Friends are Love

Okay, so this family photo is not complete but it would have to do for now.  The schedule gods conspired to give me a free day to spend with my barkada from UP Manila.  I hadn't seen most of them in about 3-4 years already, so I was really raring to go.  We went to the Taguig area to celebrate Daal's birthday, first visiting the exhibit of plastinized human bodies entitled "Myth of the Human Body,"  proceeding to enjoy iced coffee and a (long) game of Dutch blitz at the Starbucks store near St. Lukes Global, and then enjoying a sumptuous dinner at 1771 Sentro.  I love my UP family!

I ♥ Purple

Isn't it a bit OTT?

I really really really LOVE purple.

Gossip is not Glamorous

Gossip is something I've never enjoyed because I associate it so much with irony and bigotry.  Strong words, eh?  I don't like being around people who have nothing better to do than talk about other people, often in negative ways.  I just don't get how people feel that gossiping about others and finding malicious amusement in it help strengthen bonds of friendship.  I don't get how people love pointing out how this other person acted out of the ordinary and how they start treating the said person with less respect just because the person was different.  I don't get how people take out their "rulers" and judge people based on their often imperfect scales.  I don't get how some people use gossip to confront another, just because they were too uncomfortable to talk to the person directly.  I don't get how people try to make themselves feel better by comparing themselves with others; such action reeks of insecurity, in my humble opinion.

Gossiping to buttress one's ego is never glamorous, no matter how chic the clothing/shoes/bags/hair/makeup of the person doing the deed.  It becomes more irritating when people condemn other people based on traits that they possess themselves.  There are more things, tangible or not, that would make anyone feel better or be more productive than gossip.  If anyone would have nothing constructive to say, I don't think it's right to just blather about for the sake of having something to say.  I wish people would be reminded of such, each and every single day.

Humility, Respect, and Appreciation

Humility, respect, and appreciation.  These are basic values that we student doctors are taught throughout the four years of medical school, and hopefully will carry beyond those four years. Humility, respect, and appreciation. Values we apply in all the things we do during our ward work, our emergency room duty hours, and everything else that happens within the hospital.  Humility, respect, and appreciation. Values that help us survive the toxic environment with our dignity intact.  Humility, respect, and appreciation.  These are gentle reminders that we and many others can fall prey to the illusion of knowledge.

True Love

I used to think true love existed only in movies and books, but it took seeing it in the hospital for me to realize it does exist, albeit not as glamorous or as dramatic. There are wives who work themselves to the bone during office hours, spend some time taking care of their families at home, then go to the hospital to take care of their husbands; they endure the heat, the smell, the cramped conditions, and the fatigue that goes with watching over the sickly men who almost cannot be recognized because their diseases have made them waste away. No complaint passes their lips when they have to sponge their husbands' feverish bodies every so often, change soiled diapers, wipe away drool, or wait for the patient to finish a piece of bread in three hours. There are husbands who cannot sleep because they want to watch over their wives, brush their wives' hair, whisper sweet nothings in their wives' ears even when they are not sure she can hear because she's GCS3 and slipping away, and remain their families' pillars of strength when she finally bids goodbye. There are sons and daughters who drop everything else just to be with their parents in the hospital, pooling funds from their meager income, just so they can buy antibiotics or pressors to keep their moms or dads alive. Seeing how sickness makes people cherish each other just a little bit more everyday gives me hope and reminds me of the presence of love in this world.

Hello, I Am Alive and Lovely

It's been quite some time since an update was made on this little piece of real estate on the Internet. Blame it on the lack of a decent connection and on the taxing minor rotations of late.

I'm thankful that I had a relatively light rotation on the week of my birthday last April. I had time to recharge from the shock of being an actual MS4 (senior clerk) and being on duty most days on my first rotation. I almost never made it past 24 hours completely awake in medical school before (surprised?) and the concept of 24++ hour duty with its attendant responsibilities was completely foreign prior to April.  Truth be told, I very slowly got the hang of clerkship-errands, reports, etcetera.  May was a completely horrid month, and since I don't want to dwell on the details, I'd just focus on the fact that I survived it.

Am enjoying the short reprieve aka the 2-week Dermatology rotation.  Sort of a sanity break just before all hell breaks loose once more (aka the Internal Medicine rotation.)

