7 Days in Captivity


After waiting for 2.5 years to come to Thailand with Coastal Maine Global Health, I finally made it here! 


Require special COVID health insurance, quarantine rules, vaccination card, multiple PCR tests to obtain official Certificate of Entry into the country. This is the special COVID screening section at the airport before you can go thru immigration or customs
Thailand takes COVID-19 very seriously.  They
require special COVID health insurance, quarantine rules, vaccination card, multiple PCR tests to obtain official Certificate of Entry into the country. This is the special COVID screening section at the airport before you can go thru immigration or customs
#No filter view from my “captivity” resort balcony 

#Nofilter Morning Walk on the beach. (Nota bene I.e. after 3 hours of walking to the nearest town and failing to find a Thai SIM card store. A man on motorcycle asked me if I needed a ride and where was I going. I said “Tesco” which is like Walmart/HEB/Costco here.  Realized I was lost and he probably thought I was crazy when I started walking uphill towards the trees and surprise, surprise there was no Tesco LOL) I later had to pay a taxi 50USD to go all the way across the island to the only mall with a SIM card store still open during COVID-19. 

 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

We're Not in Kansas Anymore, Toto

Image
I\"ve been telling people for a year that I am going to be in Thailand. I\"ve realized lately that geographically, yes, it is still Thailand. But being so close to the Burma border, this fellowship has very little intersection with Thai people, customs or language. Even the food here is heavily influenced by Burmese culture. At our hospital, everyone speaks Burmese or Karen, the staff is almost all Burmese, the patients are strictly Burmese.  Traditional Burmese Karen clothing  I thought I would need to learn Thai. But actually it\"s more helpful to learn Burmese or Karen. I know a tiny bit of Karen language from working with the refugee microenterprise in Houston in the past. I even have Karen clothes handmade by my Houston refugee friends. So I am happy to be among Burmese and Karen people again.  The two biggest adjustments I\"ve been making at work in the clinic/hospital are: 1) Adjusting to the limited resources and the poverty of our patients (which limits the...
Read more

We Use What We Have

Image
​ Sometimes I get frustrated because we just don’t have basic equipment we need for patients.  For example, here is the baby incubator I saw when I first got here. Yikes. I was planning to scrub it down with bleach myself.  Then I saw we had a better one, but it still made me nervous: And then 2 weeks ago we got this amazing one: I was very excited we got a donation of state-of-the-art medical equipment.  There are a lot of other things I hope for here. The thing is, sometimes the hospital isn’t ready for new tech. I’ve been on a bit of a soapbox about us getting more lab test capability. We have CBC, POC Glucose and urine pregnancy, Total bili, malaria smear, and urinalysis without micro.  We have a TON of cirrhosis, alcohol withdrawal and altered mental status patients. I’m working on a sepsis protocol because we have so many deaths from sepsis. But we can’t check lactate, sodium, potassium, calculate anion gap, creatinine, LFTs or anything else for critical patien...
Read more

Got potassium?

Image
​Today we had a young lady with Type I diabetes who presented with blood glucose in the 300s, diffuse weakness or and 3 ketones in her urine. She also had diffuse abdominal tenderness but no distention or guarding or bleeding anywhere. Vitals rather stable.  She had been off of her diabetes medication for a few months. She actually had received care at the local Thai hospital in the past and had been an oral medication only.  There was some concern for DKA.  Interestingly, the head medic pulled out their guidelines for chronic disease, and I peered over her shoulder while I worked on a quality measures project I’m doing. The DKA guidelines said to give 1 liter IVF per hour. That is all. Their only clue to potential acidosis was ketones in the urine.  They can’t test metabolic panel, pH; don’t have insulin drip or potassium infusions. We have subQ insulin leftover from patients who have expired, and a bottle of insulin I bought at the local pharmacy just in case. We ...
Read more