CPR

Elbows stretched

Sweat beading as it falls down my cheek

I push

And push

And we hold our breaths

As we await for the throbbing of your heart.

I am tired

Still the cycle repeats itself

For the girlfriend you have left.

For the mother you have not said goodbye.

For the brother you have not told you were proud of.

For nothing.

... Alas, you are gone.

The ER Rotator

Being the only non-Muslim member in my IM team, I was left all alone in the ER by the time 6 PM arrives, which is about the time all the other doctors in my IM team leave the ER to break their fast, the buka, I think that's what they call them. I sit in my chair, burning in the heat, my legs trembling as I wait for the barrage of patiernts to arrive. One by one, they come in. The wheels of stretchers deafen my senses. The unconscious, the ones screaming of pain, the ones reeking of their own vomit, the ones smelling like they have no idea what deodorant was. Like the obedient intern faking her way through IM, I was forced to attend to all of them, juggling the taking of vital signs, the history-taking, the making of prescriptions, the writing of laboratory requests, the search for the elusive nasal cannula, the phone call to the laboratory, answering the demands of the resident on duty. Of course, who the hell was I kidding? I couldn't do all of them at the same time. Therefore, to add to the toxicvity of the job, I have watchers screaming at my face, because I was too slow in attending to their patients' demands.

Stop me, Doc Bastero, before I strangle this watcher. Please lang! Ilayo mo sa harap ko yang antipatikang babaeng yan!

And on top of all that, I have people repeatedly calling me "Nurse".

Arghhh!!!

Being ER rotator these past few days has been the most excruciating thing that has happened to me in IM. Too many times I have just wanted to walk out. Walk out from the ER and leave all these behind. Go and make out with some guy, just to release all that anger and tension.

And forget.

Forget about everybody waiting for me and just run the hell away from the hospital. Forget abouty the one million and one things I have yet to do. Forget about the patients waiting for me to attend to them. Forget about all this crap. When everything else sinks in, and I feel like I am drowning, suffocating, I have to fight the urge to scream. To scream so loud that everybody in the entire hospital can hear me. Hear of how I am starting to hate my job. Of how I hate it with such hatred that it burns a spot right through the pit of my stomach.

"Punyeta kang watcher ka! Hindi mo ba nakikitang bumabagyo ang mga pasyente
dito! Kasalan ko ba kung di niyo sila binibillhan ng gamot sa bahay o dinadala
kaagad sa doktor?! At ngayon kami ang tinotoxic niyo dahil hindi kayo marunong
mag-alaga sa pasyente niyo? Bwisit! Sana kayo na lang ang magkasakit at hindi
yang kamag-anak niyo! Mga punyeta kayo! Wala kayong karapatang mambwisit ng
doctor! Leche!"

Of course, I never said to that their face. But I was thinking about it. Hehehe...

The conscience gets me and I hold my tongue as I am being forced back to reality.

I have no choice. This is what my four years in medical school has tried to prepare me for. Despite the fact that I am slowly turning into the kind of doctor I hate, the kind of person I promised myself I will never ever become, I have to constantly remind myself that my selfish concerns are trivial and mundane compared to those of the loved ones of the patients I am supposed to be taking care of. So, I just have to bear it, paint a smile on my face and suck up all that bitterness.

So, to the watchers I have been impatient with and the patioents who deserve but I have not given my very best care, I am sorry... It's time I learn to accept the fact that this is what I do. This is what I'm made for.

This is who I am.

How To Survive Your OB-Gyne, Pediatrics and Ophthalmology Internship Rotations

Internship Objectives

Obstetrics and Gynecology

At the end of the month, an intern is expected:

1. To be able to run as fast as your black shoes can get you as you wheel the stretcher with the pregnant mother with the crowning baby to the DR.
2. To be able to transform magically in less than a minute from your uniform to your scrubsuit and vice versa.
3. To be able to retract the bladder for three hours or more using the same force, despite the lack of sleep, the eyes that can’t seem to keep themselves open and the hyperglycemia from not having anything in your stomach except for water during your 24 hour duty.
4. To be able to have the patience of a saint when explaining to G1 patients that a 2 cm dilated cervix doesn’t mean you’re going to have your baby right now, or that an induced delivery doesn’t mean it’s going to be less painful, or that just because you’re so tired, doesn’t mean you have to stop pushing or that you can choose to have your baby delivered via CS. You are not in a private hospital.
5. To be able to grow 10 hands and be at three places at one time as you IE one patient, make the history of another, admit another patient, call the lab for your stat CBC, secure blood for your CS patient at the blood bank, deliver the baby in the DR and assist in the TAHBSO at the OR.
6. To be able to pray for a miracle that one will pass Kong’s post-rotation exam.

