day five

Friday = Rheumatology

Another short and sweet day, which was fully welcomed on a Friday (plus a weekend beach trip to look forward to). The only thing I could think of when I first heard of rheumatology was osteoporosis and arthritis - and I wasn't too off point. The field itself didn't really interest me but it turned out to be a pretty fun encounter.  When I arrived, the head of the department introduced me to one of her youngest doctors - he just finished medical university in September and needed to spend 6 months in the hospital before becoming a "real" doctor (bac si in Vietnamese, if you were wondering - and another note about that, they call doctors "Bac Si *first name*" instead of "Dr. *last name*").  The fact that he was pretty young and probably only a few years older than me (and spoke pretty good English!) made it a more casual, informal encounter, compared to the others.

I spent a good amount of time in the bone densitometry room, where an x-ray machine takes pictures of the lumbar spinal cord and the hip area to diagnose osteroporosis, which is based on certain T-values that vary based on ethnicity (Vietnamese = 2.5). From what I remember from biochemistry, Asian females have the highest prevalence of osteoporosis. One of the theories/reasons is because Asian don't really have cows for a milk source.  And from what I remember from evolutionary psychology, due to this lack of milk/calcium, Asians also have a high prevalence of lactose intolerance (well, at least I know that this holds true for at least one case - me; I'm working on those Tums). 

The almost-doc showed me around the department and it was pretty jammed packed. I wasn't sure if there were just a lot of patients in need or if the department needed more space.  In addition to the patient rooms that held at least 8 patients each (in very close quarters to each other), there were also gurneys of patients in the hallways - not being transferred, but just placed there, as if the hallway was a room. We went around to each patient and the doc told me what condition each patient had, symptoms, treatments.  Most of the patients were elderly but a few of their grandchildren, who were my age, knew English and were happy to practice it with me. 

After mingling around with the patients, the almost-doc introduced me to the nursing staff - all of which were young people, about 8 girls and a single male nurse.  I noticed that the male nurse was sitting on one side of the table, whereas all the girls were huddled on the other side. Very awkward middle school dance-ish.  I asked about this, and the almost-doc teasingly said, "Well, you see there, that is the 'hot guy' of our department. All of the girls think he is very cute because he is tall (a rare quality - most of the men I've worked with here are shorter than me which is really strange for me). But he refuses all of them."  The girls giggled and the male nurse's only response to my question was the hand sign of a phone, the apparently-global sign for "Call me." I laughed and said that I didn't need a translator to figure out what that meant. 


The day ended there and I was able to go home and spent some time with my parents and aunt. I may have mentioned this in a previous post (but I'm too lazy to scroll back to find that out) but my aunt is living with us in our apartment during our stay. It's a three bedroom apartment so we had an extra room. Plus, the 35-year separation gap b/t my mom and her sister warrants a month-long reunion. I said before that my aunt looks eerily similar to my grandmother (mom's mom) but she also has the same mannerisms, which is so crazy, considering they haven't seen each other in a long while either (since the 80's?). She's an English-Vietnamese tutor so as my aunt chauffeurs me on her motorbike to the hospital every morning (about a 25 minute ride), she tutors me. She's also a very charismatic person and can convince anyone to do anything - she's the best person to go shopping with at the night market where bargaining with vendors is a hassle.  She convinces the parking attendants to let her park for a cheaper rate (and they have different attendants all the time - don't know how she does it).  Even though I've never met her before, our personalities click and instead of referring to me as "chau" ("niece"), she calls me "best friend." She also teases my mom all the time, which is something my brothers and I do (lovingly, of course), which makes her ever more hilarious. Needless to say, I'm a huge fan.