AnneC.

And just like that, we are married! The past few months have been heart-very-light-kind-of-nice. <3 It feels actually weird to have someone with you 24/7 at home (and not the hospital). And nope, I'm not complaining.  As usual, I've been wanting to write but not finding any inspiration until today.  I've been reflecting, more of day dreaming, while reviewing for the board exam and I just want to write down some, well, thoughts.  I grew up in an environment where there are things that should never be talked about, just because you don't want to make things worse. And it did not make things worse, but it did not make them better as well. I learned that words can make or break someone. And that if you do not have anything nice to say, it was better to shut up. And because if you say mean things, no matter how true, these may hurt people. However, this mindset did not shield me from getting hurt. This was also why I hated confrontations. Because I only thought that confr...

Hooray for another milestone. Apparently, 2 years flew by quite fast, that today was my last day of Nephrology fellowship training.  As I quote from my last blog entry after finishing residency:  "I [still] remember finishing internship and saying to myself that I need more training (I was really scared) before facing the real world as a physician. I remember the heartache of not getting into my dream residency program. And eventually understanding God’s plans year after year after year in the institution where He placed me to learn and mature as a physician."  My clerk/intern self would have never imagined I'd choose this subspecialty. But compared to my residency drama of a heartbreak -  choosing nephrology and getting into the program I want and now eventually finishing it - was more of rainbows, sunshine and butterflies. (see post http://annetitled.blogspot.com/2019/06/rainbows-sunshine-butterflies.html)  Like any other milestone, reaching this one was a 2 y...

As years accumulate to my experience of being a doctor, i have also accumulated excuses to miss out on important life events:  “duty ako e” “from duty ako e” “preduty ako e” “daming kelangan gawin”  “sobrang pagod, sobrang toxic”  “sleep is life” And if I really want to go to something but still cant, i sugarcoat it. Thinking about it as a sacrifice for the people I love. Missing birthdays, anniversaries, life celebrations then making a mental note that “hey it’s okay, everything I’m doing is for the future.”- Everything I’m learning now will benefit the people I hold most dear. (And I think that’s how most of us live with the missing out). But with each year of experience seeing sickness and death, i slowly find my excuses getting lame (still usable sometimes). Then 2020 came and is about to go bringing with it millions of lives lost. And we, doctors have been given more excuses to distance ourselves, excuse ourselves from being a daughter, a sister or a friend because w...

Losing patients never get easy.  Being a doctor for 5 years, we are being continuously trained to hone our "clinical eye" - know when a patient does not look good, when a patient is "critically stable" or when we see hope for recovery. Every day, we get to see patients who sometimes almost touch the face of death just to be pulled out by a thread - only for a few moments to give time for their loved ones to say good bye.   --August 31, 2020 ** I was about to write about things that make me happy these days (wedding planning! akalain mo yun - happy because I feel like everything is falling into place and Robert is almost always saying yes to whatever I want, within reasonable limits of course :p)  Then I came across these unfinished words - I apparently haven't had the chance to finish (writing down) my feelings last August. I remember it to be quite a difficult time, patients who have been very dear to me kept dying left and right, some because of COVID-19, whic...

The virus is evolving. It has become more infectious and more difficult to contain, in fact even more difficult to identify. The hospitals are beginning to feel the demand for isolation units once again. The emergency room slowly becoming more congested, with a lot of backlog patients needing admission but no available rooms. Correction - there are available rooms, but we lack nurses who can attend to these patients. And yet everyday, we see the numbers rising. In the early part of this epidemic, as someone who works in the healthcare, I was afraid - all this is new to me and I see my mentors and the people I look up to struggling for the appropriate management to keep patients alive. That fear was somewhat pacified as we started to see more recoveries, as we close down some covid units and as we slowly transition to the new normal. As we see patients everyday, we  started to see the complications of the lock down - people whose health deteriorated because they were unable to s...

Saying hello to the rest of the world. Been writing a lot these past few days mostly scientific things hence craving for some form of expression in a creative possibly ranting way. You see, I ordered colorful pens online (asked the fiance (because PSJ is my boyfriend. haha. bawal kontra.)) to buy me flourescent and colored gel pens online (because I haven't allowed myself to buy anything online, yet). But they haven't arrived, and so I resort to my next best form of catharsis - writing. Going into three months in our new normal - haven't been home a lot (leaving my extrovert brother at home hoping he does not go insane living alone - buti na lang meron syang kadaily video call. hihi)  since there is still no easy way to go home and staying near the hospital is a lot more convenient; seeing the parents through video calls only (at least easing my anxiety that I might pass on this unseen virus to them); seeing my constant source of happiness only about once or twice sin...