A Servant of Life (St. Jude unit experience)

an inspiring poem from Sister Visencia dedicated to all nurses

Every memory about my stressful work flashed back into my mind. Exposure to agony of seeing death, empathizing terminally ill patients, dealing with relatives of patient full of demands and complaints, choking with workloads, no eating and bladder break during a more than eight hour shift (as usual), thoughts like “may pagkakamali kaya ako?” “may kulang kaya ako?” or “geez! May nakalimutan ako iendorse!” followed by an immediate text or call to the taking over nurse, transfusing blood products which always jeopardize a nurse’s licence and finally, during code time when patients' relatives become very aggressive – my initial response is… and I think, will always be the big word PANIC then I’ll go berserk, dunno what to do and tell myself “crap, why is this happening to me!”  or “God, really!! Whatta _____!” or simply “Pucha talaga  o! Di pa ko tapos sa isa may dumagdag na naman” . Oh, there’s another one – “Takte, sobrang delayed na IV/ IV meds ko, ano  na ba talaga uunahin ko!”  But thank God, there are always good  nurses, nursing aides and excellent doctors!

Super busy except to my senior :) peace! I love`you Ma'am Angel!

The happy times with my St. Jude family

Sister Vicencia at the center - our mentor, our adviser

A smile on a face wouldn't hurt while on night duty

My last day of work at St. Jude unit

Actually, there are more stories to share that will quantify how awful nurse I am and how horribly I felt not being a service champion. Tons of stories and few should remain secret! 
But there were also instances that made me smile. The night parties and laugh sessions with colleagues, appreciation and sense of gratitude coming from some nice patients, orienting  foreign patients about the room and hospital policies (certainly my English fluency and spontaneity is well practiced when they’re around) and once, I almost handled a father of a well-known actor (wala lang, namuling lang ako),  having rounds with consultants (learned a lot from them), encountering different cases of patients especially those confidential ones and felt like I was their special agent not to reveal their diagnosis, sense of bayanihan when coding 2 to 3 patients simultaneously or consecutively, learning to prepare intravenous medications and knowing what they’re for, predicting some resident’s or consultant’s order (coz I got used to what they wrote, though predicting is truly hazardous), correcting doctor's order once in a while, seeing smiles on patients’ faces when they’re discharge and most of all, realizing how amazing it is to save someone’s life after putting our best in doing the cardiopulmonary resuscitation and the possibility of seeing critically ill patients getting better and better each day. Though some were unfortunate but life must go on and healing must continue physiologically or emotionally. 

my St. Joseph family 

Oh what a good start for a tremendously tedious shift!

Sister Vicencia, Ma'am Norie, Ma'am Hydee, Ma'am Iya (my buddy), Ma'am Rchel and our youngest 

and constantly charming charge nurse-Sister Venus

Through tough moments, never forget to beam :)

Our first night swimming 

Sing along with OLLH colleagues 

Post dinner at Mall of Asia 

I am absolutely not perfect.  I always see myself as a newbie, not mature enough to handle life-and-death situations. Decision making is not my forte and I have a slight difficulty in tailoring my profession. (Perhaps, I’m just scared to grasp the possible promotion of being a senior nurse.) 
I must admit, I'm still scared to work overseas. There's always this tremendous fear in me to see someone struggling in my hand. (still wondering why I suddenly let OLLH go but no regrets at all) On second thought, I’m very grateful to be in the medical field - the glory of witnessing how life is being delivered (talking about fetus to newborn) and the trauma of seeing how it's taken away. I started to appreciate the phrase “patience is a virtue” and I've learned to approach most of my patients and their loved ones holistically.  Perhaps, my profession is the most overwhelming, tedious and stressful part of my life, yet I find it the noblest, heroic, astounding…actually, there is no word to compare being a nurse. Nurse is just simply a verb, full of action! 

Dra. Gadia - one of the humblest and most approachable resident I've known

Christmas Eve with Dra. Afos...( I've never seen her angry ever! or if she does, she still looks adorable. Surely, Dr. Arboleda wanna hit on her...peace!!) with Ma'am Kim and Ma'am Jess

Dra.. David and`the whole gang (Ma'am Angel, Ma'am Audrey, Sister V,Ma'am Anna)

St. Therese/ St. Anne family

God, please use my choices to work perfectly into Your purposes.   I love you and thank you, always.