looking forward

time flies when you're having fun.

or when you're not paying attention.

or both.




the year was 2007. fresh from passing the board exams (barely, if i may say so), i was pondering my career options. which specialization was i to take? there are a few number of choices.

one was surgery. i always loved surgery. back in medical clerkship and internship i always loved it when i get to scrub in. sure, back in clerkship all we ever had to do was to retract and expose the operating field (a painstaking task, especially if you had to keep the operating field exposed for 5 hours straight). but back in internship i was able to perform minor operations in the outpatient department and even had the opportunity to perform a few uncomplicated surgeries from cutting to closing. i enjoyed it. it is a very exciting field. the drawback is that it is a very stressful specialty. long hours in the operating room, on-call status, long work hours. for someone with a medical history such as myself, i don't think i would survive 5 years of surgery residency. too bad.

January 2007 during the Surgical Mission

another option was pediatrics. i loved being around children. i like playing with them, goofing around with my little patients even if it means making a fool out of myself. and kids seem to gravitate towards me, i don't know why. i guess they think i'm a kid too, although much bigger than they are. my little patients seem at ease with me. i can even make a baby stop crying when his/her mother fails to do so. it's a great joy, being around kids. i feel younger when i'm with my little patients. but sadly, when your patients are little kids and you tend to be sickly, you really can't hang with them too much. i'd make their conditions worse rather than make them better. again, too bad.

early morning at the nursery

one other option was radiology. it has always interested me, radiology. to diagnose a patient's condition using imaging techniques, that's just fascinating! a simple x-ray study can give you so much information on what you're dealing with. plus, the workload is not so much like in the other specialties. with the advancements in technology, radiology has become a very appealing field especially now that everything can be converted into a digital format and you can view the images anywhere, be it at the hospital, in the coffee shop or even at home. very, very appealing. plus, it's very challenging. so i ended up in radiology.

i applied to different hospitals after researching which has good training programs. i was fortunate enough to have been accepted into one of the best. but once i started residency, i realized how not so benign radiology can be. sure, you interpret imaging studies. but to do that for the entire day even until the unholy hours during duty nights is very tiring. i often get migraines from staring at the bright lights of the negatoscope (view box) or from looking at images on the computer monitors. and the imaging studies just keep on coming and coming. that's the drawback of getting into one of the busiest hospitals in the metro. and when you do get some time off to catch a few z's, you'll hear a knock on the door and waiting on the other side is an intern or a fellow resident who's requesting you to do an initial read of an x-ray film (if you're lucky) or a ct scan or mri study. to miss a crucial finding is a big no-no. you wouldn't want the emergency department to send home a patient because you said the study was normal only to realize hours after that the patient has a fracture only very subtly seen in the x-ray and you missed it because you were half asleep when you were looking at his/her film hours before. and i never knew there were so many books to read. each organ system has their own reference, and each modality has their own book as well. i spent more on books now compared to med school.

although it was unexpectedly tough, it was also fun. i am very fortunate to have co-residents that are good-natured, fun to be with, and who do not care about the hierarchy of residents. and the consultants are all very nice. they even take the time to teach.

time flies fast. one minute i was just starting residency, and now i'm almost done with my 3rd year. and wouldn't you know it, i was appointed as chief resident for next year. there are two of us actually. but still, chief resident. i never wanted nor dreamed of it. if there was a way to, i wouldn't be chief next year. but i guess things happen for a reason. of course being made chief is a huge honor, but it comes with a very big responsibility. i do hope i can live up to the expectations.

so here's to 2011. it's going to be one heck of a year, that i'm sure.

amnesia

i totally forgot about this.

back in college and in the early part of med school, i often found the time to write down my thoughts using pen end paper and this medium we call blogging. i've had a few blogs here and there, some of which are still active even if i don't visit these sites anymore. such was the case in this one. i totally forgot that i had this. if not for my google account i wouldn't have stumbled upon this little space in the internet i call my other blog (yes, like i said, i have a few blog sites).

when i first created this blog, i was planning to make it into an informational blog. being in the field of medicine, i planned to make this as some sort of a resource blog for cases, different illnesses, and other medicine-related stuff. i guess i never did accomplish that. but hopefully now i'll be able to inject some cases here, interesting stuff i've encountered during my training.

so here's to re-opening this blog. i do hope i find the time to fill this up with interesting stuff.

