December 30 Blog

By: Paige Thune

We started out our day with orientation to Mary Johnston hospital. From the college we walk through a walkway that connects straight into the hospital. We watched an orientation video that reminded us of the history of Mary Johnston Hospital. It was Mr. Daniel Johnston from St. Paul Minnesota, who donated $12,500 for the hospital to be built. The hospital is located in the heart of some of the greatest poverty in Manila. We then toured the hospital units and were introduced to the different areas that we will be working in during our clinicals next week. They included: Medical ICU, OB, NICU, operating room, pediatrics, pediatric ICU, medical surgical floor, and ER. While in the ER, we had an eye opening experience. As we entered, a man was really struggling.  His heart rate was in the 170's, he was substernal breathing, and was on the verge of coding any minute. He needed to be intubated immediately and the doctor was explaining this to the patient's daughter. The daughter was asking the doctor to wait, in order to go find her mother as she was the one that would be making the decision about the care. As we debriefed about our orientation back at the college, Gina explained that this situation in the ER wouldn't happen in the US. If a patient was brought into the ER back home, the care providers would have "implied consent," and intubate them right away. But here in Manila, before anything is done they need a down payment or agree that they will be able to put a down payment for the treatment. The family needs to consider if it is possible to make the payment that the treatment will require. So this family was stuck. And they kept having to repeat "no wait," while this patient was failing.  We, then as a group were asked the questions: How would this feel if you were the doctor caring for this patient? Or the nurse? How could you stand by and not do anything while knowing that the reason for holding back life saving treatment is money? This devastating dilemma is something that occurs all the time in Mary Johnston hospital, and if we encounter it next week it is going to be a dramatic change from what we are used to in the hospitals back home. I myself, would really struggle having to stand by and watch nothing being done when it determines if the patients life would be saved or not. Although this may be one challenge, after orientation we were so excited to begin our clinical experience next week! It was made aware that we are going to have opportunities here in Manila that we would never have back home! So we are very anxious to see what next week brings :) We then packed up and began our two hour drive to the Camayan Resort. After we drove out of the city of Manila we began to see another side of the Philippines. We passed by rice fields, sugar cane fields, mountains, and small towns among the farming and the mountainside. When we finally stepped into the resort we couldn't believe how beautiful it was! The sun was shining, flowers decorated the grounds and the ocean and beach in front of us was surrounded by mountains. We spent the rest of the day in the water, laying out in the sun on the beach, and enjoying the view. Finally, we ended the night with dinner and enjoyed the warm weather on the beach listening to live music. It is very exciting to know we have another day and a half to enjoy here!

LInk to Mary Johnston Hospital (history)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zWwNHvZD7E

Mabuhay- LIVE, Tumawa-LAUGH, Pagalingin-HEAL 

(Thanks to Google translation!)

Dec 29 blog

By: Shannon Krueger

What a busy day! So much happened today that it’s hard to summarize it in one short blog. We started the day by going to Asociacion De Damas De Filipinas, the settlement house. The orphanage’s philosophy is Settlement house believes that a young child be nurtured and guided. Teach him, love him, and implant in his mind what is still vital, necessary, and righteous, as soon as possible. Delay may mean defeat, and to wait will be to make the task harder and perhaps even hopeless. On the way to the orphanage Paula explained to us how it was run. The orphanage is fully funded by donations. The orphanage coordinator is Mina, a Mary Johnston school of nursing graduate.  She gave a brief history and orientation before we met the children. Currently the orphanage has 11 resident children who live there full time and the rest are either dependent children, meaning their parents can’t financially support them, or abandoned children.  Another option was for children to be left for a daycare service. Upon arrival to the orphanage, the children were a bit shy, but by the time we left we couldn’t go anywhere without them by our side. The children love to sing and dance so they performed multiple songs for us and even had us join in and dance; Yes, Gina and Paula were out on the dance for doing the cha cha too! We played on the playground with the children as well. Before we left, we helped serve them lunch and gave them each a stuffed animal to have. Hannah’s grandmother sewed some pillowcase dresses to share with the girls as well. It was so enlightening to see that even though they were in an orphanage these children were as happy as could be. There was so much laughter that filled the room the entire morning…although maybe it was partially because we were so tall and some of us had “white” hair. It was hard to say goodbye to the children, but it made me happy knowing we could make their day just a little bit better. We used some of the money donated as a gift to the orphanage.

