Admission #138: Motivational Powerpoint
I got inspired by this article on buzzfeed and I made my own motivational powerpoint of my favorite good-looking guys and encouragement to keep me studying.
I feel like I should add some ladies too because beautiful, strong women are crazy-inspirational as well.
SGD HOMEWORK.
may usapan kame ni papa kanina dahil nanghihingi ako ng pera para sa lakad ko bukas (ARAL KASI YUN).tas tinanong niya ako kung may gas pa sasakyan ko. Sabi ko wala. Sabi niya sa akin, “bibigyan pa ba kita?” Sagot ko: “mukha ba akong may pera papa? kung patabihin mo nga ako sa isang mahirap (yuck, mayaman ako?) na walang ginagawa, mas mukha pa akong mahirap e” “halata naman na kasing haggard ako diba?” wala lang. :)) sobrang sabaw na, kailangan ko kasing piliting sagutan at intindihin tong bwakanang sgd na ‘to e. :| Pahshet sila. :(
Second Semester Schedule
Physio Mondays Medical Physiology (Mas masarap pakinggan ang Physio Fridays (last sem schedule), pero mas masarap sa pakiramdam na matanggalan ng TINIK sa simula pa lang ng linggo)
HisTuesdays Histology (Slide, slide and away! Eto ang pinakasayang na araw… intayin ang Friday)
BioWednesdays Medical Biochemistry (I HATE LOATHE Biochem)
Gross Thursdays Gross Anatomy (Gusto ko ‘tong subject na ‘to, minus the cadaver, minus the smell of the cadaver, minus our cadaver without a head)
FEthicsAn Fridays Family and Community Medicine, Medical Ethics, Neuroanatomy (Kamusta naman ang pagsama-samahin ang “MINORS” [1.5 units, 1.0 unit, 1.0 unit, respectively] this sem. Hello, Biostatistics, Negligence & Malpractice, and hundreds of terms to memorize!)
SATURDAY-SUNDAY Dee-op (Day Off)
P.S. 17.5 units LANG ang load ko this sem.
MEDLIFE Peru 1/4/12 Day 5
Today was a sleepy, lazy day. I seriously slept a ridiculous amount today. After only about five hours of sleep since people were partying loudly the night before, I woke up at the usual 5:50am, got ready, and headed down to breakfast. To supplement what they gave us, I also ate a yogurt and mango I bought from the Wong supermarket. I’ve noticed that we go there almost every day. It’s like our daily Wong trip ritual. Haha. Anyway, breakfast was standard, bread, jam, eggs, and ham. Nothing special.
I was so tired that after I finished breakfast, I collapsed on my bed again and just laid there for another 15 minutes before heading downstairs. I wanted to sleep on the bus, but I ended up spending the entire time talking to one of the Berkeley MEDLIFErs. Today I did the doctor station and toothbrushing. The place we went to was really nice. They had nicely maintained buildings and were relatively clean, compared to many of the other places we went to. So once at the doctor’s station, I worked with Marla. She spoke a little bit of English and I understood some Spanish so we were able to communicate tolerably. The patients that came in had a lot of common illnesses: rhinitis, skin infections, colds, etc. There was one woman who came in with a severe UTI. While I was talking to Marla, I told her how I was interested in becoming a pediatrician. She responded in English, “You’re very brave.” I was wondering why she said that until one kid came in screaming and kicking. Okay, maybe I’ll look into another specialty (I’m kidding, I still want to do pediatrics). We pretty much worked nonstop until about noon before we switched stations. But yeah, I felt pretty bad, especially since the sleepiness started to kick in around 10am. I could feel my eyes getting heavier even as she was talking to me. I tried to keep myself awake and it took all of my willpower.
The second station was toothbrushing. Unfortunately since it was the PM shift, there weren’t too many kids left. Fortunately, the station was right by the Wawa Wasi Day Care Center, which I believe is kinda like a national program for daycare. We got to take pictures with the little kids. There was this girl, Ciela, who was about 4 years old. We tossed one of those playpen balls around and we even got to take pictures with her and another ADORABLE little boy. I was satisfied with all the pictures I took. Yay!
