DeAnna Friedman Arrives at Chiang Mai University

The following was submitted by DeAnna Friedman, 3rd-year pediatric resident:

Hi everyone!

Made it to Chiang Mai safe and sound. I'm staying in a hostel right now, but I have more permanent accommodations starting on Saturday. Everything is new and different, and I've been finding my way around. I've never been in a place where so few people speak English before - wait, that's not true - I've never been ALONE in a place where so few people speak English before (I've traveled through Central America plenty, but I usually have a Spanish-speaking friend with me). I'm getting by with some pantomiming and brand names and such, though.

I've already had the chance to take lots of great pictures, which I'm posting on a public gallery. There are all kinds of old beautiful buildings here in Chiang Mai. I'm still trying to learn what everything is (again with the not-a-lot-of-English thing, I can't just ask people). I hope I haven't made any missteps as of yet with my picture taking - again, still learning.

I started work at the hospital today. Everyone here is very nice and very accommodating. They helped me find a place to stay from Saturday on, and showed me around the campus. I attended wards rounds, and they were nice enough to do them in English for me for today. I am to be paired with an ID fellow starting on Monday, but he's out of town right now, so they paired me with a neurology fellow doing general pediatrics wards rounds with one of the resident teams that speaks English well. The residents were a little nervous about doing rounds in English, I think, but it all worked well.

Photo of the outside of the Faculty of Medicine at Chiang Mai

Outside another of the Faculty of Medicine buildings at Chiang Mai University

I saw several children with issues similar to what we have back in the U.S.: a 15 month old with medulloblastoma with an infected extraventricular device, on meropenem and colistin and still spiking fevers; a 7 month old, ex-28 week premie who came in with hematemesis and was found to have esophageal varices and portal vein thrombosis, likely from his UVC at birth; a 15 y/o with a suspected brain abscess, although it seems to not be improving well on cefotaxime.

We ended with a girl with high-risk ALL who's relapsing while on her induction therapy. This child would have been on the BMT consult list back home.

Overall, things here are similar to the setup back home. CTs, CSF studies and cultures, phenotyping for the ALL, and meropenem are available. We have morning report or other conference first thing (8:30-9:30), then wards rounds until noonish, then an afternoon conference for teaching. It should be an interesting 2 weeks!

DeAnna