               After leaving the orphanage, we went to Max’s for lunch. It was a nice little sit down restaurant known for their fried chicken; they literally fry a chicken whole and bring it out on a plate. We tried many different things during our meal including a peanut butter based soup with ox tail, tendon and part of ox large intestine.  The second soup was a tamarind based stock with whole prawns (eyes and legs) Filipino spinach and okra. There was also fried boneless milk fish. Some of us had a whole young coconut cut to be served as a drink. Needless to say it was an interesting but, yet again, delicious meal! Although I think I could go without ever trying intestine again!

               When we got done eating we left and went to The City within the Walls known as Fort Santiago. It is a Filipino monument where national hero Jose Rizal was killed. One of the interesting things was walking into the wall. There were golden footprints on the ground where Jose Rizal took his final footsteps. It was an intense feeling to be in such a historical place. There was a lot of history to take in, but it was very interesting to hear about how the Filipino culture came to be. On our horse drawn carriage tour, we also got to see two gorgeous cathedrals, San Agustin church and Manila Cathedral. While we were around the cathedrals, there were three different wedding parties that we saw. People reserve these cathedrals a year in advance, and there can be as many as six weddings per day in a cathedral. This final stop on the tour was the gift shop, and I think there were only three people who made it out of there without buying pearls. The Philippines is known for their pearls and they are gorgeous here.

               Next we headed to Shakey’s for pizza and a locally brewed beer called San Miguel. I felt like we were back in the US, but none the less the food was delicious and we all had fun chatting about the days events.

               To finish the night we headed to the Bayleaf skydeck bar. The rooftop had an amazing view of the city’s skyscrapers and lights. The beautiful scene made for a relaxing end to a very busy day. I think we’ll all sleep well tonight.

By Shannon Krueger

December 28th Blog Post

Started today waking up at 6am. We arrived late last night in the Philippines and got around four hours of sleep after being awake for 24+ hours flying. Breakfast included some fried eggs, cereal, white toast with a choice of PB and Jelly, an interesting red colored sweet pork sausage, watermelon, coffee, and yogurt. As I walked out of the mens

sleeping cabin I was greeted by a few stray cats and a very noisy street packed with people, cars that never stop honking, motorcycles, and other vehicles. There are Jeepneys which are vehicles left by the American military now functioning as group open air taxis. After breakfast we loaded up the coach bus and headed to St. Lukes hospital for a tour. This hospital was the first in the Philippines to be accredited by the Joint Commission. Their next goal is to be awarded magnet status. We were able to see many different types of floors. Lunchtime came next at a restaurant called Abe. We ordered multiple large family sized plates and passed them around for everyone to share. Lunch included Lumpia which is young coconut stacks with carrots in a wrap (similar to spring roll), Pla-Pla (fish) which is tilapia deep fried, roast pork, gising-gising (spicy veggie with coconut milk. Most people ordered a ripe mango shake, pineapple shake, tamarind shake, or watermelon shake. For desert we had Halo-Halo which includes sweetened fruits, purple yams, beans and ice cream. After lunch we went to 'Market Market' and exchanged our American dollars into Pesos (1 American dollar=47 pesos) and went shopping. One of the favorites of the market are pearls. They are much less expensive than in the U.S. After the market we headed back to the college and ate dinner. We ate pasta and banana egg rolls. After dinner everyone headed to bed around 8pm to get some well needed rest. By: Luke McKenzie

Minneapolis to Manila. Travel Day.

