warrior is a child

I got my much needed break this weekend.  The free weekend could not have come any sooner!  As you noticed from my previous posts, I was really hanging on by a thread.  Now I can really say that when everyone else leaves you and when you are down in the dumps, your parents or whomever you call your ‘family’ are the best people to be around you.  In less than an hour from my post duty, I was whisked off by my cousins to my house at Lipa, for a mini-vacation slash rehab time.  The peaceful scenery outside my house, the fresh air, and the most comfortable bed was what I desperately needed.  As much as I love the city, a weekend at the province can be such a relief.  I got to eat a home-cooked meal, and then slept throughout the day… I woke up at 7 pm just to eat dinner with my family and relatives.  I wanted to go swimming too, but the sleep that I got was well worth it.  Then we spent the evening watching my original copy of “The Beyonce Experience”, one of the best concerts I have seen in my life.

Saturday went by so fast, and before I knew it, it was Sunday already, a day before my next duty.  I used to dread going to Sunday, but today, it seemed like the perfect thing to go to.  It was like the therapy or the psychiatry visit that I needed.  It was like the priest was talking to me directly, telling me that I could fix my life, and it is not too late.  I guess this is the sign that I was asking for.  I realized that because of all the built up stress I was bombarded with, I was drifting further and further away from God.  I was becoming the horrible people that I chose not to become.  I hope I remember what the priest told us that day:

1. Pray.

2. Do some sacrifices.

3. Do good.

Sounds easy, but we all know those are some pretty difficult things to do.  I have never been a devout Catholic.  But I realized how important my faith is because it is really what’s holding me together.  I am not saying that from this moment on, I will go to church every sunday.  But I do know that I will pray more frequently.  Maybe with just a little more effort, I will be able to remember what saving lives is all about.  Maybe then I will get the courage to get some humility for a change.

But before I forget, I’d like to say thank you to the friends that stood by me and are still standing by me.  Thank you to my parents who continue to support me.  Thank you to my cousins who have been nothing but angels to me.

But my battle has only begun.  And I am still young… If this is a test, God, then I hope I pass it with flying colors.  You must think highly of me to give me such challenges in life.  And you must really love me, for giving me few but true, special friends.

breakdown…burnout

84 days until the end of internship… It’s about that time when I have already gotten used to the ins and outs of PGH, I have already established a set of friends, and my blockmates knows each other’s strengths and weaknesses.

But this didn’t stop me from totally breaking down… I am supposed to be used to an every 3 day duty, but right now all I am feeling is fatigue and depression.  You know when you are not mentally and physically fit when you wake up everyday dragging your feet to work.  You have to work up an appetite just to get by.  You literally count the seconds till you are allowed to go home.  And I am not just breaking down… I am really experiencing burn out.  Everyday, I want to skip duty, but because I know I am going to cause a major headache to my blockmates, I still go.  I wake up late because of so much fatigue, so I end up being marked tardy in the attendance, which will require me to take additional hours later on which makes the length of my agony longer and longer.  When I am at work, all we talk about is work.  When it’s time to go home, I basically go to the mall by myself just to get entertained.  No, I don’t go out with friends.  They got better things to do.  I try to study, but my mind is to preoccupied.  I am too tired to hit the gym.

I wasn’t planning to go home this weekend, but seeing as it is my only chance to go home, I might as well take that opportunity.

I’m stopping myself from breaking glass and throwing stuff around…

To make matters worse, I even ended up hurting someone while I was on the verge of my madness at the world.  And I am now at a loss at how to get things back to the way it was.

I want to take a break… But I want to get  things done.

I’m 23 years old, young and still in a hurry to get through life.  Am I missing out on the good stuff?  Is it really worth it, being in such a hurry?  If I was in such a hurry, I should have just taken up something that will get me easy money.  Or maybe I should have entered showbusiness while I still have my youth.

Is it too late to start fixing things?  To start fixing myself?

All day today, I thought that I really need to get help.  From a psychiatrist, a therapist… If I am lucky, maybe I could even get help from a friend.

And in my haste, I end up hurting the ones that are near me.

Is it really that hard to get help?

