30 November 2016
Ran around to many places today, and did so
many things!
The plane touched down at 4:30 am. Cindy
from TIHTC picked me up from the airport and took me to the dorm at Taipei
Hospital in Xinzhuang. It’s a nice big dorm with 2 big beds! And not forgetting
the red big tong cooker!
Then I went to Tucheng to visit my grandma
and treat her for lunch!
In the afternoon I went to Taiwan’s popular
government protest zone to check out what’s going on, visited a famous
Presbyterian church in this protest zone, and prayed there. My personal
devotional today came from the Stream in the Desert, “…this is my doing…” (1Kings
12:24).
Then I went to book myself for some
exercise and cooking classes!
I visited Barnabas School of Missions in
the evening and was greeted warmly by my friend Rui Rui, who even gave me a
worship music CD! The speaker today, elder Zhang, is very well known, and the
topic was on “The Apostolic Church”. At the end, elder Zhang prayed for the
students at BSM saying, “those who are present tonight aren’t here by chance”.
When he prayed for me he said, “Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid. The
Holy Spirit will lead you, to complete this task/doing (note these are the same
word in Chinese).”
1 December 2016
This was my first day at Mackay Hospital. There are many
differences between the health system in Australia and Taiwan. First of all,
there are GP outpatient clinics in public hospitals in Taiwan, whereas GPs in
Australia work in private clinics. The terminology of who’s who in the hospital
is also very different. Clerk=6th year medical student, Intern=7th
year medical student, PGY1=R0, then R1, R2, R3, Chief Resident=R4.
I had lunch with several senior Mackay Medical School
medical students who were interested in Australia in the restaurant on the 16th
floor of the hospital! Something of interest to note is that this medical
school is the newest medical school in Taiwan, with its first batch of students
graduating last year. Yet, it is the top medical school in the preference
rankings amongst the private medical schools. There is a museum of the history
of Mackay Hospital on that floor. I learnt more about the tough life of the
missionary Dr. George Leslie Mackay, where he was often mocked by the people
and attacked with pig faeces!
In the afternoon I sat in with one of the GPs, and saw that
they use the SOAP format in their electronic records. (Subjective findings,
Objective Findings, Assessment (Past Medical History), Plan, Progress notes, Pharmaceuticals,
ADR). The doctors all wear masks when they see patients. I am not used to
wearing masks and felt very deoxygenated. The GP kept giving patients free flu
vaccines because it is towards the end of the year and the leftover vaccines
will be thrown away if they don’t get used up. There is 1 nurse to 1 doctor in
every consultation room. There are also health educators that can be called in
to educate patients about their medical conditions, which is quite different
from Australia where it is the doctors who educate the patients.
In the evening I visited my grandpa who lives right next to
the hospital. For dinner, I tried out ramen noodles at 7-11.
2 December 2016
Listened to a community health talk given
by a GP in YWCA. Giving such talks in the community is actually part of the
work roster of hospital GPs! The lovely GP who gave the community talk and I
went to Tim Ho Wan for lunch and it tastes better than the one in Sydney!
Coincidentally this GP is also a Christian and she goes to the Presbyterian
church which I prayed at on the day of my landing in Taiwan! She told me that
R4 is the final year of the GP training here, and most GPs leave the hospital
to go to community group practices. Work is tough, as GPs often work until 10pm
and only get a 7-day holiday each year.
I went to the GP department meeting, and
saw that a pastor actually exhorts the doctors at the start of the meeting! At
the end of the meeting they told me to introduce myself and asked me to give a
talk about Australia’s health care system in two weeks’ time!
A local doctor took me to the doctors’ library
on the 15th floor. I was delighted to find a few treasures: a coffee
machine that gives free coffee daily, and the diaries of the missionary Mackay!
I saw how Mackay kept getting sea sick and vomited on the boat. I just can’t
imagine when people have to go on boats for weeks! I always get motion sickness
on boats! No wonder so many people die from sicknesses on these long boat
trips! I also saw the earliest known photo of Mackay where he didn’t have his
big beard. And when Mackay was preaching the gospel, there were many people
that went to beat him up and threaten to slay him!
In the evening I went to have a haircut,
and saw the hairdresser’s cute 8-month old baby! Then I went to the TOD prayer
meeting, which was full of fire in preparation for the anti-gay marriage
protest on 3Dec. I was deeply touched when they sang the song “Baruch Haba
Beshem Adonai”, which I previously heard on Mount Carmel in Israel!
3 December 2016
200,000 people standing up for the #family
in #Taiwan (Taipei, Taichung, Kaohsiung)!
4 Dec
Went to visit my aunt in Linko for lunch on
Sunday. Attended a baptist congregation there right before lunch and
coincidentally the female pastor speaker had the same name as my aunt! This
baptist church is quite open to the work of the Holy Spirit and had a lively
worship. Quite different from the Chinese baptist church in Australia! There's
a dermatology clinic below the church and their work schedule is pretty full
on!