We packed up and left. I fell asleep on the bus. I just couldn’t take it. I fell asleep right as we started moving and woke up right when we arrived. 45 minutes of solid sleep. Once we got back to the hostel, there was a 5-person line for the shower, so I took another 40 minutes of sleep. After the nice shower and getting into nice clean clothes and makeup, I had to wait another 10 minutes before the meeting started. So thus, I made the very well-thought out decision to lay on my bed and “rest” for another 10 minutes. I woke up 2 hours later at 6:15, just in time for dinner. I completely slept through the meeting. Oh well.
Anyway, I went to dinner since I was madly starving, which consisted of a tamale as the appetizer and beef and mashed potatoes for dinner. It was strange, since the appetizer was very Peruvian, while the dinner seemed like an American imitation. I think they think that we can’t really handle Peruvian food so they’re trying to give it to us in small amounts haha. We made our daily Wong trip after dinner and then headed back to the hostel.
We headed over water park in Miraflores that night. Basically, it was a bunch of fountains in a really big park. Some of the fountains were just purely for show, while others you could play in. I really wanted to go in, but it was pretty cold and I had already showered. There was one fountain that was basically an arc of red-colored water that we could walk under. My friends and I walked under it and I ended up getting wet when someone decided to splash me T_T anyway, we just walked around for a bit until we met up with the rest of the group by a larger fountain area where they had a light show, similar to fantasmic at Disneyland. It was interesting: there were lots of different geometric shapes and traditional Peruvian dances. It was cool and entertaining. Afterward, we were all so tired we headed back to the hostel and fell asleep fast.
MEDLIFE Peru 1/3/12 Day 4
Stairs today. I’ll update tomorrow when I’m not dead exhausted and have time. Right now I have to try to sleep through the ridiculous partyers in the pool outside my room. T_T
EDIT -
Sorry if this is a bit short. I’ve had an exhausting day so I’m writing this on January 4, 2012. So we woke up later than yesterday since we were having breakfast between 6-7. I woke up pretty late (around 5:45) since I figured it wouldn’t take me too long to get ready for stairs anyway. I made my way down and ate one of the yogurt cups I bought the day before. We also had the basic bread and butter, which also came with some sort of ham (that had a peppery taste to it) and some meat spread, similar to the type they put on Vietnamese sandwiches. I was just happy I was getting some protein and not as many carbs. Plus I’ll need that energy to work today on the stairs.
We loaded onto the bus, which contained both UGA, Oregon, and Berkeley people and drove toward the site. I fell asleep during the ride since I was so tired. While we were driving there, I kept thinking, “ oh this isn’t so bad!” But when we finally arrived, I looked up at the path that we were supposed to travel up and I was awestruck. It was steep and slippery, especially since it really was just a hilly area with dirt, sand, and rocks. The trek up was okay; I slipped a couple of times and was traumatized but once we got to the area where the previous day’s group had finished the stairs, we were able to walk up.
When we got to the top, the view was AWESOME. We could see the coast from how high we were. It was pretty warm, but luckily there was a breeze and the sky was a little overcast. First we started with shoveling and mixing the sand and cement. We shoveled the pile right and left again. We then formed a pool to hold the water in order to make the cement. I didn’t do much since I figured I wouldn’t be much help anyway, so I just chilled and applied a third layer of sunblock.
While the cement mixture was being made, we went down the side of the hill to where the wood planks were forming the stairs. This was treacherous. I slipped so many times and had so many life-threatening accidents, I was terrified. Once I was able to find a nice foot hold and place to stand, the passing of the buckets commenced. I have to say, I’ve developed nice arm muscles from that workout. We were basically passing buckets of cement from the mixing area at the top of the mountain to where the stairs were being made halfway down the mountain. I did this for maybe about an hour, sweating profusely, before I switched to the other line which worked on passing empty buckets from the bottom back to be refilled at the top. It was pretty efficient and we worked pretty hard right up until 12:00 when we had to make the treacherous climb back down to get lunch.
Omg that trek was HORRIBLE. Luckily, Joe, one of the MEDLIFE staff, was there to hold my hand and guide me down, but I basically crabwalked down half of that side of the mountain since it offered more stability than just standing and walking. Once we got to the bottom, I was so hungry I had a cereal bar, an entire water bottle, and two sandwiches. FATTIE. It took us about 30 minutes and then we headed back up the hill.
