I felt weak in the knees learning that our patient whom I wrote about in November last year, died after undergoing another operation to close her infected chest wound.
In December of last year, she underwent coronary artery bypass graft to cure the blocked three vessels in her heart. Her peritoneal dialysis was temporarily put on hold on the day of the operation but was resumed the following day in the recovery room.
The patient was uneventful in the recovery room and in the surgical ICU. She was even transferred to our ward, in the same room about three days post operation. She was about to be discharged after a few more days and they have settled everything until on the day of her discharge, the nurses noticed heavy amount of serosanguinous fluid oozing from her operation site. The discharge order was deferred.
She was cut open again to let the tissues granulate. She was also referred to the Infectious Disease Service and wound gram stain culture and sensitivity revealed heavy growth of e. Coli (Escherichia coli). After a couple of weeks of wound dressing by the surgeons and antibiotic treatments, she was scheduled for wound re-closure. It also went well. She was transferred to surgical ICU and the unthinkable happened. Her blood pressure dropped and she crashed. There was nothing they could do to revive her . The relatives requested DNR.
I felt chills down to my spine hearing the bad news. One cannot defy fate.

December is the perfect month for reunions.  There so many announcement and invites son facebook  about high school and college reunions. I myself has been invited to attend our high school reunion next month. There are class rings high school that will be given as memento of this rare occasion.  I am really excited to sit down with my former classmates and catch up with them.

I am an advocate of one’s right to free air but I also have friends to really cannot control their urge to puff the cigarettes. I just smile at them when they try to sneak out of the office and exchange Padron with one another just to satisfy their cravings. I know that they are old enough to know the consequence of their actions and they are responsible enough limiting their smoke-intake.

It is really heart breaking to learn that the person that you cared for for how many days will be gone in a blink of an eye or someone you are just talking to the other day just lost his or he life to something tragic. Well, what do we know? As the bible says, death will come like a thief in the night that is why it is imperative that we have life insurance guaranteed issue to protect us from the world’s uncertainties.

I have been wanting to buy the Littmann Cardiology Stethoscope. Since I wanted it badly and I do not want to break my bank, I decided to go for the Littmann Cardiology III Stethoscope: Burgundy 27″ with free engraving. I skipped the first website that I have visited since they charge extra for the engraving and they pass on a hefty tax. I settled for Medisave.net as they offer free laser engraving and everything was tax free . I saved about $30 for that. I have added 3 Liquid Syringe Pens and I was billed a total of $167.26 including the shipping fee. I tried to check out using my MasterCard and I have gotten the message that there was an error validating my account so I tried again, to my dismay, I got the same error message. I tried re-doing the check out procedure all over again and that time I was prompted that the authorization was declined. I have not gotten any confirmation that my transactions went through. Nervous that I was billed for the previous attempts, I called BPI’s phonebanking and got hold of Sabrina. She confirmed that I was billed twice for P7244.03 for my online transaction. She told me to get in touch with the online shop so they could void the said transactions since I have not received any confirmation which might be a glitch on the online shop’s part.
I have emailed them and got the confirmation ticket for my complaint. It was 3:00 pm then and I have not received word from them. I tried calling their hotline on MagicJack but all I hear was a recording that their office was closed at that time.
For the love of me, I need to have these things ironed out. I want my money back and I want my stethoscope.
I need someone to save me from this mess

This is crazy. I am nearing my mid-life but I am still to yet to get my own car. Yet being the operative word is not will be in the next 5 years. I am not fretting though because my long time friend promised to be my constant designated driver whenever and wherever. Being behind the wheel for almost three months, I made her promise to get cheap auto insurance. We have to be sure just in case.

I just want to scream in frustration. I have been staying in the ward after my shift for at least two hours. It is because my shift was not enough to fulfil my duty. We have 5 level 2s and so many high level 1s in the ward. To top it all off, the relatives are annoyingly demanding. I know that they want only the best for their loved ones but most of them are already going way over board. You have to make them understand that they are not the only patients in the ward.
I called the ward this after to check my sked tomorrow. I spoke with the then charge nurse and he quickly told me that he will just text me my sked because they were about to intubate one of our level 2 patients. I told myself that level 2 will be lessened but to my surprise. I got a text from my senior that although the said patient was intubate, the patient’s daughter who is a doctor fought her way to keep the patient in the ward.
Hospital and sanitation policy states that intubated patients should be placed in the ICU for close monitoring and it requires the expertise of ICU nurses.
Aaargh…
If someone says that nurse’s work is easy, that person has to be exposed to our lives.

I have so many cases to write about but I have little time to research on it. While most of our patients are getting better, the situation in the ward gets tougher as days go by.
We have this patient who we kept avoiding. Like what the one of the cardio fellows has complained, the patient’s case and attitude are toxic, her relatives are difficult to handle and to top it all off is her attending physician as demanding and as irrational as her patient.
We try our hardest to understand that the patient is on her end stage of cancer and she deserves all the best care that she could have. The thing is, the patient, her relatives and her attending are known to be inconsiderate. We just could take their attitude anymore.
They kept on complaining about our ward’s service but they kept on choosing our ward to have the patient confined in. It is just too much and our head nurse could not agree more.

The tattoo that one has is as good as the feeling you had when you decided to get the permanent ink pricked into your skin. I can’t help but wonder how my ex-boyfriend will get rid of my name tattoed in his bicep. He had it when he was still madly inlove with me and now that our relationship had turn sour, I do not know how will explain the indelible mark to his new partner. He must have bought tons of tattoo removal cream to erase that now unsightly mark.

The constantly changing shift in the hospital has created a disturbance on my sleep pattern. It is hard for me to get in bed before 12 midnight and as a result it is hard for me to get up so early in the morning. Counting sheeps never worked for me. I am thinking of popping some sleep pill to tuck me to bed before the crack of dawn.