daddy and me

I don’t know if a lot of daughters still have good relationships with their dads.  I know a lot of adults are telling the world how awful my generation has become, and how much we have grown apart from our parents.  I know for a fact that I grew up most of the time “yaya-guided” by my beloved “Ate Its” (yaya means nanny in Tagalog).  My dad worked day and night as a surgeon.  I would wake up in the morning and he’d still be asleep.  When I return from school he’d still be in the OR (operating room).  By the time he’s back I’d be asleep.  It never was an issue to me, because I knew he was just doing his job to earn money so that me and my 2 older siblings would stay in school.  Now that I have decided to follow his path, I couldn’t praise him more.  Most people would think that I have full advantage having a surgeon for a dad.  It’s partly true.  I started watching his operations when I entered 3rd year med school.  Just watched from the back, not assisting.  I started assisting during my clerkship, just last year.  He didn’t treat me like a family member but a real surgeon in training, and I thank him for that.  Now that I’m an intern, I assist him every time I go home.  The pic above this article is just one of our operations together (my dad is the one at the left).  He’d give out a snappy comments like:

“Your job is to make things easy for me, the head surgeon, not to make things worse.”

Then after the amazingly short OR, he’d treat all of us to dinner, like nothing happened.  He has taught me a lot, not just through his words but through his actions.  He lets me go with him as he makes rounds.  I smile at the fact that he sits beside the bed of his patient and holds his or her hand.   He explains  their diagnosis as simply as possible.

Whenever I feel that my mind is already so poisoned by the goings-on at my hospital, I just look at him and I’m reminded that there are still good doctors out there.

Like what one of my teachers said when I was still in med school,

“Never let reality dilute your values “.

I told my dad, “I wish I can be just as good a surgeon like you.”

His reply was simple, “I wish you would be a BETTER surgeon than me.”

Love you Papa! ^_^

the heat is on in the OR

Working in a government hospital sure has its ups and downs.  The people of the Philippines are lucky to have a hospital like PGH that makes the skyrocketing hospital bills a little more reachable.  People all of the country flock to this hospital because they don’t have to pay for the rooms daily, and they don’t have to pay the doctors professional fees at all.  All they need to pay for are the meds and the OR equipment (which, for some people are still pretty expensive, but goes there anyway).  Unfortunately, this hospital is not like the other government hospitals in other countries which are completely free.  People have no choice but to settle for this place because it’s the cheapest bill they will ever get.   And because the funds of this hospital rely on government money, you can’t expect top notch care, as much as they say it is.  We get donations from different associations and people, but once those equipment gives out, then we are in big trouble.  This hospital hardly has money for maintenance.

And that’s where the problem pertaining to that written on the picture above comes in.  I saw this message written on manila paper on one of the bulletin boards in the hospital.  In English, it is translated as, “The heat because of the broken air conditioning in the operating room, makes the heads of the staff and doctors hot as well!”

I experienced assisting in OR’s in these non-air conditioned rooms.  Most of the time the electric fan in the OR would be facing the head surgeon, which means I am stuck with the dead air.  We can’t turn the fan on full power because it will mess with the surgical field.  And so we end up with sweat beads on our forehead with the mission impossible hope that the sweat doesn’t contaminate the field.  Oh man!!!  I got lucky because the OR i am in lasted for less than 5 hours, but think of the 12 hour operations!  It must be hell!

I really hope that they fix this problem because it’s not just for the the staff but for the patient to be operated on too.. There are just some parts of medicine that cannot be compromised.

J-Dorama Review: Kira Kira Kenshui

Kira Kira Kenshui means “Sparkling Medical Intern”. It revolves around the life of Oda Usako, a new medical intern at Otowa General Hospital. The show follows her around as she barely survives the life of a normal intern trying to get by and trying to understand the minds of her very different but very real instructors and the different nurses in each department. There she gets the help of a male nurse named Tachioka (although he is always teased with the name “Tapioca”) and a very attractive (my personal opinion) medical representative named Yamazaki.