Once back up, it was time for us to start the second set of stairs, but we needed to transport water from water tanks to the cement mixing site. So again, we formed an assembly line, but since the distance was so great, there was at least 10 feet of distance between persons. So we had to carry buckets of water and pass them down to the next person. Being the uncoordinated person that I am with horrible balance, I splashed at least an entire bucket of water on myself while passing them down. I was completely drenched. That plus how dirty the buckets were meant that I was basically caked in dirt; that really didn’t work well with the sweat either. After that, we formed the assembly line again to pass down the cement buckets. Since I was now an experienced cement bucket carrier, I knew the tricks to help me through it. I took another swig of water, found stable footing, and began passing buckets. We took a couple of breaks, but we were working for about 5 hours, just passing cement buckets. During one of our breaks, a community member, Cleo, brought us some Chicha morado to drink. It’s basically a purple colored juice made from corn that tastes similar to jelly beans. Another member also bought us inca Cola, which is a Peruvian soda which tastes similar to bubble gum. We were pretty proud with the amount of work we did, especially since we had less community members helping us out that day, but we did way more work than the group the day before. As we made our way down, some of the group wanted to play soccer with community members. At this point in time I was so tired I just went to the bus myself.
I tried to clean myself off with body wipes. It took about three body wipes and half a bottle of hand sanitized before I switched from feeling absolutely revolting to slightly dirty. My hair was a completely different story though. Gross beyond recognition. Anyway, once everyone finished playing, they got back on the bus. Again, I fell asleep on the bus on the way back and once I did, I wasn’t able to shower since a lot of the other girls who did stairs formed a line before me. So I figured I’d go to dinner and come back and shower when there was no one there.
Went to dinner and had some curry chicken again with spicy soup. I felt disgusting but didn’t really care since I was so hungry. Nommed everything down, went back, and took the most rewarding shower I’ve taken since I’ve gotten here. I must have washed my hair at least three times and scrubbed my body at least twice. I felt so clean and refreshed coming out of the shower so I dressed up pretty nice and got ready since we were going to karaoke that night.
We walked toward the city center again and stopped at the karaoke bar not too far from the park. It was interesting and very different from those in the US. The karaoke was free, but it was required to buy drinks. This made it pretty cheap. They surprisingly had a large amount of English songs, so we had plenty of songs to sing. We were able to fit our group into the 12-person room and sing to our hearts’ content.
We didn’t leave the club until about 11:30 and once we got home, I still had to get ready for bed. Still, it was horrible since people were partying by the pool right outside our room and playing really loud salsa music until 2:00am. I was so exhausted that I just slept through it all.
MEDLIFE Peru 1/5/12 Day 6
SLEEPY. Woke up at 5:50 and got down to breakfast by 6:15. It seems that as the week progresses, people wake up later and later. It was pretty shitty; they gave us the usual coffee, tea, bread, and jam, but today it came with a very bitter type of cheese and also peach yogurt smoothie. There wasn’t very much protein. I wish they had served something warm, like eggs or ham. Anyway I headed back upstairs, finished getting ready and piled onto the bus.
It was only 8am and it was already ridiculously hot. I was sweating in my t-shirt. Once we arrived at the community, we had to wait in the bus for 10 minutes while Alberto talked to the community leader. Then, we all came out and were about to start unloading and setting up when Alberto came to tell us that this community completely forgot that they had a clinic today and that we had no buildings to set up our stations in. So we all piled back on the bus and headed for another community on the other side of the mountain. However, to get there, it required a ridiculous drive up and down the mountainside. We were all terrified of falling down the steep cliff. On the way there, a pig ran in front of our path and we all freaked the f%ck out. We thought we were going to fall. We kept driving and the pig ran for its dear life as the bus came pummeling toward it. Eventually it moved out of the way and we arrived at the village. They had a clinic that was built already so we unloaded and set up very quickly. Since this community had a surprise clinic, one of the community members was able to use their speaker system to make a community-wide announcement.
I was doing vitals first shift so I grabbed the electronic thermometer and prepared myself. There wasn’t too long of a line, but it grew as fast as it decreased. We went through a lot of patients. One little kid kept crying as I approached him with the thermometer. So, I had to distract him as I placed the sensor on his neck to get his temperature. One woman came in who was 38 weeks pregnant, so she was about to give birth at any time. She didn’t look too big though. It was pretty amazing, since she already had a son who was 11 years old.
