Chapter 9: Karate Moves Pending…
Saturday, February 8th 2020:
I'm still waiting patiently today for the karate moves to appear that my neurosurgery team promised they would install during surgery, but I’m losing confidence here. I might request a refund.
Today has been a nice day at home with family and friends. I cannot express enough gratitude for my support system providing physical help, emotional help, and spiritual help from Minnesota and afar. I feel so loved and really don’t understand what I ever did to deserve all of this love. I think I tricked you all somehow, but I appreciate the support regardless.
I’m not exactly sure how great one is supposed to feel 3-days post brain surgery, but I can tell you a few interesting things about my experience. To reduce brain swelling, I am on a hefty doses of steroids. Let me tell you, these things have all sorts of nasty side effects but one of them is to make you hungry as all hell. I woke up around 2 in the morning after dreaming that a food delivery service brought me hot, syrupy chicken and waffles. I have never eaten chicken and waffles in my life, but now this is the only thing I will think about until I consume a massive plate of it.
To keep some semblance of normalcy, I wrote myself a nice schedule for the day and have been trying to stick to it. Easier said than done when I need a nap every hour or two. My day has actually been quite full and exciting considering the time restraints:
- Breakfast with family. Pancakes were a close second to chicken and waffles.
- Shower with shampoo! Oh, the joy of being able to use shampoo! Never take this miracle gel for granted.
- Manicure with mom. Thank you, thank you for a semblance of normalcy!
- Visits from many loved ones, including my fantastic, recent husband and forever friend J and his amazing family who brought our fur baby Ridley to see me.
- Many, many snacks, because steroids. (I’ll use that excuse as long as possible)
- Blog time. Trying to stick to this rigorous self-imposed schedule as long as I can.
Back in chapter seven, I spent some time discussing my initial admission to the hospital in Chiang Mai shortly after I was faced with unpleasant MRI results and essentially bossed my way into a hospital bed. I want to take us back to Chiang Mai and dive a little deeper into my unique experience as a patient who is ironically also a physician.
Tuesday, January 28th, 2020: Chiang Mai University Hospital, day of admission
Well, here we are. After hours of testing, waiting, and stressing I have found myself dropped off in a private room on the 11th floor of Sriphat Medical Center in Chiang Mai, Thailand where I will need to sleep overnight as a patient. This is not my first time being a patient, although it has been many years since I last was one and I can’t say I’ve even been a patient in a foreign country before. This is also my first experience being a patient who is also a physician.
As an internal medicine resident and aspiring hospitalist, I am extremely comfortable in the hospital setting. I plan to spend my career in a hospital setting, helping admit, care for, and discharge adult patients from the hospital for all sorts of various ailments. Although the medical care system works differently in Thailand, many of the logistical and scheduling qualities of my hospital stay were actually quite familiar to me: I knew I would receive initial labs, imaging, see a physician, meet my evening nurse, get an IV placed, be started on fluids, start a few new medications, be woken up every 4-6 hours for vital sign checks, receive terrible hospital food for breakfast, and do it all over again the next day. I knew that I would likely not receive any “results” from tests, labs, or imaging for at least 24 hours and I also knew I would likely only have a few minutes to ask the physician my questions for the day before he would need to move on to see another, likely sicker patient. Throughout all of these familiar steps, I continuously found myself feeling one overarching thing: grateful.
I absolutely cannot fathom how terrifying it would be to be a patient, let alone a patient in a foreign country, lying alone in a hospital room undergoing the above procedures with no or limited knowledge of what it is "supposed to be like" to be a patient. To go through this experience without knowing why things are happening, when they are happening, or what the results might mean would be unbelievably difficult.
Every time a “familiar” activity happened (blood pressure check, for instance) I felt grateful. "Ok, I know what this is. I can read my blood pressure measurement, I know this number is good." When my IV was placed and normal saline was hung, I thought “Ok good, this is a familiar fluid. I know the effects this will have on me. This is not really so different from home.” When the lab tech entered my room the following morning to check basic labs (CBC, BMP) I could read the labels and thought “Ok, I'm glad they are checking these. Good idea. I’ll remember to ask the physician what the numbers show in 2-3 hours when he arrives.” I made a list of questions I knew I wanted to ask the physician during our limited time. I was grateful I knew to do this in advance and wasn’t taken by surprise that he was in and out of my room in <5 minutes.
I tell you all of this not because it is necessarily how medicine should be, or how it always is or always will be, but because I cannot deny how absolutely grateful and lucky I felt to understand the situation around me in a unique way. Being a patient is terrifying, simply put. Your autonomy is gone, you have a million unanswered questions, and you essentially wait for someone who “knows something” to come and tell you an answer you hope or fear to hear. I have never felt more fortunate to understand the ins and out of the medical field as I did that first night as a patient in Chiang Mai.
I hope that one day, if one day arrives, I can remember this hospital admission with absolute clarity and precision so that I may act as a more compassionate physician who can provide a small amount of comfort to my own patients through one extra minute of communication, patience, and explanation. We are all learning, after all.
Fondly,
Courtney
© CB2020