The Freudian Slip Of A Bacolodnon

I had the most toxic duty last night. Although I only had 14 admissions all in all, three of those are very toxic patients. One is a case of massive GI bleed, the other is a case of a seriously large cerebrovascular infarct and the other is acute respiratory distress, a known Chronic renal disease patient secondary to gouty arthritis. Before I went home today, I found out that the stroke patient already died at the ICU. The kidney patient's folks have signed the DNR consent. The GI bleed patient is currently recuperating at the ICU as well. It can be very wearisome at times. It was my first time not to eat dinner on time. It was my first time also to wake up early before breakfast time since I had to go on a much earlier morning rounds to check up on all my toxic admissions. The hardest part was apprising folks of their patient's conditions, especially those who are in a very critical stage. My strong religious background and experience as a campus peer minister have helped me ...

I am currently working on a presentation which is due tomorrow morning. The case that I will be presenting is about a patient I admitted less than 24 hours ago. I am supposed to present a case of thyroid carcinoma but I felt that the case isn't as exciting as this one I recently admitted. This German patient made me stay up almost the entire night, barely 36 hours before my presentation. This morning, with the help of JJ's laptop, I started making my slides, taking pictures of my patient's X-ray films and CT scan. Tomorrow 8 a.m. I will be presenting him, making this case as my last and final presentation for the department of medicine and perhaps for my entire Post-graduate internship. What made this patient "toxic" was the hard labor of performing what would be a quick 20-second bedside procedure: NGT insertion. I made attempts at the E.R. but to no avail. Second set of attempts was done at the I.C.U. in the presence of my bosses. The third set of attempts was w...

In BOLMSH, I officially belong to an unofficial elite circle of interns who share the same 24-hour duty schedules. We call ourselves the magic four for lack of anything to call ourselves. At present, the magic four are: me, gesper, ken and marc. Who are these people? No, they are not superheroes although they do possess some extraordinary skills. Neither are they dieties for they bleed like any human being does. Gesper is a certified pharmacist and graduated from the University of San Agustin. Gesper took his medicine proper in the College of Medicine USLS and along with Marc and me, graduated as one of the pioneers of the said college. Currently, Gesp is still single and this is not by choice. He has a bipolar personality and actually a very complicated person. But life is never that simple for anyone, isn't it? A very talented artist, he can draw, dance, web design and most of all sing. There was one time when we tried to push him to audtion for Pinoy Dream Academy but being the ...

You can't do anything about it. Since J.I. days, the Department of Internal Medicine is always the most toxic department ever. Compared to other departments, the I.M. has the most number of daily admissions, the most frequent ward calls and the most number of morbi patients. During my first 24-hours duty, I had a total of 16 admissions, 3 of which were early morning admissions. How early? Way too early. And I was paired with a usually "benign" junior consultant whose usual quota is only 8-10 admissions. My second duty was somewhat lessened quite a bit with only 10 admissions. And thankfully I was able to have a quick nap during that time as well. My third duty was also quite okay with this time a total of 8 admissions but the ward calls were unstoppable and I had to sleep with the phone literally as my pillow. The previous duty was a little toxic. I had 15 admissions. Thankfully though the ward calls were then a little less and we didn't have to do those scary CPRs or...

Now that the internet connections are up and about, it is time to make a more decent post and for this 2007, let me tell you what happened to me during the last few days of 2006. The last few days of 2006 were almost memorable. They were ordinary days but nevertheless, it was spent more than just ordinarily. On December 30, 2006, I was doing floater-duty for OB-GYNE. I was the last intern to do a floater's job for 2006 and hopefully the last intern to do such for the rest of BOLMSH's history of internship. Thankfully, it was a very benign night duty. I had one patient waiting at the labor room but it was a premature rupture of membrane (29 weeker) so we had to do tocolysis on her to prevent premature labor. Most of my time therefore was spent at the On-call Room together with our in-house interns (whose quarters down at the basement are still recuperating from the flash floods last December 20) and the rest of the interns on duty. Those who were from Iloilo went home except for...