rusted keys

Question: As you are walking along a dusty highway, out of the corner of your eye, you spot a key lying on the ground. Describe the key. Would you pick it up?

I recently got elected as the President of the Phil.Gen.Hospital's Physician's Association (UP-PGH PA). The post was held last year by the Chief Resident of the Dept of Psychiatry. Before that, by a Senior Resident from the Department of Surgery. What with the overall difficulty of managing toxic patients, here I am about to pick up another responsibility.

The PA is a near dead organization. More like a loose association of disinterested individuals with different goals and widely divergent means to an end. I plan on waking this slumbering beast. Make its diversity its strength, make its individual egos its driving power. But first I have to consolidate its key members. Rouse the arms and legs that long lay dormant. May luck shine on us. We would surely need it if we are to survive.

I see you

My last two months in the surgical ICU are almost up. Well I did have a good time in my rotation. Got to meet new people, new personalities. Had to force myself to read though. Its a welcome relief and I did learn much.

I was able to finally sift through and organize at last the SICU jungle of medical abstracts and updated journals. Something I'm really proud of since I personally have met with all the surgeons who have tried for the past 3 yrs (and failed bravely) to keep the files in a more or less user friendly format. Try dealing with 2.5 GB of data in 2.8million something files and you fairly get the idea. All this haphazardly dumped in more than 200 folders and linked and cross linked with each other. No wonder sometimes files just disappear under the tens of daily updates and uploads.

Now try searching for a specific article of interest.

The problem lay not just with record keeping. The more daunting task at hand is how to make all these life saving data available to just about anyone who knows how to use a keyboard. Yep. The answer lay in indexing. Search through individual files for certain keywords within each document and you have a prescription for masochism induced insanity.

In retrospect, the answer lay in front of me all the time. For how can one see the path when one is already walking it? Suffice it to say that I did have my share of sleepless nights (just two though), tweaking the files and putting them up in proper order.

That is my gift to the next SICU rotators.

A wealth of information literally at their fingertips. Now made accesible to anyone who knows how to type.

hahaha..

What Famous Leader Are You?
personality tests by similarminds.com

that sounds accurate enough. ;P

tempus fugit..

in a few more days, I shall be leaving my BURN Surgery rotation. the future looks bleak. I am about to face three grueling months of TCVS residency training (Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery). Not that I dont like TCVS, in fact, I love doing their procedures and operations. Its just that I probably wont be able to spend as much time doing nonessential stuff as compared to the past month. My, how time flies..

the final arc..

In order to embrace the light, one must dance in the darkness. Both are sides of the same force, both misunderstood, both misused. Only by death will one understand the force fully, only with life can one use it completely. To master the ways of the force entails immersion in all its multifaceted and often contradicting qualities. BECAUSE TO MASTER THE FORCE IS TO MASTER THE SELF.

Anakin, your life's journey made you what you are. You have walked paths both dark and light, as such you have become more powerful than any Jedi (or any Sith for that matter) can ever hope to become. You have completed the circle of the force for in the end you become the embodiment of both sides of the force, neither one nor the other, yet both at the same time.

And at the end of your journey, you will realize, that you are right back where you started.
Conclude your journey across the force. We eagerly await your emergence. FOR IN DEATH, YOU ARE REBORN, AND IN INNOCENCE YOU ARE ENLIGHTENED.

Lumos!

(postscript: pleeeeassse read the blog: THE DARTH SIDE: MEMOIRS OF A MONSTER
by CheeseburgerBrown through whom the ephemeral thread of Anakin's existence gains perennial relevance.a great read!)

65 hours and counting..

the choice is clear so it seems..

All I have to do is go on duty for 72 hours straight. that means I could see her during the time that we are actually both off duty. No more half visits, hurried social calls, tempered stop-overs. In 7 more hours, I would be officially off duty (though I couldnt get out of the hospital until after office hours translating to a whopping 84 hour hospital stay).

