Abby: learning, questioning, striving to process what she's learning

This week I spent the 3 days at my internship shadowing Sister Castle in all of her patient consultations and I’ve already learned so much. I got to assist with drawing blood, giving birth control injections, and testing for HIV, pregnancy, and syphilis which was incredible. It was also really interesting to observe how diagnoses and treatments are decided here compared to at home. I’ve noticed that Sister Castle is really big on using observation to determine severity of an issue and also has so much experience and knowledge that she diagnoses very easily. For example, she uses how they walk into the room, what their condition is after waiting in the waiting room for hours, and how easily they can do simple tasks with the afflicted area as part of the diagnoses. Furthermore, at home, there seems to be a test or x-ray for any ailment, but here sister listens to the patients and uses questions to determine what is wrong. Also at home, physicians are so quick to give medication for any complaint whereas here, Sister is very reluctant to give medications because we have so few. She also is not afraid to tell people that they are fine and that there’s nothing she can do for them, which would not be as accepted as home.

This past weekend, we hiked the famous Table Mountain. What was supposed to be around an 8-mile hike turned into 13 miles when we took a wrong turn. I was exhausted and pretty dehydrated but it was worth it for the incredible views. It was also a very fun hike and unlike any other hike I had done before. There were times we were actually on our hands and knees to get up or down steep rocks.  I also went to Muizenberg beach for the first time which was beautiful. It was nice to relax after the big hike but I also got a few bad sun burns from being outside the whole weekend.

 

Abby on top of Table Mountain

Last night in class I had a good discussion with a fellow co-educator, Kayla. I already touched on it in my recent discussion post for class but I thought it would be good to reflect on here as well. We are both ½ Asian and we discussed what it is like to be Asian American and how that has been affecting our thoughts towards the articles we’ve been reading. Something we discussed in class is that when you are a fraction of anything besides white, you are immediately associated only with that other ethnicity, so I am commonly called Asian and not considered white even though I share both parts equally. However, I greatly identify with my white half culturally because I was raised in America and was not really taught about my Asian culture. Therefore, while reading these articles and participating in these discussions, I have taken everything said about the white population as applicable to my own life. But looking at the history of the Asian immigration in this country and how I am perceived phenotypically, I’m not sure if I should be identifying with this white savior complex, white culture, white girls, etc because no one considers me to be white. Many of the articles focus on the black and white populations, and not so much on the other minorities so I don’t know where to fit in these discussions or how to properly process what we’re learning.