Pediatrics

At the end of the month, an intern is expected:

1. To be able to keep yourself from screaming obscenities when you are barraged with mothers in the ER bringing in their children because of 1 day colds, or severe weakness due to diarrhea when the child is happily playing and smiling at you, or two-week history of cough and fever and the child looks like he’s practically in his deathbed, at 2 o’ clock in the morning.
2. To be able to juggle carrying two babies, both with O2 face mask, and look after another intubated one carried by his mother, and not trip nor stumble, so as to manage time efficiently when bringing in NICU babies for X-ray.
3. To be able to fight the hypoglycemia and the dehydration. Let’s face it. You will not be able to eat nor drink anything.
4. To be able to charm your way with the medtechs and the radio technicians, particularly, to avoid giving your cellphone number, in order to get what you want from them, such as giving you priority and faster service (I miss you, my curly-haired medtech na parang hanger ang katawan. Where the hell are you?).
5. To be able to supply the correct answer to Doc BJ and Doc Balido’s bedside rounds questions whose answers we were apparently and supposedly already knew, like the gastric capacity of a 5-month old baby, the actual caloric content of Bear Brand, Al-110, Simelac and S-26, the rationale of giving folic acid to your AGE patients and cross-infection of Dengue and Malaria. Heller! Like you already knew that when you were interns back in 19kopong-kopong.
6. To be able to look like you were not from duty, when you actually are from duty.

3. Ophthalmology

At the end of the month, an intern is expected:

1. To be able to shell out your hard-earned savings and feed the department at the end of your rotation.
2. To be able to assist in the OR by turning on the airconditioner, searching for plaster, preparing the gloves in the prep table, looking for stuff in your resident’s tool box, opening the vent of the IV and holding his cellphone as he makes an intra-op referral to his senior resident. That’s about it.
3. To be able to see something abnormal during a funduscopic examination. Seriously, I’ve never seen one. I only say “Yeah, I see it,” when the truth is, I can only see blood vessels and ¼ of the freakin’ fundus. The trick is not to look like you don’t know shit.
4. To be able to use those skills you learned playing family computer back in Grade 3 when maneuvering the slit lamp or the refraction machine.
5. To be able to pretend you don’t notice that Ma’am Pilar and Doc Vanessa are not speaking to each other and to have the tact and sensibility not to ask either one of them about it. Deadma, ika nga.
6. To be able to suture a patient’s eyelid without poking her eyeball with your needle.
7. To be able to avoid answering the “Ms. Top 1, ano nga ba yung…” questions without looking like you don’t know anything at all.


The rest of the objectives for the other rotations will be given as soon as this intern finishes her rotation in the other departments and is able to find the time to squeeze important Friendster blogging time in her very busy schedule.

Top 10 Most Frequently Asked Questions to Interns During Internship

10. From what school are you?

Like it would matter. They all treat us the same anyway. Semi-slaves to the residents, the unofficial IWs the consultants would ask to buy their Coke in can and siopao outside the hospital, the one they would scream obscenities with if the lab results were not pasted in the freakin’ patient’s charts, the one they would pimp to the technicians in the X-ray room to get the films of their patients, the one they would blame their irresponsibilities with if the patient dies because they weren’t able to answer to the referral soon enough since they were too busy cavorting in the other wards when they were supposed to be in the ER. Di ba, Allen? Hehehe…

Although in fairness, some residents lang naman. Hehehe…


9. How old are you?

Oo na. So maybe I look like I’m 15 parading around in my white blazer and pretending to be a doctor. It’s not my fault I came from a good genetic background and I look younger than you by, say, 10 years. Go to a spa and get a facial and a massage on your days off, for god’s sake. Nang hindi ka naman mukhang toxic and 40 all the time, when you’re standing next to me.


