Day Three: Temple Clinic

January 6, 2015
Let me start off by saying how amazing today was.  It was the perfect start to this trip and a day I will remember forever.  We started our day with breakfast at the hotel then walked across the street to Sangkhlaburi Hospital.  There we were greeted by nurse practitioners, nurses, and other hospital staff who gave us a presentation about the hospital and a tour.  This is a government run hospital with a separate inpatient and outpatient sections.  They see about 300 patients every day with only 4 doctors and 29 nurses.  They are extremely low staffed right now and have had to ask the nurses to work 16 hour shifts (usual shift for nurses is 12 hours).  They also have a dentist who sees about 25 patients per day.  If the  patient is Thai and have their paperwork then their care is free, if not then they have to pay for it.  They showed us the whole facility including the emergency room, operating room, and the labor/delivery room.  They have about 500 births every year, Sharp Mary Birch for women and newborns in San Diego sees roughly that many every month just to show you a comparison.  They also have 6 ambulances, one truck for jungle terrain, and one helicopter.  If they are unable to help the patient then they are sent to the main hospital in Kanchanaburi or to Bangkok depending on the situation.  I was surprised by how clean the facility was, compared to the hospital I went to in paris which was smelly and dirty with blood drips on the floor.  This hospital was beautiful, especially for such a rural town. Unfortunately we were unable to do any medical assistance here due to the restrictions from the Thai government that basically only allows Thai citizens to practice medicine.  But it was a great opportunity to see how another healthcare system works, the staff was very friendly and informative, and everyone enjoyed our visit. 

Next we went to lunch and split into two groups for our first medical checks at two different monasteries in Sangkhlaburi.  I was partnered with Janell who is the president of HEAL and we were asked to go to the bigger temple of the two.  When we arrived, we went around to the Buddha statues and said our prayers, one of Starfish interpreters who is Buddhist taught us how to properly say our prayers and do the appropriate bowing.  Then we were all gathered around one of the Buddha's and the most respected monk of the monastery blessed us with holy water and he gave us a gold pendant to bring us luck on our mission.  This monk ended up being my first patient and I was really honored to be allowed to perform the medical check on him.  Usually monks are not allowed to touch women or be touched by them, but in a medical circumstance it was allowed, even though I had to keep my distance and stay below his level at all times to show my respect.  he was sitting in a chair so I had to do my whole assessment crouching on my knees, which by the end of the day got pretty painful.  We also cannot touch the top of their heads because it is the holy and most sacred part of the body.  He was an 82 year old who had been a monk for over 50 years.  He spoke no English but we used a translator and we were able to communicate through body language and gestures.  He was very friendly and was thankful for our help.   Not having done an assessment for a couple weeks I was a bit nervous, but as I started it felt very natural and I felt knowledgeable while I tried to help diagnose the patients.   We assessed about 20 monks today and it was smoothly for our first day of clinics.






After the temple, we went to the river to swim and to watch the sunset.  The water was so refreshing and we ran off the dock and jumped right it with the whole group, it was so much fun!  The sunset was also amazing and I couldn't stop taking pictures!


Later in the night we went to a local restaurant with the whole group, and I got pad see ew with prawns and it was delicious, only $2!  We sat and talked for a while about our days and I had some good conversations with people I didn't know as well from the group and had a lot of fun.  We walked through the town on the way back to the hotel, saw tons of dogs, and some cockroaches too.  As the day ended I noticed how calm and at peace I felt here doing my medical work.  Today was filled with so many experiences I never though I'd get to do, I felt so lucky and blessed to be here with this group.  Excited for our first day at the villages tomorrow!

Day Two: Arriving in Sangkhlaburi

January 5, 2015
We started the day with a buffet breakfast on the river in the same place we had dinner the night before, and then we board the coach to start our long drive to Sangkhlaburi.

