♫ So this is Christmas... ♪

I had already resigned myself to the fact that I will not be having a very merry Christmas, seeing as I was set to be on duty Christmas Eve (yet again). However, I did not expect to have a spectacularly sucky Christmas.

Let's start with breakfast. I didn't have any. Strike One.

I was so tired from not being able to sleep during the last 2 duties that Christmas Eve morning, I got out of bed late and I couldn't really take my time since I had to accompany Marisse on her panicked Christmas shopping. But I wasn't really hungry. For the past few days, maybe from all the stress, I was having indigestion and I felt bloated or something so yeko ra.

Shopping, shopping, shopping... then lunch. I really wanted to eat at KFC and while we had allowed for the lunch rush to subside, there were still a lot of people. I was seated at the table I was saving and Marisse was ordering our food. I really, really wanted to eat their Famous Bowl (with all the mashed potatoes drowning in gravy) BUT they did not have any. Strike Two.

We finished shopping just as the stores were about to close. (Actually, we were still at the cashier when they started turning off the lights.) I had an hour to get home and then head to the hospital. And I hadn't even wrapped my Christmas presents! (I had finished my Christmas shopping a week ago but I wasn't able to wrap them because whenever I got home from work, I, more often than not, ended up falling asleep in my work clothes, drooling on occasion.) So, with my duty bag packed and lugging around another bag with my unwrapped presents, I headed off to work, starving and optimistic that I could always have a Jollibee Christmas dinner.

I was so wrong.

Jollibee was closed and so was the convenience store in the gasoline station nearby. Well, I really couldn't get rightfully pissed because who was I to begrudge their employees their Christmas celebrations? Anyway, I trudged back to the hospital and made a Christmas Eve feast of the instant noodles I had purchased weeks before in the event of food emergencies. I just didn't think it'd be on Christmas Eve. Strike Tres..

I wasn't hungry anymore but neither was I satisfied. And it seemed like the hospital grinch was following me. I got a ward call for an IV insertion and when I entered the patient's room, there was the Christmas Feast I could not have. So while I was inserting an IV on his left hand, said patient was gorging himself on various meats and sweets with his right hand. Rub it in, why don't you.

My ward shift ended and just when I thought that the fates would not be so cruel as to send me admissions on Christmas Day, a 3-year old was brought in by his mother at 3 in the morning because of a 4-day fever. *sigh* The kid was foul-mouthed, too. Not because of all that vomiting, but mostly in reference to all the cursing. The mother was trying to placate him by threatening him with an angry baby Jesus but the kid continued summoning the devil, screaming, "Yawa!"

Dear Doctor,

Good morning and Merry Christmas. I would like to inform you that you have an admission. Yes, on Christmas Day. Three year old male, in for 4 days fever and vomiting. Clear breath sounds, non-hyperemic tonsils, mild dehydration. History of previous febrile seizures. Neurologic status: GCS 14-15, drowsy, irritable, possessed. No history of illicit drug use or previous exorcism. Diazepam 3mg IV prn for seizure, restlessness and general evil. Patient admitted at Station 4C, just above the hospital chapel.

Love,

Farina

At 12 noon today, my duty ended. I still have 12 hours left to Christmas but I have a feeling I will end up asleep in my work clothes again, most likely drooling on my pillow.

But that's okay. I'm optimistic. Jesus wasn't even born on the 25th. I can have my Christmas some other day. (Like on Sunday! During the annual 4R and Friends Christmas Party!)

Why I'm starting to think using Lysol as a body spray is a good idea.

Call me unproductive but my choices of things to do when I'm bored range from mindless internet surfing, to reading senseless books, to watching *stoopid* movies and tv series. This is not to include Purposeful Internet Searches in The Pursuit of Knowledge, Reading of Profound or Mysterious Books That Stimulate The Mind, and Viewing of Award-Winning Films That Give Insights Into Humanity. Those I actually schedule and plan, with snacks on the side. (Because all meaningful activities need snacks.)

But for the past few weeks, there have been precious little opportunities to be bored. And who would be, really? Not if you're at the hospital practically everyday, getting kicked in the face while inserting IV lines, avoiding huge hulking males who throw tantrums (as well as drinking glasses), trying to stop babies from coming out of vaginas because the obstetrician hasn't arrived.... yes, hospital life can be pretty exciting, if not terribly exhausting. (And just now, EARTHQUAKE! See??? Exciting.)