Crazy Past Few Days

 I'm recovering from that week of 30+ hour duty assignments that came with tons of paperwork and errands. I miss the toxicity of the week in Otorhinolaryngology because that rotation taught me a lot in the very short time I spent with the department. Best of all, I had the best teachers: multitudes of patients who had all sorts of diseases that are now in that part of my brain marked 'unforgettable.'

Signing off for now because tomorrow is a very early day.

Stay healthy everyone!

Thanks (Commercial Muna)

To the nice people from Johnson's and Sunsilk, thanks a lot!

January to February in Notebooks

 

First photo of the January notebook

The cover is a beautiful dark-red to maroon color.

My mum thought it was my passport the first time she saw it.

 

Now for the February notebook.

It's a very nice and rich red and this photo does not do it justice.

(P.S. I'm still using the multi-colored fineliners)

Well, That Went Well

First day of classes for 2010, and yours truly thinks she did pretty well.

I made it to the first class on time, no matter how tempted I was to sleep in the cool sheets or how slow I was in getting ready. What previously took 5 minutes took me some 20 minutes this morning; blame it on holiday hangover or vacation inertia, but I probably just have to reset my routine or familiarize myself with the dorm again. I have to keep my resolution of arriving in class well before any official activity takes place, unlike those last few weeks of 2009 when I'd arrive harried-looking and wheezing with asthma to 7 AM quizzes or classes, much to my own dismay and discomfort. I can probably improve on getting a proper breakfast down, but I'm improving. Anyway, sleep totally beats (PWNs?) food for any MS3.

Listening to the lectures and trying (emphasis on trying) to participate in the group discussions made me realize how I've taken pharmacology and microbiology for granted, just because they belong to hazy memories of MS2.  I like that I remember most drugs and most microbes and that I am able to apply those information to the current things we discuss; it's just that the professors have this look that all the effort we exert is NOT GOOD ENOUGH.  They always remind us that everything we study is not compartmentalized and should not be forgotten, which is the truth, but they have the advantage of years of experience in the field, whereas we're these students who have to make space for every single topic of every single medical/surgical specialty.  I know it's not entirely good to cut us some slack because we're not trained to be complacent or forever classroom learners, it's just that maybe they can teach us in a way that doesn't make us seem like 1 GB flash drives trying to eat some 40 GB of data.  Is it just that my neurons have 'emptied the recycle bin' while I valiantly try 'system restore' on those precious shreds of memory?

The interesting thing that today brought was the wide range of substances that one can abuse or become dependent on.  There's a difference, according to Dr. V. Rosales (one of the best neuropsych lecturers of all time, we lesser mortals should bow down to our basal ganglia god, kthxbye), who kindly explained it in terms of 3 venti Starbucks brewed coffee from Colombia and whatever subject's been messing with our brains and grades lately.  We unknowingly abuse caffeine--down own and you're still drowsy, down two and you're a bit awake, down three and you're vomiting/fecally incontinent/miserable but awake.  That abuse doesn't translate to dependence, because we nerds have stricter criterion to see if anyone becomes truly dependent or has those horrible withdrawal symptoms that one friend inelegantly put as, "you know, sabog..."  Most of the drugs of abuse mess up the reward (dopamine) pathway of the brain, some inhibit the inhibitory pathways (hence, disinhibition on one's part, which is sadly a very bad excuse for drunk texting or emo posts on FB/tumblr), some make one so euphoric and anorexic (favored by artistas and mow-dels) and some wreak havoc on neurotransmitters that you start hallucinating like Alice in Wonderland who took special brownies with tea in the Mad Hatter's place.  Trivia of the day included that two bottles of beer can get you legally intoxicated, that 10% of alcohol ingested passes through the lungs and kidneys unchanged so reeking of alcohol really means you're truly drunk, that methamphetamine is rampantly abused in our country because the masses can only afford shabu (the conyo kids carouse with ecstasy, marijuana, or cocaine, and heroin is so darned expensive that only politicians, swindlers, or dictators can afford it), and that at any given area anyone can get a high from solvents but the long term trade off is brain atrophy and a low IQ.  Makes you kind of wonder whatever it was that our current leaders were or are on.