On the way we stopped at Hellfire Pass Museum where an extremely difficult passage of the Death Railway is located.  The Death Railway was built by forced labor from allied POW's in WWII to supply the Japanese forces in Burma.  200,000 Asians and around 60,000 POW's consisting of Australians, British, and Dutch built this 415km (257mile) railway across Thailand to Burma.  Hellfire pass was the largest rock cutting on the railway, and due to the harsh conditions and Japanese retaliation over half of the Australian POW's and many others died trying to build this pass.  The museum was built by the Australian government to remember the men and women who lost their lives along this railway.  We were able to tour the museum and walk along Hellfire Pass which was a lot longer and bigger than we had imagined.  We saw the old train track and there was a memorial at the very end with Australian flags all over.

After our time at the museum we were back on the bus and we started driving through the thick jungle towards Sangkhlaburi.  The scenery was gorgeous, bright green jungle everywhere you looked, and there were mountains that looked just like the islands that we had gone to before the medical mission.  We passed a bunch of rivers and lakes with houses built right on top of them with stilts.  All of them in the middle of nowhere, we were about three hours away from the city of Kanchanaburi at this point.

After about five hours we had made it to Sangkhlaburi and we checked into our hotel that would be our home base for the rest of the trip.  We had another welcome dinner at a local restaurant right around the corner from the hotel, where we would eat at many times during the brigade.  We got to meet the rest of our Starfish team, some of which were born and raised in Sangkhlaburi.  They gave us a tour of the town, the local street market, the 7-11, massage parlor, and some coffee shops and restaurants.  Can I just mention the massages are approximately $8 for an hour long massage! The town consists of only a couple of streets and it is shaped like a square with the main market located right in the middle.  We walked by the school and saw some of the kids on the field playing soccer.  The entire town center can be walked around in less than ten minutes, so you can imagine how small and quaint it is, no street lights or even stop signs here.  You might have imagined this town to be fairly quiet, but in fact it is kind of loud.  Everyone drives motorcycles or scooters so those can get a little loud.  However, it was still a lot more peaceful than the craziness of Bangkok.
                                  
For dinner we were picked up in trucks converted to taxis with built in benched in the back called Samn Tow meaning "two rows."  We had dinner at a really nice restaurant located on the river.  It was decorated with tons of lights and we had traditional family style Thai food, fried chickedm, steamed veggies, coconut chicken soup, sweat and sour shrimp, and of course rice.

It was off to bed after that for a good night sleep to get ready for our first clinic the next morning. We were all so excited it was hard to sleep!

Day One: Kanchanaburi

January 4, 2015
Today was day one of our medical brigade, the day where the whole group  met up at the airport and we finially met our Starfish team.  We arrived at the Bangkok airport after our week of traveling and vacationing through the Phi Phi islands and we were so excited to meet everyone!  Most of the group has already been in Thailand for a week or two traveling around before the mission so everyone had stories to share and they all seemed to have just as much fun as we did.  We met our Starfish team and then we boarded a coach and started our three hour trip to Kanchanaburi.  Kanchanaburi is located in western Thailand and it is the capital of the Kanchanaburi Province which is the province Sangkhlaburi is also located.  It is four hours away from Sangkhlaburi which is the town our medical mission is based out of.  Kanchanaburi is the closest big city to Sangkhlaburi and it is where the main hopsital is located, so if there is a medical emergency the patient is taken to the Kanchanaburi hospital.  Being there only one night however, we were not able to tour the hospital.

Once we arrived in Kanchanaburi we checked into our hotel which was located on the Kwai Yai River.  For our first night the Starfish team welcomed us with a buffet dinner on a riverboat type setup consisting of chicken curry, glass noodles, fried chicken, shrimp, and vegetables, rice, and fruit.   It was the best meal I had had thus far in Thailand.  The team introduced themselves, we went through the itinerary for the trip, and then we were off to bed for a good night's sleep to get ready for our trip to Sangkhlaburi the next day!

(Sorry still unable to upload my pictures)