Sana naman hindi maging makitid ang utak natin.

Bakasyon ba daw ang turing. Hmmph.

roni_bats once wrote in an article that if you want to start crying two days before someone actually dies, go and take up medicine.

Or something to that effect.

My version goes: if you want to be plagued by what-ifs and if-I-had-done-thats and should-I-haves and if-had-known-then-what-I-know-now, go ahead and become a medical student.

You've gone some of the way, but you aren't really there yet. You know stuff theoretically, but you don't know what to do with it yet in real life.

If I had known then that what my grandfather was experiencing during our last phone conversation was already unstable angina, would it have made much of a difference? If I had taken the time and visited my high school a few weeks ago, would I have been able to pick up the warning signs and have warned my teacher about the possibility of liver disease?

Yes, I know it's not really my responsibility, but I can't help it. I think these kinds of stuff, you know?

I just wish it gets easier the nearer I am to becoming a doctor.

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It's been a long time since I last felt the Christmas spirit.

It's been years and years. I think it harks back to when I was still a kid.

It's the world, I guess. It has made me more and more cynical as the years go by.

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I know I'm contradicting myself yet again, but a thought that struck me in the middle of class last week had me confused.

I realized that I do not want to examine patients for the rest of my life.

I want to go out there and be free; not saddled and weighed down by other people's troubles but be free.

So what am I still doing here in med school?

I don't know. I sure hope I can think up reasons why.

Let's see what happens in the next couple of weeks.

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I promise I'll write a more upbeat entry next time.

I used to hate math. A lot.

Credit that to a grade school teacher who, when she decides that you're a total dumb ass in Math, ignores you for the rest of the year (or maybe it's just my paranoid personality disorder talking).

And with that, I decided, since she labeled me so, I wasn't any good with math at all, and I did not try as hard as I guess I could have.

It was all the same for three years in high school; I did take math seriously. If I flunked an exam, I flunked. If I passed, I passed. Rarely did I even try to comprehend what the teacher was trying to teach about math.

But that, as the cliché goes, all changed when I reached 4th year in high school.

We had this math teacher who made math seem absolutely easy and understandable. He did not laugh at stupid questions, and he never ever ran out of patience. His lectures weren't boring, and he knew how to laugh with his students and at himself ("Um, sir, the function of z is not closed... it's open!").

I listened to him teach, I took down notes, and I made every effort to pass every exam he gave.

And for the first time in my life, I understood math, and in time, learned to love it because of him.

One of his requirements so that we can get his signature for our clearances was that we all give him a graduation picture each. We all complained of course, but I guess he had his reasons. Besides, I did not begrudge mine one bit.

Sir Alex Alix passed away just a few days ago.

I would have loved to hear of him still teaching math to his high school students well into his retirement. A "professor emeritus" of some sort; he deserves it, somewhat.

What I hate about growing old and moving on is that through circumstances, you lose touch. The last time I saw him (first sem, first year med school), he looked absolutely fine to me.

I never did hear that he was hospitalized, or that he was getting worse.

I never did get to say that he was my favorite math teacher. Or that for me, he was my ONLY math teacher.

Goodbye, sir. Your students will all miss you. Everyone up there will enjoy learning math from you.

Our prayers will always be with you.

OK. Ito na po yung entry na pinramis ko tungkol sa aking "great sembreak adventures".

As if naman great.

Nagmukha lang "great", kasi normally, I would have spent my sembreak rotting at home in front of the TV, in front of the laptop, or sleeping.

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First off was the "great 100 islands adventure".

Obvious naman na hindi ito yung salad dressing.

Anyhow, a few of my Olatutu tribemates + other classmates + me rode a bus to Alaminos, Pangasinan one early Monday morning. The ride was indecently early. According to my vacation standards, anyway :p

We reached Alaminos around noon and we then proceeded to Lucab by trikes. We checked in at an inn (sa Philippine Tourism Authority ata yon), had lunch, and then went on a boat ride to view the islands.