Then had a really heavy lunch, followed by
a short hike, then a really heavy dinner! I was also quite impressed to find
that my 80y.o. grandma is using a smartphone now and knows how to take photos
with it!
5 December 2016
Started my week at Tamshui Mackay Hospice. Initially
I couldn’t find the hospital and had to ask people on the street. The place is
a bit isolated. I can’t remember receiving much exposure to Palliative Care and
Hospice during my medical training. This is the first time for me to have such
close up encounters with so many people who are close to their deaths, and it’s
rather sad. Strangely, a journalist called Dr. Huang, the head of department,
wanting to interview him on the topic of euthanasia. He was puzzled by this
phone call because he couldn’t understand what’s this got to do with hospice.
Started cooking class with Jason the chef!
4 lessons (hard to translate the dishes into English)! 1. Prawn and mushroom
tapas, Paella. 2. Rose smoked salmon salad, black pepper crunchy chicken
drumsticks. 3. Prawn and seafood steamed egg, tuna ham sandwich. 4. Maple syrup
banana, cheese pork ribs. It’s pretty fun. Lately I feel like I am temporarily
living a different life!
6 December 2016
Dr Huang is very nice. However, the hospice
is too quiet. There was nothing to do in the afternoon, so I took the courtesy
bus back to Taipei Mackay, and climbed 15 stories up to the library. Got this
piece of info: if I want to get a GP qualification in Taiwan, I just need to
pass a written and oral exam and I can obtain the qualification without having
to go through any hospital residency years.
7 December 2016
Listened to the hospital psychologist teach
about narrative therapy. It was very interesting. Then I had Japanese for lunch
with the people from this department.
Took the courtesy bus to Tamshui Mackay, very
quiet again.
Went to the Barnabas School of Missions in
the evening and the topic was on missions for the nations. The speaker talked
about the silk road and how the hospital will spread from the ends of the earth
back to Jerusalem, and Jesus will enter through the east gate of the temple.
8 December 2016
There was a web conference for the hospices
across Taiwan at 7:30. It was very quiet afterwards. In the evening I went to
new Beitou and met up with a friend from church whom I haven’t been in contact
with for 5 years. Interestingly, instead of avoiding the military service like
other overseas Taiwanese, he actually came back to Taiwan especially to do
military service! This is pretty unusual (but then some people would also think
I am quite unusual in taking 1 month off work to come back to Taiwan). When I
prayed for him, I was surprised to hear that no one’s prayed for him for 5
years! Then I visited my cousin’s new pharmacy.
9 December 2016
A quiet day at the hospice. Went for a
dance lesson in the evening!
10 December 2016
First visit to the Wesley Methodist Church
in Taiwan, to attend a funeral in the morning, a life with great testimony. Had
lunch with group G from the Israel tour last year, had a great time and
listening to many interesting testimonies. It was an honor to meet the group
leader’s son Ken! Their touching testimony can be seen on GoodTV:
Wei Wei from the group was invited to give
a sermon in Taichung the following day. This was the sermon content:
In the evening I had dinner with a new
friend at the East Gate (Dongmen). This is a doctor who’s a great drawer and
pays attention to current affairs, and the interaction had been interesting!
11 December 2016
Went to Linko again. Very touched by the
Sunday worship. This church is actually quite charismatic and the sermon was on
the “Apostolic church”:
When we first became Christians, the church
seemed so glorious. Once we serve in ministry, we start asking, “where is the
glorious church?”
However, the church continues to improve
and is very different from 40 years ago.
In the church, many parts of the body are
weak, but every part is important and precious.
We need to build each other up, or else
we’d fall.
The solo pastor can only care for 50-60
people.
Revival begins with a compassion for the
weak.
A little analogy about the body of Christ:
The mouth eats and talk. The rest of the body thinks it’s useless, so they
refuse to let it eat. One day later, the stomach started feeling uncomfortable.
Then the eyes became dizzy, and the limbs became weak. When one part of the
body is not good, the rest of the body gets impacted.
David: His family did not think he was
important and told him to tend the flock when the prophet Samuel came to anoint
the king. Yet, it was David who got anointed.
The pastor talked about praying for the
sick: Initially whenever he tried to pray for the sick, none of them got
better. He continued to do so, and now has a high percentage of healing rate!
Met a nice new friend who’s very sporty and
knows very well where to exercise in Taipei. So I discovered a community
exercise center close to my accommodation! More exercise options in addition to
climbing 15 stories in Mackay Hospital and dance lessons.