By: Nate Hemann

Since we are about 14 hours ahead of all of you back home, I'm writing this about a day late. We left Minneapolis at 11:30AM with a slight delay for deicing. We proceeded North from there to cover Canada, Alaska, and the Arctic Circle before our decent over Russia. I was intrigued that we hardly flew over the Pacific at all. It took us just under 13 hours to land in Japan's Tokyo/Narita Airport. On the flight many enjoyed watching movies, reading, sleeping, and Gina's personal favorite, getting to sit by our flight's version of Django. Django was a nice country looking man with a killer mustache and about enough cologne to make her have a little nausea, and of course he traveled from Minneapolis all the way to Manila with us. After departing Narita, Japan at around 6:00PM we landed in Manila at around 10:00PM. We rode in a massive, double decker plane from Japan to Manila that was 10 rows across. Once in Manila we collected our baggage, and the man from Immigration asked if Gina was my mother (clearly my height of 6'5" and German features of blonde hair and blue eyes gave it away that she was in fact my mother). If I hip-checked Gina, I would probably break her neck because of how short she is... Anyway, we met our friend from the school of Mary Johnston, Bhebe, outside after getting our bags and she led us to our bus that would take us to our home for the next two weeks. The traffic in this city is UNREAL. No Minnesotan would survive having inches if not less between each car, the honking (we need our little Minnesotan bubble at all times), or the disobeying of general traffic laws, including red lights. Nonetheless, the bus driver was patient and phenomenal at getting us to the college. Once arrived, it was after midnight so we all crawled into our little twin beds (that of course my feet hang off the end by about 6 inches) for a very short night of sleep.

Transcultural Nursing Philippines Experience 2015-16 Travel Blog

Nineteen Traditional Undergraduate Nursing students will be traveling to Manila, Philippines during winter break. Two nursing faculty will be leading the group, Gina Diaz and Paula Byrne. The group is excited for this upcoming trip.

Pre-Departure Blog Post (December 19)

By: Victoria Westlund

We leave in just a couple days, and I know everyone is extremely excited! Finals are over, and now all we have to focus on and look forward to is the Philippines trip. For me, I have never been anywhere outside of the United States, so it is a lot of excitement and a little bit of nerves as I finish up my packing today. The longest flight I have been on is a little over 3 hours, so adding ten more to that is going to be interesting. I am going through my head as to what is the most important thing to not forget (plane tickets, passport, etc.), what and how much of everything I need, and what I can/can’t bring on a plane. It’s kind of a lot to remember!

On the ninth of December, we had our last meeting as a group at CSS. It was a pretty high-energy class, especially when Gina and Paula started handing out the plane tickets! It finally started to feel real. This semester has been quite busy, so being able to feel like we are ACTUALLY close to leaving for the Philippines was thrilling. At the final meeting, we were also given stories/advice from previous students who had gone on the trip. It was really insightful, and nice to hear their personal experiences. As we were munching on our Erberts and Gerberts sandwiches courtesy of Paula and Gina, we read those stories and talked about packing, what we were excited about, and many, many questions were asked and answered!

After we talked and ate, we started packing the different donations. We filed into Gina’s office and grabbed huge duffle bags, and began hastily filling them with the various items. I don’t think I have ever seen so many stuffed in my life! Aside from the millions (give or take a couple) of stuffed animals, there were also multiple different medical supplies items, books, and other toy-like objects. I believe we filled about 7 bags, and most of them were pushing the 50 pound limit! There are also other items still coming in, and those are being packed by others and they are bringing them to the airport themselves.

Personally, I am very excited for everything on this trip, and I also am looking forward to getting to know my classmates better! I have no doubt it will be an experience I will never forget. At this moment, I am going to finish packing my stuff in Duluth, and then I’m headed to Wisconsin for Christmas. The next time I see everyone, it will be at the airport on Saturday. Merry Christmas, everyone!