The show runs for 11 episodes, and I watched it for an entire Sunday just stopping to eat. It was so funny and I could really relate to the character. It was just kind of annoying that she cries in every single episode! My favorite instructor was Kawai-sensei, the OB doctor. He can really be a good mentor if he tried really hard. They say that the story was based on a real intern’s blog. ^_^ It really feels good to write about your experiences in a blog, but for it to be turned into a movie? That’s a different feeling right there.

I recommend this show to all of my med friends out there. It’s not as AMAAAAZING as Iryu: Team Medical Dragon, but it sure is entertaining. I wonder why there aren’t any Filipino medical shows? I don’t think it is too hard to handle…

22 days and counting

1 more week in rehab

1 24 hr duty left for my entire internship

2 more weeks of internal medicine

2 more final exams (pedia and OB)

1 oral exam in IM

a few hours of make-up

and I am DONE!

Time flies when you are having… FUN?  I can’t say that all of that work didn’t have moments of laughter in it, sure it did.  Especially with great blockmates like mine (aww…).

Everything nowadays is pretty benign, considering that most of my work is in the clinics, and most of the sleepless nights are because of the final exams and not because of physical work.

Me and my cousin tikoy even got to watch the annual DLSU Pops Orchestra concert!  I was a part of this group during my college time.  I am so glad that they are still doing damn well.  The only bad part about the concert is that they chose not to have any cool hosts, and so it was just like listening to song after song, without as much as a story-telling effort.  Plus they were having a lot of mic problems, which is really unfair for the singers, since most of the are probably nervous about their performance and then they end up not being heard at all! I hope they were able to fix the problem for the gala night. 

The concert was held last March 29, 2008 at the Yuchengco Theater in DLSU-Manila.  The title of the concert was “On stage Tonight”.  The show featured tracks from movies, musicals, and some TV shows.  Some of the pieces that they played were familiar to me since we also played them back when I was still there, but there were a lot of new songs as well.  I am really proud of my Pops family   Going to the concert also meant going back to DLSU-Manila… ahh.. nostalgia… DLSU Manila is still one of my favorite campuses ever.  The best times in my life were really spent there.  No doubt about it. ^^

rehab absurdities

ok… so time flew by so fast that i didn’t even post an article when I was in Orthopedics!  Gosh… well, basically it was great because unlike the whole OB experience where you feel like you are working working working, in Ortho, your resident is your big brother and friend.  I had to present twice in front of them, and it was like a casual conversation… piece of cake!  I DID have some trouble with the ER, just because I didn’t have a resident with me the whole time, and so I was kind of the one managing the whole ORtho area with some help from the clerk on duty come the afternoon.

And so Day 2 of Rehab has arrived.  I never thought the day would come, when I would rather screen a hundred patients in the blood bank rather than see 2 rehab patients… SERIOUSLY.  The 2 days have been excruciating!  First of all I feel like I am a crow at gunpoint.  I’ve been hearing people say you have to sign in on time, no problem with that.  Then sign in at the OPD, then sign in at lunch time at the rehab office, sign in at 1 pm at opd, sign out at 4:30 pm… Basically they are tracking our every move.  What am I, 3?  Then even if we are done with OPD, we can’t leave earlier because we have to sign out at 4:30 not a minute earlier.  The point being…?  Even so, it was never an issue for me, because I don’t leave early coz I have to make these utterly long histories with too much detail… *sigh*  Then I got this message from my friend that they now want the histories to be computerized… OK… fine… On duty, you have to sign in on 7:30 am, spend the whole time at the ward even if there are no toxic patients there, then at 4:30 pm till morning, at the call room, answering calls… answering calls?  for what?  Good thing I am ok with quiet time, so I guess it won’t be that much of a crazy time for me… come post duty, you can’t go home yet… you have to stay in the ward… make your progress notes… then? just make sure you stay there or ELSE… they will demerit you… OUT OF POST!  This is supposed to be a minor rotation, but that doesn’t mean it is a piece of cake.  It makes me all the more paranoid because of all the rules.  Not that I am out to make any trouble.  I am just getting too anxious because I might break a rule even though I don’t mean any harm.  So, basically I think I will get by, I just want to say, that for the record, that the rules are absurd.

27 days to go and it’s goodbye PGH!