Aba, hindi pala joke na 100 islands yon. Mukha nga talagang 100 islands. Andami. Lahat pa maganda at merong mga trees and shrubs. Pwede ka nga ata mag-bird watching eh, andami ko kasing napansin na birds, though you should have the patience, the determination (you have to wake up before sunrise for proper birdwatching), the know-how (or a very handy guide book) and the equipment (a good pair of binoculars would have been handy).

Contrary to popular belief, hindi lahat ng 100 islands may beach at magandang swimming spot. The few that are good swimming spots are guaranteed with white sand, kaya lang hindi rin all the time pwedeng puntahan kasi maalon.

And, I learned that summer is NOT the best time to visit. Madami daw tao at nakakaloka. Hindi mo na maappreciate yung ganda.

We stayed at Lopez Island the whole afternoon. It sported a white beach, some kind of a rock formation, trees, shrubs and the like. Being the intelligent person that I am, I forgot my snorkeling mask at home (snorkel daw oh. Ni-hindi nga ako marunong magswimming), so I had to be content in, well, "frolicking" at the beach. And being the bright minded person that I am, I also neglected to bring home my swimsuit from Winder for the Pangasinan trip, thinking that I could pass by Winder on the way to the meeting place. At, isa pa, dahil nga napakagaling kong tao, naiwan ko rin ang aking denim shorts sa Winder. Sun and surf nga dapat diba, so dapat ang porma, "beachy" or "summer" man lang. Nainis talaga ako sa sarili ko.

OK, I'm rambling.

Back to the island.

Maraming Sargassum sp. Think Bio 12 and Dr. Roderos, Bio and Psych peeps! The waves were noticeably strong, dahil siguro kalilipas lang nung bagyo nung pumunta kami dun. Syempre, photo-ops galore, and ano pa ba ang gagawin ng med students kung magkakasama? Aba, pagchismisan ang ibang classmates at professors! Ibang klase. Nakatayo kami dun, nagbababad sa dagat at nagtsitsimisan, parang nasa medstones lang kami. So what does that say about us?

We went back to our inn, pumunta sa bayan, at nag-dinner sa... (gasp!) Jollibee! Shet, Jollibee in Manila, Jollibee in Pangasinan! But remember, we are but students; poverty po dapat ang theme.

Syempre, nang pagbalik namin sa aming tinutuluyan, we "had a few" drinks, with matching chismisan ulit. We even had a Class 2008 chismis alphabet going, the goal of which was to go through every name in the class and unearth their "inner chismis". I learned quite a few things here, which of course, I cannot reveal. More on why, later.

I was kind of tipsy, and as usual, I was talkative and inquisitive, which was conducive to the chismisan business. But it ended there. I was just tipsy. Did not throw up this time, either.

Next day, we went to another island with facilities where we had our "ihaw-ihaw" seafood, liempo, eggplant lunch, more picture taking and the continuation of our 2008 alphabet. Off we went to another island, which had a cave, photo-op again. Going up the dang cave involved using my hands to steady myself, which I learned, also involved having to touch the "by-products" of whatever animal that lived/passed by there. Buti na lang tuyo na. At dahil magaling kami, na-discover namin na meron palang steps duns sa other side ng entrance ng cave that did not involve using your hands to steady yourself. Grabe na itech.

We then made our way to Children's Island. Children's kasi malayo ka na, mababaw pa rin yung tubig. The scenery was ok and everything, but the dang spot was full of irritating seaweed. Hindi ka pwedeng magbabad at peace. So nag-explore na lang kami at photo-op again.

We headed back to the mainland, had dinner again at Jollibee (poverty nga eh) at isa na namang all-night chismisan session, wherein we finished our alphabet. We are all bound by the Pangasinan code, as symbolized by the burning of the papers, and so I cannot reveal nor anyone of my co-conspirators can reveal what was said during by the proceedings. Kung may umimik jan, I swear, I'll strangle their necks! Bwahahaha!

And so the next day we went back to Manila. And that was the end of the great 100 island adventure.

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Meron pa kong 2 eh: the Corregidor experience and the exhausting stopover at Camarines Sur. Pero inaantok na ko. At mahaba-haba na rin ang nasulat ko. So next time na ulit.

