After attending the morning internal medicine meeting, we went to Dr. Ho's outpatient clinic again. As before, his clinic was very busy and we rarely had time to ask him questions. But we did manage to slip in few questions in between. We asked if there are certain precautions we need to consider when needling the patients to avoid infection. Dr. Ho replied that first, the patient's hygiene is very important. For example, although alcohol wipes are often used, most time in outpatient settings, the needles are applied through the cloths, extra precaution need to be applied if the patient's clothes are soiled or poor personal hygiene is noted. However, since he knows most of his patients well, he does not need to worry about that often. Another important point to consider is if the patient has diabetes, which will prolong healing time and increase risk of infection. We also learned that since many of his patients are elderly patients with many of the chronic metabolic and cardiovascular disease, the goal for him is often to control and lower the condition enough using Chinese medicines to at least lower the amount of western medicine needed or even replace them to control the disease.
One of the highlights of the day was meeting with Dr. Lin and Superintendent Lin. It was great to have the chance to convey personally to him how thankful we are for the wonderful opportunity. We were each given a bag of gifts along with many much needed maps for tourist information! The TIHTC treated us again today to a wonderful lunch, there were so much food that even though all 9 of us (including Dr. Lin and YuYu) entered the restaurant with empty stomach, we could not finish all of the food. And the food was so good that even though we were probably all stuffed all the way up to our epiglottis with food, we still want to bring the left-over home! Once again, their hospitality really touched me and will always be part of my fondest memory of Taiwan.
This afternoon, due to a miscommunication, Mickey and I were not able to rotate in the afternoon TCM outpatient department. So we went to the pathology department with Sandy, Bor-Han, and Amanda. I was expecting to see a bunch of stained slides and huge amount of microscopes in the beginning. But what I saw first was actually the actual preparation of the tissue samples. Even though I knew that the slides must be made into slides from sample tissue somehow, but seeing it in real life is a different story. Just looking at the biopsied knee joint, it was hard to imagine that it once belong and was functioning within all that flesh and tendon of a living human being. But after the initial shock, I felt like it allowed me to gain a new respect to the job of a physician; that no matter how little one's interaction with the patients is, a physician's job, no matter in which specialty, will cause tremendous change in the patients' lives. Although the change is for the better or worse will solely depend on how serious the physician takes his or her job and how dedicated he or her is to the patients.
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