My second station was dentistry. It was my first time doing this in Peru, so I was pretty excited. Also I had heard that the dentist, a very young man, was pretty badass. He insisted that we call him Claudio and not “doctor” or “dentist” and spoke very fluent Spanish and a little bit of English. He pulled really hard on teeth, so hard that his hand was trembling. During a small break between patients, he talked about shots and alcohol. I think we’re supposed to go out with him as a group on Saturday. LOL. But yeah, he was pretty cool. The pregnant woman came in for a check-up and he explained to us that he couldn’t do anything for her since any anesthetic he used to accelerate and cause child birth. A mentally handicapped teenager also came in and he explained to us how he couldn’t treat him since it could put him, us, and the patient in danger if the patient felt threatened and lashed out. We went on later than all the other groups and we only finished after everyone had already packed up and got on the bus. After packing up, we went back to the hostel.
Since we had a really long time before meeting and dinner, we decided to visit the ancient ruins in the middle of Miraflores. Huaca pucllana was a ceremonial area constructed by the Limas, the native people, who lived there between 500-700AD. We arrived just in time to take the tour and were able to see all of the ruins. We were even able to see llamas, alpacas, a llama-alpaca hybrid (pacallama), and guinea pigs. The tour guide was informative and spoke good English, so it was a pretty enjoyable tour. Once we finished, we went to wait for the bus, but it wasn’t there. Since we didn’t’ have to meet the bus for another 20 minutes, we wandered around the area until we found a really fancy, high-class restaurant where we all bought gelato. Coffee gelato is delicious! We went back to wait for the bus. Once it hit 4:30, we all started joking that he left us and that we should just walk the 18 blocks back to the hostel. However, at around 4:40, he came around and we were all able to go home.
I hopped in the shower as soon as we got back, prettied myself up, and hung out a little with everyone before heading downstairs for the meeting. During the meeting, we talked about clinic and about the living situation in Pamplona. Apparently most people move to the highest parts of the mountains, Pamplona Alta, as a temporary situation in order to own their own houses even though they live without running water or electricity. They hope that it’s just temporary and that they’ll be able to save enough to move out of those areas into better ones. However, for many, they become used to the lifestyle and just live out their lives that way. Alberto said that they make only 10 soles a week from recycling bottles and papers salvaged from garbage. 10 soles is only about 3-4 American dollars. That is ridiculous.
After the meeting, we went to dinner and had an interesting mashed potato casserole appetizer followed by chicken parmesan. MORE CARBS! I quickly followed this with a lot of yogurt smoothie drink in order to get my calcium and protein. This was followed by another Wong trip where I bought more yogurt smoothie drink. We went back to the hostel and dropped our stuff off before heading to go shoe shopping. Judy asked Albert, en espanol, if we could go shoe shopping and he just laughed (either at us going shoe shopping for clubbing tomorrow or at Judy’s Spanish, or both) and kept laughing for 5 minutes. When he was able to breathe again, he gave us permission so the five girls went shoe shopping. I really didn’t need to buy another pair, but they were SO CHEAP and I’ve been looking for a pair of simple black pumps for so long. All five of us bought heels. As we were leaving, we remembered and booked it back inside before the shop closed and took a picture with the ladies who owned the shop. They willingly obliged and we then headed to the Fiesta casino.
We met up with everyone inside the casino. Everyone left to get churros while we went to the bar and ordered drinks. I ordered a Mojadita, which is basically a Peruvian version of the mojito. It tasted very similar to a regular mojito, but they used pisco in it. Eventually I got pretty buzzed and we all headed to the blackjack tables. The minimum bet where we were was 5 soles which equals about $2.25. I used about 10 soles and I lost it all, but whatever, it’s only $5. After gambling we all went back to the hostel. Some people went out bar hopping while now I’m just laying in bed typing. Sleepy time! ^^
MEDLIFE Donation Campaign!
Hey Tumblr community!
I’m planning on participating on an international medical brigade to Lima, Peru during New Years. As a poor college student trying to support myself without my parents’ help, I’m having trouble affording the participation fee and flight cost for the MEDLIFE mobile clinic.
I’ve gone on a medical brigade this past summer to Riobamba, Ecuador and it was an amazing, eye-opening and enlightening experience. I worked side by side with local medical professionals to provide healthcare to those who did not have access and also taught basic hygiene to children at local schools.