I could hardly wait to see her..

there and back again..

Bilbo Baggins said it right.

THERE AND BACK AGAIN seems like a fairly accurate description of a surgeon's life. Well atleast a resident surgeon's. Been goin up and down the PAY WARDS the whole night. The nurses at the PAY stations mustve thought it pretty amusing to see a surgeon on his 48th hour of duty run up and down at the slightest behest and request of a patient and their relatives only to recall him once he reached the ground floor just to verify his orders..

How I wish there was an instantaneous transporter already invented. One that would copy your biochemical makeup in one terminal and effectively purge it of all conscious existence ( the body being just an agglomeration of chemical entities bound in a special way) and faithfully reassembling one's chemical constituents at another. The destruction or dissipation of the passenger's chemical structure at the first terminal must be complete. Otherwise there would be TWO passengers as a result of the replication process..

The body is relentlessly renewed every so often after all. One's outer skin turns over every week or so. One's gastric lining becomes renewed every 48 hrs. One's blood dies every 120days (obviously, not at the same time) only to be constanly renewed by the creation of new cells manufactured by the body from basic chemical compounds taken from the environment. One is never completely what one was a few seconds ago. In a span of a few years, most, if not nearly all of one's cells would have been lost , replaced or recreated such that in an objective point of view, one is never really materially existing in time.

But then again an instantaneous transporter would open a whole battery of philosophical musings and whatnots which (as dictated by my ephemeral temporal and non-Euclidean status) I would rather not spend time dwelling on.

Got to go. Got to answer another call..

and I thought I'd be spared..

The BURN Unit is closed for renovation. As such we dont see as many burn patients as we used to. was actually preparin for a nice comfy nap at the station when my fone started ringin. I hate ER consults. Would've been nice if they have the full complement of sutures and stuff. Imagine giving me a ROUND needle with a cotton 2.0 suture to stitch a screaming child's bleeding lacerated scalp?(for those unbaptized to medical lingo, surgeons use a CUTTING needle to pierce the skin, a ROUND needle is for muscle and fasciae while a 2.0 cotton suture is definitely way way larger than a 4.0 suture that I would be comfortable using..) The idiosyncracies of surgeons never end.

Yeah I know. we make do with what little we have.Whatever gets the job done, gets it done. right?

"Dont let your limitations limit you" as one big time surgeon used to say. But then again, if they dont do exactly that, why call them limitations? maybe the term TEMPORARY INCONVENIENCES is more apt and appropriate.

Anyway, the child is resting now. Its the mom I'm quite concerned with. She was quite pale when she was watchin me suture.

lets see how long I can maintain this blog...

henceforth..

Patterns of fate: our struggle unfolding
Unraveling future in our hands are revealed
Grasp the quill that penned the songs of dawn rising
Arise horizon's children, begin an epic unsealed.

Dreams of liberation stir sleeping blood by morning
Light long lost, these silent souls pursue
Ad astra per aspera: heed lessons learned from mourning
Weave living songs of greatness, honor and virtue.

It is NOT a matter of chance, but a matter of choice.
Now we bleed for we need to heed destiny's voice

(historic trivia: the quill that penned the dawn of PUGADLAWIN was from an eagle's bloodied left wing. Such information is both literal and metaphorical..hmmm..after reading BETWEEN the lines, you might enjoy reading DOWN the lines..first letters only.. Aaah, its good to be back..)

This should work.

Why? Coz I said so!
Seriously. Because it's hideous knowing this is turning into something complicated just coz this system, which supposedly is maintained by high-class information techies, is not working the way it should. I like things simple. Don't you?
Actually... as expected of new accounts, new blogs, new entries, almost anything new and as fresh as the green leafy vegetable only found in the legendary Arcadia (believe it or not, there is such a thing), this is the entry having "TESTING... 1, 2, 3..." as the only point. Do you read?
And yes, this is THE girlfriend talking (and tinkering with this whole thing), so this better... *umpf*