Rebirth: Gary V. @ 25

A couple of nights back, a friend mentioned that he can include me in a list of people with reserved seats for the Gary V. Rebirth concert. At the mention of the name Gary V., I suddenly became excited. Here was a guy that who sings songs I enjoy listening to, and to see him live would just be awesome! So I said, "I'm in!"


Oh, I forgot to mention that I went there with my girlfriend. She's a fan of Gary V. as well.

So off we went to Eastwood City. Traffic was bad, but we were able to arrive with time to spare. Ate dinner at one of the fine establishments before taking our seats. The usher mistakenly brought us to the VIP section, and we were almost seated beside Mark Escueta of Rivermaya.

Before we knew it, the concert began. As soon as Gary V. stepped on that stage, it was excitement nonstop. The guy is electric! He has so much energy when performing, you can't help but move along. His charisma transcends different generations, be the young ones or the young once were having a great time. I liked it when he sang his classic hits like Sana Maulit Muli and Take Me Out of the Dark, as well remix of Shout For Joy which was emixed by his son, Gabriel. He sang a brand new song called Ohhh as well, which I'm starting to like because it's so catchy. We enjoyed the part where e performed with his son Gabriel as well. That kid is the next Mr. Pure Energy if you ask me.

Gary V. didn't just dance and sing, he also shared some inspirational thoughts. And I appreciated that. He really does want everybody to feel good during his shows.

After the concert, there was a meet and greet. People lined up to have cds signed as well as take pictures with him. The line was moving so slow, and we weren't able to wait any longer. Too bad. Maybe I'll get my chance during his concert at November.

All in all, we enjoyed the experience. Great food, great show, what more can you ask for? Eastwood City really has it all.

breathless

i can't breathe.

that was my first thought when i woke up. i was having chest discomfort. it felt like all the air was sucked out from my lungs. i was starting to feel numb. and i knew right away that i was having another asthma attack.

thank goodness my inhaler was just an arm's reach from the bed. one, two puffs. it gave little relief. i've had times wherein i had really severe exacerbations almost bordering to status asthmaticus. no one was around to drive me to the hospital. so i drove myself to the nearest emergency room. three sessions of nebulizations later, i was able to breathe easier.

in my readings when i was still in med school, i've read that asthma exacerbations are trigerred when exposed to certain triggering factors. it can be trigerred by allergens like dust, or ingesting some food items like seafoods. it can also be triggered if someone is under stress. avoidance of such triggering factors is one of the managements of asthma. a pulmonologist from my med school once jokingly said that med students who have asthma get exacerbations because of the stress that med school brings. so therefore, clerks and interns should be excused form duty so as to avoid asthma attacks. i told him i second that motion.

have to get some rest. tomorrow is going to be another long and tiring duty.

i was never really a fan of blogging.

back in college, i started a blog because i wanted to comment on a friend's blog. since i already created the account, i thought to myself that i might as well use it. so i blogged. most were just nonsense happenings in my daily life, but there are rare posts wherein i share my philosophies and beliefs.

that blog had many uses. i used it to vent off my anger and frustrations. i wrote on it when i needed to tell someone something but no one was actually available for me to share it with. sometimes, i let some of my creativity run loose on it.

i came across the idea of paid blogging. at first i thought that it was nonsense and that nobody would actually do it. but i heard of real stories wherein people really got paid and all they did was blog. so i think i'll give it a try.

so here is yet another blog from yours truly.