In the evening I went to Barnabas School of
Missions’ Mission Builder Dinner, and Ross Paterson reminded us that a burden
needs to be accompanied by action, because in the Chinese language, the Chinese
term for burden is comprised of two elements, touch and move. Met more new
friends, and the new friends made arrangement for me to meet more new friends
again next week! This is a fresh experience for a person like me who’s used to
living a very independent lifestyle. Even though I’ve only been back for less
than two weeks, my schedule is already full for this month!
12 December 2016
Returned to Taipei Mackay, observed how
they do clinic. It is very interesting to view the doctor-patient relationship
from the perspective of an observer. It made me notice many things that I did
not notice before. One patient with poorly controlled diabetes was really
funny. He had numb hands so the doctor said she’s worried about his nerves (in
Chinese, the term for nerves is the same as the laymen term for psychosis). The
patient misinterpreted this and exclaimed, “What? I’ll become crazy if my
diabetes is not well controlled?!” There is also an elder lady whose husband
had recently passed away. The patient’s daughter cried as she thanked the
doctor for caring for her parents so well, and the doctor shed a few tears too!
I went for the GP department meeting in the
afternoon. Couldn’t control myself from nodding off to sleep because my
schedule was too full on the weekend and didn’t get enough rest. When I regained
consciousness, I realized the talk was on dementia. They showed several videos
about dementia which made me feel like crying.
Tomorrow’s memory:
Still Alice:
Alzheimer’s Disease:
Dementia Village:
It’s really sad not knowing who you are.
Are you still alive if you have no memory of yourself? This made me think about
my paternal grandpa, who seems to have signs of dementia.
Went for cooking class again in the
evening. Some classmates were different. Maybe people can go in place of other
people in this class! It was a pleasure to receive feedback that the stuff I
made actually made people feel hungry!
13 December 2016
In the morning clinic session, I asked the
doctor why Taiwanese doctors wear masks when they see patients. She was very
surprised and asked, “Don’t you wear masks in Australia?” She said it’s mainly
to protect against contagious infections, but also serves other protection
purposes, such as not getting recognized by her patients on the streets.
However, sometimes when she actually wears a mask on the street, she gets recognized
by the patients!
Did a presentation on GP in Australia
during the GP department meeting. Met a new doctor friend who attends the
Wesley Methodist Church which I just went to last week for the funeral! He
invited me to a talk about the refugees and the homeless! Interestingly, he did
his military service as medical service in a developing nation.
14 December 2016
This morning I went to a nursing home which
is located in a rather remote region. There is a pick up van from Tamshui
station, but no stop sign, which made me nervous. Anyway, the van came and I
got there successfully. This nursing home is well decorated and looks more like
a home than an institution. On arrival an elderly lady speaking in Hakka kept
trying to give us a red packet. The residents come from high socioeconomic
status, and their children tend to be pretty well off, eg. Doctors, people
living abroad, etc. This nursing home’s waiting period is 30+ years! The
medical student and I went to the dementia area to interview some residents.
The elderly lady assigned to the medical student started yelling so he had to
change to another resident. The elderly lady assigned to me still remembered
how many children she has and that her parents already passed away. When I
asked about her activities of daily living, she claimed she’s independent. When
I asked her about her mood, she said it’s fine. When I asked her age, she
initially said she was 80, then 90. When I asked her questions about
orientation, she couldn’t answer it and simply said she doesn’t follow through
with those things because they’re not important. She thinks she is in a
friend’s house and this is a place where people sing and dance. When I tried to
do the MMSE, she couldn’t comprehend most of the instructions. The staff aid
this lady gets agitated with noise and can hit people with her walking stick
when that happens. She also has a delusion that people are always out there
wanting to steal her things, so she always asks the staff to lock her door
well. Then another elderly lady came, and the first lady said this second lady
is her friend. However, the first lady speaks Mandarin while the second lady
speaks Taiwanese, Japanese, and a bit of English, so they actually have a
communication barrier. Nevertheless, they are quite compatible and often sit
together. When I did the MMSE on the second lady, the result was similar to the
first lady. Then I saw the second lady’s artwork, which was very pretty. During
the conversation I found out the second lady is a Christian and her name is
very similar to my aunt, so there was a sense of closeness. She happily prayed
together with me.
At noon, I had lunch with the medical
student and went to visit the place where the missionary Dr. George Leslie
Mackay came ashore onto Taiwan! The waves were big that day and the water kept
splashing ashore!
In the afternoon I had a happy time
coughing up with some of my friends from Sydney. Had a nice hot pot in
Dapinglin and went for class at Barnabas School of Missions. The speaker was Dr
Ching-Feng Lin, a doctor from the Ministry of Health and Welfare, who’s the
head of the National Pension Supervisory Committee. The topic is on career
missions, which I found quite helpful.
15 December 2016
Went for morning clinic session. Had dinner
with Dr Hsu and the medical student.
