Today, we had clinicals again and honestly it may have been my worst day in Taiwan so far. Clinicals start at 8am and since I was up late (despite my long Sunday nap), I was really tired. Not to mention, Taiwan is SO hot right now that I can barely muster up enough energy to last the whole day. To start out the day, I was already nausea and sweating when we walked into the community office that morning. We had plans to do 3 home visits that morning then 3 more visits that afternoon with the Dr. Lee. One of the patients that morning screamed the entire time we were there…which was a while since my nurse couldn’t get her NG tube in because she was screaming. Plus, all the houses that morning were not air conditioned so I had a headache all morning. It was just a rough day. To add to it, my nurse Ginger finds it HILARIOUS when I don’t like Taiwanese food so she bought me a bunch of weird stuff for lunch and just laughed the whole time when I acted like it was super good. I couldn’t even eat it all because I was already sick before we even went to lunch.
A "very special" gift you'd give to families that had someone die recently. (So says my nurse, Ginger)
When I thought we were finally done for the morning, she decided to take me to Chihkan Tower, a historic site in Tainan. It was actually very cool but I was so hot and tired that I couldn’t appreciate it nearly as much as I could have. I guess the place was a Dutch Fort way back in the day and is one of Tainan’s most famous historic sites.
In the afternoon, we planned to go with Dr. Lee. After just our first visit we were already running really late and I knew we wouldn’t be home by 4:30 or 5 as planned. But, to top it all off, Dr. Lee wanted to take me to see the beach. It was blistering hot that day and the beach was definitely not what I wanted to do that day. But we still went. I took a few pictures and said I was ready.
After our last two visits, we went to eat…meaning we didn’t get home till after six. Needless to say, I DEFINITELY was not in a very good mood that night. I was so tired and I just wanted to sleep. When I got back to the dorm room, all my roommates were asleep so I crawled in my bed and fell asleep for a while too.
Tuesday turned out to be a lot better. We had a lot fewer patients and we even got home a little early! I got home at 4:00 that day instead of 6! Plus the nurses got us some really yummy fruit. I’m not sure what it is in English though…kind of like an apricot…but not really.
And, that night, our community nurses took us to KTV (karaoke) which was SUPER fun! The KTV place has individual rooms for each party so we have our own screen and controllers to pick our songs! Plus, there is an all-you-can-eat buffet for the entire 3 hours we were there! We sang all types of old school songs like N’sync, Backstreet Boys, Britney Spears, etc.
Wednesday, our last day of clinical, we did a lot of stuff with all 4 of us students. We started the day doing visits but then we went to lunch all together with our nurses and had fried rice. The soup they got us had little fishys in it so we did not want to eat it. Oh, and one of the sweet families we visited game me some really pretty, wonderful smelling flowers!
We went to some pretty wealthy houses that day too.
Ginger took us to a HUMUGOUS temple that afternoon also. I’m pretty sure it was a Taoist temple
When we finally got back to the office that afternoon, the nurses had cake for us to eat. We also took a lot of pictures with the nurses since we weren’t going to be coming back anymore.
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