Anyway, since days off are very rare luxuries at the moment, I spend it doing whatever the hell I want, regardless of its level of productivity. Some mornings, just before taking a bath, it feels nice to just say, "Hey, I think I'll just stare at the ceiling for an hour. Maybe two.", and I just do it. Stare at the ceiling and think about totally random things like why I have the eyelashes of a boy or why my wrists never get fat.

I don't know. It's the same as last year. I always get busier during the Christmas season. I'm never at home and when I am, it's only to sleep and recharge until the next duty. I feel like I've changed residence. Sometimes, I just want to start begging for a change in scenery, any scenery.

I really should get out of this hospital for a while. I'm beginning to get addicted to the surgically sterile smell of the white Lysol. (But it really does smell awesome. I want to spray it on my face.)

December 26 is the new Christmas

So it's been awhile.

At the risk of sounding absurdly adult, I've been really busy with work. I'm on duty practically everyday that consultants and co-residents alike have been poking fun at me being literally a resident physician. Incidentally, I was on duty December 24 and 25 so Boxing Day is going to have be my Christmas Day.

However, I do try to make up for my lack of a social life by going out on my very few days off, under any circumstance. Take December 19 where I had my very first taste of Tanduay Rhum. Which, although did not render me totally wasted, got me sufficiently tipsy enough to belt out Bon Jovi's It's My Life at a KTV bar. Photographic evidence has been burned and buried in radioactive waste. Hopefully.

December 23 saw me at the cinema.

Alone.

Watching James Cameron's Avatar.

I had planned to watch it with friends but said friends had either:

1. already seen it

2. no plans to see it

3. appointments with orphans

Can't compete with orphans really.

So I ended up, for the first time in my entire life, watching the movie alone. It really isn't all that different from watching a movie in the confines of your room but while I'm perfectly used to talking to myself, it really is much more fun to mock trailers when you're with someone.

I mean, seriously. The tagline for the movie I Love You, Goodbye was "In a world where hearts are easily broken, sometimes I love you is Goodbye."

Really.

Anyway, back to Avatar. Great movie although reminiscent of Fern Gully but with better graphics. Reminiscent of Braveheart as well, during the part where Jake talks to the Omaticaya about defending their land, except he was very conveniently already blue without the aid of war paint and he lacked the distinct Scottish brogue. "Ye may take our land, but ye cannae take our liberty!" LOL.

Like I said, the graphics were outstanding however one scene stood out and made me think one of the graphic artists may have been a marine biologist or could be absurdly into zooplankton.

Remember the tiny flying creatures they referred to as the Eywa or something?

I may be the only person within a 100 mile radius who sees it but they look like plankton. Apart from the multiple antennae in an umbrella configuration akin to the bell of a jellyfish, they pretty much look like the generic zooplankton. At first I thought it was similar to the genus Oithona but on closer inspection, they were closer to the genus Calocalanus. (Forgive me. Crazy about plankton. Always have been since my thesis.)

Anyway, did my Christmas shopping on the fly as well. Overall, I'm tired but I'm happy. (Why does that remind me of an Alanis Morissette song?)

Of course, one cannot totally depart from geekish ways so in between duties and blogs, I am all atwitter because Ronza, MouseHunt merchant extraordinaire, has arrived and is selling the coolest traps that will beat the shit out of even the most badass of mice.

Merry Christmas. ^_^

Shake your moneymaker...

When Christmas rolled around last year, I was interning at a private hospital in Bacolod. In that hospital, it had become a tradition for post-graduate interns to go caroling and extort money from the consultants to fund the end-of-internship trip to Boracay. Highest collection since the start of the tradition was P75,000 so the bar was set pretty high already.

Now, not all of us could dance. I could sing well enough to stay in tune but I was no performer. But there was just something about the people there that made me achieve the impossible. I sang and danced. For money.

I sang and danced for money.

And after we sang and danced for money, we posed like the moneymakers we were.


This went on for about a month. Maybe there was something in the Negros water but I would never ever have done this in my hometown. I guess geography really does have an effect on lifestyle. Anyway, it wasn't permanent. I crammed this side of me into a footlocker a million leagues under the sea the moment I stepped onto a boat on my way home to lovely, sedate Cagayan de Oro.

BTW, we raised P110,000. What up! (I love Barney...)