Sa classmates ko, see y'all on Tuesday!

In our class in Psychiatry, we were required to conduct a complete psychiatric interview of a psychiatric patient confined at the PGH. We were also expected to present the diagnosis, along with a comprehensive plan of management.

Initially, I had my reservations, probably because of my limited and biased experiences. Studying various psychiatric disorders for a semester and the normal functioning of the mind the semester before that had not helped me any in preparation for dealing with real live patients. Besides, I still had 21 years of biases formed from thousands of hours of TV watching to undo.

I know that I can do a pretty comprehensive history; I've had practice from several Neurosciences ward work sessions. But this was an entirely different story. Questioning patients who you know can answer adequately is fine; interviewing patients who may have a hundred different answers to a single question or don't want to speak at all is another.

But required is required, and as with all academic requirements, it too should come to pass.

We met a young adult female patient one afternoon during a month where all academic hell had broken loose. We were determined to keep everything short and sweet; we had reports to finish for the following day and excruciatingly thick transcriptions to go through for an exam a few days after.

But alas, interviewing her was difficult; we tried to bribe her with food as our other groupmates had done so that she would agree to talk with us, but she adamantly refused it. It took a while, but she began to spontaneously talk to us after she began to be interested in the sheets of paper we carried around on our clipboards. She thought they were test papers she had to answer; to us they were but our Neuroscience Examination Sheet which guided us during a neurological examination of a patient.

She filled the check boxes, the blanks, the spaces. What she wrote was starkly different from what was asked; when prodded, her explanations were even more cryptic. When questioned, she would answer with an entirely different concept. When examining her, we had to pretend it was all a game to get her to cooperate.

Her answers might be confusing, but there were still glimpses of reality in her stories. What we thought was but a product of her mind had a connection to past events, thought the connection was often tough to elucidate. She narrates stories of trips to far-off towns where seemingly strange events would occur; she would tell us of persons who were "at war" with her. She would say that her body parts correspond to different internal organs and that rubbing alcohol was a "cure-all". She also told us of her fear with certain numbers, and why she feared it. Somehow, these still had connections with reality.

Our interviews with her and her mother led us to the conclusion that she had disorganized schizophrenia. She had hallucinations, delusions; speech content was poor; thought process was tangential.

Through that interview and through the process of making and presenting a report, I learned a hundred new things about the psychiatric interview and about schizophrenia. What I did not expect to learn from her was the realization that I had been dismissing people with psychiatric problems as inconsequential and people who are best left ignored. What I understand now, more than ever, is that all patients, and not just psychiatric patients, do not need pity, sympathetic looks or whispers; what I should do is help, which I could accomplish by simply listening to the story of a patient who has no one to talk to or being the stranger whom an anxious mother can pour out her worries about her sick child.  

I wish that I would remember this for the rest of my life, and not become preoccupied with symptoms, lab results, pathology reports, and drugs. I hope that I do not forget that people who are admitted in the hospital are not just the "person with TB meningitis" or the "person in Ward 5, Bed 14" or the "person who would not last the week". I hope I do not become as callous as that and forget that they are people with lives, experiences, and feelings outside their illnesses and that they are people who are thinking of their mortality and do not just need a biological cure but emotional and spiritual support as well.

For I know, one day in the future, I myself would be confronting my own mortality, albeit in a still unknown manner.

And I know I would want one doctor who holds my hand, comforts me, and listens to my fears rather than a hundred specialists who regard me as another interesting case to be studied.

I can't study...

...because my yellow highlighter has died on me...

... and National Bookstore is sooooo faaaaarrr aaawaaayyy.

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The Hierarchy of the HiLiter

1st Reading

Blue is for headings;

Green is for the facts/concepts/subheadings;

Yellow is for the text.

It has to be Faber-Castell. It won't work with anything else.

2nd Reading (a luxury nowadays)

It has to be red ballpen for emphasis/underline/double underline/circle/notes.

It has to be Faster to work.

And I have to be using a clipboard to hold the transcriptions.

I'm such an OC when it comes to cramming.