8. What are you planning to specialize on?

Isn’t the point of internship to make me think about what I wanna do for the rest of my life? Stop convincing me to go into your specialty, just so you can have the opportunity to boss me around for a longer time. I’m a freakin’ scholar for god’s sake! I’ve got four more years to think about what I wanna specialize in. Not to mention, I’m still trying to survive these next few months in this hospital. Quit it!


7. Kumain ka na?

What a stupid question! How the hell am I supposed to eat when you’re not in the ER to take my post? Am I supposed to close the ER and stop taking patients for 20 minutes so that I can eat? Maybe I can ask the pregnant woman with the fully dilated cervix to stop screaming and wait for me to finish my meal before I start rushing her to the DR, or the seizing baby to stop convulsing and foaming in the mouth so that I can get my three spoonfuls of rice in my already cachectic body. I’m so freakin’ hungry, I may just start eating my stethoscope.


6. Anong rotation mo ngayon?

Smell me. Ano sa tingin mo?


5. Admission yan, doc?

No, we just enjoy poking and hurting little babies by putting them in an IV. And I’m just using these filled up history sheet, admitting orders sheet and discharge summary sheet as a fan to keep myself cool while I slave away my hours in the ER… Heller! Ano sa tingin mo?


4. Toxic kayo?

Not really. I just enjoy looking like crap. I just don’t like to comb my hair, I just enjoy the sensation of oil in my face, I just love the smell of lochia in my clothes, I particularly cherish those huge dark bags under my eyes and I don’t like sleeping at all.

Yup. Hindi kami toxic at all.


3. Are you a doctor?

So wala pa akong lisensiya. Kung aangal ka, get the hell off my face.


2. Do you know what you’re doing?

Deadma.


1. May boyfriend ka na ba?

Wala. Bakit, mag-aaply ka?... O, yan ang hirit ng intern na walang magawa sa buhay. Tulad ng mga nasa Optha, Psych and Radio ngayon. Wehehe…

Medtech Boy 2007

Maybe it's because I am trapped in a place for the next few months exposed to no other type of guy except for those who are connected to this hospital, my hormonally-challenged self (who has been starting to miss the dating scene) started scoping the incredibly few picks to choose from. Being in the middle of a severely dry spell, I found myself crushing over another Medtech.

Still, like the low self-esteemed girl that I was, I could barely find myself to make a decent conversation with him that lasts for more than one minute. I am not a seasoned femme fatale unlike most people think. Plus the toxicity of my being a medical intern and his being a medtech most likely makes it incapable for us to flirt for more than the few alloted minutes that fate or rather our jobs had provided us. The most that I got aside from the usual, "Sir, pwedeng pa-CBC si ____?" is this:

Me: Oh, di ba dapat nakawhite pants kayo? Bakit nakablack ka ata? Bawal yan
(spoken with a saucy little teasing grin in my face).

MTB2007: Okay lang yan, ma'am. Kasi gabi naman (with an embarassed grin on his face).

And that's it... God, I'm so pathetic.

Humanda ka sa'kin next time, bata ka.

Hahaha...

Acting Superior

It's funny how life throws you these really weird curve balls.

I've spent the past month working as a medical Intern at the OB-Gyne Department of ZCMC. I've been busting my ass off trying to please my superiors, doing all the dirty work, sticking my two fingers into incredibly rancid orifices, skipping lunch and dinner, running madly towards the laboratory to secure blood, and still I get insulted by/screamed/yelled/ at by my superior resident for something so mundane.

And contrary to the rumors flying around, no, she did not tell me na sayang ka lang naging most outstanding student (heller! sino ba nagkakalat ng balitang yan!).

And then lately I realize that it's really not her fault. She is my superior after all. We are all someone's junior and someone's superior. This is simply how the world works. So I made my superior resident wait for quite some time. For her, that was a sign of disrespect. She had the right to get mad. And I already paid for that with an hour of embarassing sermon during CS at the OR, amidst the student nurses and anesthesiology team, but who cares? Someday, I'm probably going to end up doing the same thing to my intern or junior resident.

No, wait, I already did.

The unlucky victims of my act of superiority? The student nurses at the ER who take too much time doing the TPR when all I really want from them is the BP and for them to shave the patient's pubes.

Hehehe... Yes, ang sama ko talaga.