I started my rounds almost 9:00 pm already and the way I assesed my patients, I thought that I will not be hitting the marker on time. I had so much on my plate: constant chest pain, difficulty breathing, IV line out needed reinsertion, IV line to be started, osterized feeding residual, status post chest tube thoracotomy removal with pain at the insertion site, unstable vitals, stat orders from attendings and fellows and early case of coronary angiogram plus three patients due for suppository insertion. Whew! I cannot believe I managed all these and was able to finish my chart on time. The endorsement, including the equipment inventory, was finishedbefore 8:30 am.
I am really getting the hang of it. Although, I envy the other bedside nurse and the charge nurse because they were able to catch some sleep in the wee hours of the morning.

I was furious yesterday. For one, I ended up having 7 patients and another, a male pervert patient patted me on my butt twice. They said he was a doctor but he does not look like one. He is extremely obese confined in bed requiring total care in terms of oral and body hygiene. They said he’s been coming in and out of the hospital for quite a while already. Instead of me having pity on his condition, I tended to hate him. I left the charged nurse for his diaper change and I called upon his bedside nurse to assist him. Maybe that moron has overdosed some testosterone cream making him act that way. It was not the first time that he did that to a nurse. As a precaution, he is being assigned to male nurses.

Yesterday was my last of my straight PM shifts (7pm to 7am) and I am glad that I managed to survive, somehow. I will be on AM shift tomorrow (7am to 7pm) after my two days off and yet I still feel the need to get energized. I have slept all day yesterday and I got up almost lunch time today.
Unlike my colleagues, I do not hate this effin’ job. It is still rewarding, I just hope that I have all the time in the world to carry out my duties without missing any of it. Or in reality, I just hope I could manage my time effectively so I could get to finish all my tasks on time and get home early.

It’s summertime. The heat can be felt as early as seven in the morning. We punched out of the hospital at 10:00 am and headed to the Sunday bazaar at the Lung Center of the Philippines. The stalls are make shifts out of tents and the roofs are too low that you can feel the heat. We are not appropriately dressed for it. We are in our long sleeved white dress and stockings so just imagine how much soaked we were as we hunt for great finds.
It is summer time indeed and this means only one thing, it’s beach time. The perfect cue for me to try unearth my swimwear and custom beach towels

I admitted him the other day, he’s still a bit strong and get up on his feet with littlet assistance until the last night when started to detetiorate physically and neurogolically.
A large mass was found in his brain and the doctors would like to find where it started. Tests were run and revealed that he has adrenocarcinoma in the liver and has metastasized to his brain. An adenocarcinoma is a different type of cancer, it originates from outside of the liver. Adenocarcinoma means a malignant tumor in epithelial tissue, specifically in a gland.
I don’t know if I could ever learn how to hold back my tears in times like this. I was at the bedside when the doctor broke the news to the patient and relatives. They all burst in tears and only a person with no emotion could not be affected.
Last night, he showed no signs of improvement. He is vomiting coffee ground subsstance. We call that hemoptysis. A sign that he is bleeding in the gut which is a sign that the liver is giving up. A nasogastric tube was put in place but he cannot still be fed. He’s complaining of hunger but we cannot him food or fluid by mouth as yet.
Before the midnight strikes, he was moved to medical ICU for close monitoring and we all felt that something bad is waiting to happen.
A few hours after he was moved to ICU, code blue was called there.

It’s my first day of work after the “cat fight” with another staff nurse. Technically, it was not a catfight because I did not engage. I just let her purr…
The girl has been transferred to another ward through drawlots.
At first, I felt a bit unfortable. I felt that everyone’s eyes were on me. Until one of the seniors asked me what happened so I gave my side of the story.
I do not know if they’re just over it or they just want to make things lighter but they start crackin jokes on me telling me to pull my act together so as not to be shouted at.
It was a tiring yet light night.

It was a busy night for me, as usual, but I was able handle the shift smoothly until the incoming staff nurse begun intoxicating me with her demands to endorse my other patient to her. This is what she normally does, makes sure that the endorsement gets done early so she could start or end her shift ahead of the others. It was okay if I was not busy but the thing is, I was attending to two patients when she started asking about the patient that I was supposed to dowload to her. It was really irritating. There was also this other orientee who waits for me to get done so she could endorse all her two patients to me. She was quiet though because we had an agreement that she we let me know if she’s already ready for the endorsement.
So when I was done attending to my patients, I sat down and asked who between them will I attend to, then she snapped at me. Begun with her lithany of me being arrogant. All the three nurses there were shocked. And as the orientee and I started with our endorsement, I tried to assure the orientee that everything will be okay and we giggled. This made the mad nurse furious as she thought we were laughing at her.
I have heard that she had issues with other staff nurses because of her attitude.
I still kept my silence. I wanted to snap back but then again, a mature person would not do that. Instead, I turned the other cheek. She will get transferred to another ward anyway. I cried though in the morning when I got the thing off my chest with my batchmate during our post duty breakfast.
I was thinking if I will let it slide or bring it up to our headnurse.

A grocery store has just opened a few blocks from home and I have been thinking of pursuing my plans of getting a franchise a dumpling foodstand. It will be a close to successful home business if it comes true. Only if I had the capital on hand to start the business I would immediately jump into the opportunity. Maybe I have to wait a little while.

I know for a fact that Karen Carpenter died of anorexia.
I know that it is a serious situation but living in the third world country made me think that it is a far off condition a Filipino could face. We love it. Even if we live in third world country, no one has died of starvation, malnutrition maybe but none of hunger.
Then I came across this patient who was diagnosed of anorexia. She’s in her early 70s and she’s single. She only had her niece to look after her.
Anorexia has took its toll on her health that it caused multisystem failure. She’ retained so much water in her body but her blood pressure became palpatory and her cardiac rate has went way below down the normal level.
Her niece has decided to sign the DNR form except for medications. This means that there would not be attempt to resuscitate the patient through cardiac compressions or other mechanical means but only medications could be given to her to revive.
Just before she left, the niece approached me, telling me just to look after her aunt.
It’s time to pull the plug. They have accepted the patient’s fate.

I was able to punch out at past 10:00 this morning from my 7pm to 7am shift. I was able to finish my focus charts early but I was caught up between the chaos of cleaning chest incision wounds and giving medication to a disoriented patient. I thought I could make it through my shift early. It just as frustrating as my first month of being an orientee. I was home at 12nn and slept immediately but I woke up at 3:00am soaked in sweat. The power supply server in our air tripped and it needed an rv repair It was restored just now and I am trying to get my doze mode back on.