Is it really that hard to find a friend who will just take you as you are?

And if I find a friend, how long will the friendship last?  Will I screw this up just like in all the relationships I had?

Maybe that’s why I am better of going to the mall on my own… Because I don’t know how to deal with people…

58 minutes to the next day… In a few hours I will be on duty again…

God, if you can read this, please give me a sign just to tell me that everything is going to be alright… This is as bad as it’s going to get… One can only go up from here.  Time sure ain’t flying when you are not having fun at all…

I guess this is what they call, hitting rock bottom.

rage against the rotation

[I decided to write this now because my mood was becoming happy again after watching 3 episodes of the Simpsons.  Good thing I remembered what happened this morning coz it needs some documentation...]

Just when I thought that I was growing to like my OB rotation, it turns around and punches me in the face.  If anger had a scale, 10 being the most anger a man can ever attain, it would have been an outright 10.

I am not the smartest person in the world, but I DO study.  We have an announced quiz every Friday, but last friday it got postponed to today.  It was all about Sterilization and Contraception, and all of the questions are supposed to come from William’s Obstetrics 22nd edition.  I got myself a copy a week before the quiz and read the whole thing.  Being a veteran quiz-taker, I knew what kind of questions residents are supposed to be asking us at intern-level.  Management, most commons, Risk factors, Complications, all in multiple choice, identification or even enumeration.

What is the objective in giving interns quizzes?  It is to assess if one has a full grasp of the topic in question, right?  As much as I wanted to memorize the whole 2 chapters I focused on the above-mentioned essentials.

Trust me when I tell you that THAT QUIZ WAS THE MOST HORRIBLE, MOST UNFAIR, and MOST NON-YIELD QUIZ EVER!

The first was matching type.  I’ve answered a lot of matching type questions but not one that looked like this:

Match the following contraceptives to the lowest possible failure rate it can incur (may repeat the letters)

1. Oral Contraceptive Pills                              A. 0.1%

2. Condoms                                                       B. 0.2%

3. Mini-pill                                                        C. 0.3%

4. Emergency Contraception                         D. <75% reduced risk

5. IUD                                                               E. 0.4%

6. Injectables                                                   F. 0.5%

7. Female Sterilization                                   G. 0.01%

8. Male Sterilization                                       H. 0.02%

9. Withdrawal method                                   I. 0.5%

WHAT KIND OF A QUIZ IS THAT?!  All that reading, and I was supposed to just memorize the percentages?!

Then it went on to a quiz type like this:

Write T if the contraceptive is contraindicated with the following conditions and F if it is not. (WHA?!)

Heart Disease

__ Condom

__ IUD

__ OCPs

__ Minipill

This went on for conditions such as heavy smoker, thyroid disease, etc.  Although it seemed better, still one could have written a far more superior quiz.  I am not angry because I know I am going to get low grades, but because I studied so hard and had to get such an inferior line of questioning.

The worst part about it is when the resident who gave the exam went up to one of my co-interns and said:

“Didn’t I tell you guys to study on the lowest failure rates? Didn’t you tell your co-interns?”

Ahh… so apparently she thought we would get good grades because she leaked the question out.  Well, for one, that intern didn’t tell me that the questions would be that way, and two, I study not just for quizzes but also for future care for my patients.

Again, another kind of teacher that doesn’t know how to teach.  Another teacher I refuse to become.  You teach for your students to learn, is that so hard?

And that is why I was so mad starting from 9 am this morning… As I stormed out of the conference room, I could feel the confusion and anger of most of my cointerns as well.  As I made my daily rounds that morning, I saw one of my surgery residents making rounds as well.  She smiled at me, and I immediately begged her to take me back to Surgery…

I didn’t come all the way to the UNIVERSITY OF THE PHILIPPINES to take such exams that don’t even help me with the future boards…

Speaking of quality of education in UP, we also are students in charge of patients in the Gyne department right?  Well, I heard from one of my cointerns that they don’t even let you scrub in in the surgery, but they just call on you to pass the specimen to the histopathology department…

WHERE IS THE DAMN LEARNING?!

