ha so we asked again and they still didn’t understand (or at least couldn’t explain it). This is us on the way...excited for "the mountain".

On the way we stopped at a very wealthy patient’s house. It was as nice as some of the nicer houses in the U.S. I was shocked. Even more shocking was the fact that the patient’s wife spoke some English! It was so refreshing to be able to talk to her. It’s really hard because I want to talk to all of my patients and their families and learn as much as I can but it’s impossible. We had a blast at this home and spent over an hour just talking! And once again this woman couldn’t understand that I was American. She kept saying that I was European and that I couldn’t be American because of the way I looked. Afterwards, we drove for about 45 minutes listening to extreeeemly cheesy American music. The Taiwanese people always think we want to listen to American music so they always put it on in their cars….but it’s never normal….it’s always like 50 year old songs that no one listens to anymore…but they think that it’s popular and they’re so excited to show it off to us lol. We then arrived at “the mountain” ha ha. It was beautiful! It was rolling hills of tropical trees, mango trees, papaya trees, banana trees, and all sorts of plants. The mountain ranges were called the Central Mountains. They are the mountains that separate Taiwan from the East and the West. They supposedly protect the West side from Typhoons. The patient we were visiting had a tiny little house surrounded by the hills. The patient had an Indonesian caregiver that spoke a little English (It was my lucky day!). She has worked as a caregiver in Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, and Maylaysia so she had a lot of stories to tell. It was a blast.