Then rushed over to Andy’s accounting firm
to listening to an evangelical sharing by Donna Chiu, a singer who was very
famous in the 1980s! The content of her testimony is similar to this video:
The food was also pretty good, but I
already had dinner. 13 people accepted Christ. Got some Donna Chiu CDs at a
discounted price, and there was a prophetic team praying for each individual.
This team was no joke: when they prayed for my friends and I, we all find the
accuracy rate to be extremely high!
“There seems to be a bag on the ground.
She’s dropped a few things and have to pick them up in order to be used by God
even more greatly. In facing her career, family, etc. she needs more wisdom
from God. There is a rock, not big, not small, but it is a barrier she needs to
overcome.”
16 December 2016
Early morning awakening to go to a semi-rural
place called Shimen! Left at 6am, arrived at Tamshui station 7am, then took a
bus with the Chief Resident doctor for 1 hour to Shimen! So isolated! One
patient came for her scripts then there were no patients, so I walked over to
the local tour attraction by the sea and saw that the waves were pretty big.
Then I ate a rice dumpling. When I returned from the tourist attraction, the CR
was only seeing his 2nd and 3rd patient. Then came 1-2
other patients, and that was it for the day! The health department is promoting
people to get their flu vaccines and giving out free snack packs when people
are compliant! Chatted with the CR on the bus, and was quite surprised that
he’s heard his Christian friends talk about the term “filled by the Holy
Spirit”!
The faculty meeting talked about the new Gardasil
9 vaccine. They mentioned that even virgins can get cervical cancer (although
it’s extremely rare). So, should virgins get PAP smears? Then I went to the
Taipei Hospital to see what “health educators” do. They told me that there are
a lot of chronic conditions where doctors can do a multidisciplinary plan for
(similar to the GP management plan in Australia), but the doctors have to do
additional work to get qualifications for each condition in order to do such
plans!
17 December 2016
Went to Barnabas School of Mission to
listen to Dr. Allen Lien, a famous evangelist/ medical doctor in Taiwan who
went to Africa.
When Dr. Lien talked about how Pastor
Philip Mantofa suddenly yelled at him prophetically, “Don’t waste your time in
Hualien!” I could imagine Pastor Philip yelling at me, “Don’t waste your time
in Taipei!” Seriously, more than half of my holidays have already passed in a
blink of an eye! Pastor Vera Huang summarized the whole meeting, “Pick up the
lost tradition of getting down on your knees to break the ground with the
groundbreaking prayer!” This reminded me of the prophetic words a few days ago
about picking up the things I’ve dropped!
A good friend of mine from middle school
came with me to the meeting, so I had a great time catching up with her. At the
same time, I was quite sad to hear that another middle school friend whom I
haven’t been in contact with for quite some time became very unwell.
Nevertheless, this unfortunate friend is wonderful living testimony for Christ.
I had dinner with my paternal side of the
family. My grandfather is phobic of everything! When people try to bath him,
cut his hair and nail, he just yells out in pain. He doesn’t dare to swallow
tablets, so he chews on them and refuses to take the bitter tablets. The
relatives think he must have had severe of childhood trauma of some sort. It’s
not hard to imagine. After all, he lost his father at the age of 7 and became
orphaned at the age of 9. Prayed for him and he seemed happy with that.
18 December 2016
The schedule had been really full on for
the last few days so I arranged a morning of rest. I went to Wesley Methodist
Church to listen to a seminar on refugees and the homeless. This seminar was organized
by a new doctor friend I met in Mackay. I think it was great of him to organize
this talk. The media in Taiwan is really crappy, unbalanced, and never report
on things that’s got depth to it. It just gives people tunnel vision and
creates division.
In the evening I went with Rui Rui for a
Muslim meal, had gelatinous rice balls, then prayed together in the 24hour
prayer center! Walked along Shinshen (New Life) South Road all evening and
passed by many churches on this road.
19 December 2016
In the morning I went with a resident
doctor to see what they do in the health checkup center. At noon there was free
lunch in the GPs’ office, and I chatted with several GPs in there, including
three VS (visiting staff/specialist GPs). They asked me which year “V” am I,
and I realized I am V6! I felt so senior! There was another V who looks and
talks like a child, so I asked her which year “V” is she, and she said she’s a
young V, V3! So there is a distinction between young V and experienced V! Then
she told me she’s just doing some odd jobs, learning from experienced Vs, and
some academic research. She’s only one year younger than me, but already has a
1 year old baby, so it seems like Australian GPs complete training faster. The
GPs started complaining about how bad the work environment is in Taiwan, and
started talking about a previous colleague who went off to do cosmetic medicine
and how good her life seems. Then the handsome CR (Chief Resident) said he
wanted to do cosmetic medicine!
During the GP department meeting, we
learned kinesio taping method. This is not something we get to learn in
Australia! I went to the library to search for the family medicine monthly
magazine and was shocked to see a very clever design where there are additional
magazines hidden behind the magazine displayed!