I probably got to learn more about OB in DLSU than this… I got more hands-on in the surgeries…

I try to calm myself by remembering what my Dad said… You don’t expect them to teach you directly, you learn by yourself, read by yourself, teach yourself…

Fantastic… maybe I should have been home-schooled instead…

Great quiz Ma’am, looking forward to the next quizzes…

6  WEEKS TO GO BEFORE END OF OB-GYN ROTATION.

post duty hang over

Good morning everybody… It’s been 26 minutes since I got home from duty. I already changed into my sleepy clothes for a well deserved morning sleep after a 24 hour duty. Compared to my last OBAS (Obstetrics Admitting Section) duty, this duty was particularly more toxic, because of the constant influx of patients. But now that it’s the second time around, I wasn’t as scared as I used to be, and because I knew tomorrow there you would be no endorsements of new patients, I gladly became the intern in charge of patients with no study pressures for the next day Despite the non-stop action from all the tasks we had to do, the most fun part of the duty was our ice cream time. One of the patients who gave birth treated all of us to a bucket of mango graham ice cream… Dee-lish!

happy

You read a lot of blogs that talk about how crappy their lives get (my blog included), but there ARE days when you just can’t help but view yourself like you are like those people in vitamin commercials that say “More energy, mas happy!” (translated as more energy means more happiness).  These are the days the keep you moving forward.

After a long and tiring 24 hour duty in the OB admitting section, the day started about great for me because I did pretty well during the summary rounds.  As predicted, they asked me most of the questions since I was the only one decked with a patient last night.  And with the little time I got to read, I was able to survive the interrogation.  YES!!! Man, you have no idea how much my shaking hands and tired face with my unkempt hairstyle seemed to glow after that.  Students like me live for this moments of triumphs.  Because unlike people who are par excellence, there are people like me, PLAIN ME.  The student who just gets by.  Damn, it really felt so good.

I went home and immediately fell on my comfortable bed… With luck I was able to wake up just before I met with some people for a coffee-shop transaction.  I hurriedly went to the nearest Starbucks cafe and ordered my usual Java Chip Frappuccino, and there he was: the kind barista.  Not just kind, but I-am-happy-to-be-a-barista-and-I-am-not-just-being-kind-to-make-you-come-back-for-more-coffee kind.  Our conversation went like this:

Barista: So are you a UP student?

Me: Yup.

Barista: That’s cool.  So what are you studying?

Me: Medicine.

Barista: Ahh… Are you a first year or second year?

Me: I’m an intern already.

Barista: Wow! You look so young!

Me: Naks.  Thanks for the compliment.

Barista: Cool.  Enjoy your coffee!

I am so easy to please right?  Sometimes a compliment can seem so fake, but sometimes it can be the best thing you should hear after a tiring duty.  Work makes you forget to take care of yourself.  But when a complete stranger compliments you on your youth, then it makes me light up all over again…

Next happy story?  Don’t worry I got more.

As I sipped my Frap, a familiar face walks up to my table.  Nikko Faller!  My childhood friend.  He tried to teach me tennis when I was young, and I didn’t really do well.  Anyway, it’s been 7 years I guess since I’ve seen him.  He stroke up a conversation with yours truly.  He told me that he is almost done with his Nursing course.  He asked how I was doing, and I told him that I was ok.  A reunion with a good old friend is a treat!

Then late tonight, I went to the gym after a long long hiatus.  I was able to join my favorite Body Jam class. The new music was amazing!  It was just a one hour workout, but I felt so rejuvinated afterwards.  All the stress was gone!  I was able to forget the ton of books I had to study.  I was able to forget that a girl like me doesn’t have a special someone (yes I think about that sometimes especially when it’s real quiet).  With all those fun people around me, all strangers, all with no inhibitions about dancing in front of people they don’t know, it felt like I was in a party where everybody was invited.  No one cared if they weren’t able to dance on cue or if they didn’t have the perfect figure or if they didn’t have the sexy hips.  People just came to dance.  ^_^

All of that happened in one fantastic Friday.  It doesn’t matter if my day is gonna suck tomorrow.  Today, I am happy.  Hope you get to have your own happy day soon. ^_^