So please, help me afford this trip to go. Any amount of donation will help. 50% of your donation goes toward my participation fee and the other 50% will go toward patient follow-up care and much needed medical supplies.
https://www.medlifeweb.org/campaigns/limaperu2012
And again, thank you so much! If you have any questions about MEDLIFE or my trip to Ecuador, don’t hesitate to message me! :)
Medical Student Ploys
You’re in the OR (or anywhere for that matter) when the attending docotr asks a brilliant question that you’re sure you should know the answer to, but don’t. What can you do?
•1. “Would you please repeat the question?
•2. Ignore the Doctor and act like you didn’t hear the question.
•3. Repeat the question aloud to buy time.
•4. Ask for clarification of the question.
•5. Say “I don’t know.”
•6. Say “I’m not sure what you’re after.” (You know so much you need more specifcity.)
•7. Be bold (i.e. stupid) and say “I don’t think that’s relevant.”
•8.We didn’t cover that in class.
•9. I haven’t had that rotation.
•10. That rotation was bad. •11. The doctor was on vacation when I was on that rotation. •12. The nurses were on strike when I was on that rotation. •13. The doctor on that rotation was bad. •14. That’s an elective and I’m not going to take that rotation. •15. I was sick that day (month, or year). •16. I didn’t get good notes from the note pool.
•17. The day for that lecture they closed (choose one) __school, __hospital, clinic for (choose one) __rain, snow, __heat,
(copied from ppt: EUGENE CASTILLO, M.D.)
this is my reflection paper 1 on our community immersion (sorry, due to lack to post haha)
The Road to Health
‘Health for All’ does not mean an end to disease and disability, or that doctors and nurses will care for everyone. It means that resources for health are evenly distributed and that essential health care is accessible to everyone. It means that health begins at home, in schools, and at the workplace, and that people use better approaches for preventing illness and alleviating unavoidable disease and disability. It means that people recognize that ill-health is not inevitable and that they can shape their own lives and the lives of their families, free from the avoidable burden of disease.
WHO Global Strategy for Health for All by the Year 2000
In this dawn and age of social networks, designer bags and clothes, doubtful sincerities of TV game shows, and quality health care means expensive medical bills, health seems to be one of the least priority of almost everyone, especially our indigent Filipino people. Because who would prefer buying a hundred-peso tablet that only promises cure over food for the table that guarantees ease from hunger?
I was least expecting that my first rotation would be Community Medicine, as I was readying myself for endless hospital works and sleepless, cruel nights. But then one hot Monday noon, I saw myself standing in one of the most rural places I have been to. Don’t get me wrong, not that I say I haven’t been into one, but thinking to myself that I’ll be living there for almost 4 weeks, it sure is one shocking revelation.
Dealing with my housemate/groupmates, my foster parents, and other people in the community, I know will past by like a breeze for me, since I’m quite a social person. But, maybe, I’ll never be ready (for now at least), in dealing with patients. Patients who are maybe a stone-throw away on being hopeless, or on losing trust on doctors, or on people in medicine like us. Fear. Fear that we let them down, letting them down, or will let them down. Because as a doctor, or a future-doctor that is, we are here to help them.
The immersion program is designed to help the people to help themselves, but sometimes, people can’t help but to voice out their real concerns—when will we give them medicines? Or maybe even money for expensive work-ups? And every time I hear that, I feel so helpless. Is visiting them every day, taking their histories, prescribing them medicines, and monitoring them really enough? Can they really help themselves eventually by that?
We all vision a healthier Philippines, where no one gets sick because of simple negligence of not taking their children for vaccines, or at least where everyone has an access to health insurance. But seeing how our politics work, I think we are far from it. Or is the responsibility really lies on every one of us? That we have to stop to settling on low-class health services. That we have to step up and be aware on the health services we currently have—like regular pre-natal visits, vaccines, preventive measures against Dengue or common cough and colds, or early detection of cancer. Or even make suggestions on how we can improve, and be actively involved on health programs of the government.
The point is, you cannot help a person who doesn’t even want help. And the immersion program teaches us, future doctors, on how we can empower people to take care of themselves, to be aware and concern of their own health. Because at the end of the day, it is not because you live in a place deep in the mountains, where roads are dirt and stones, and no one has even heard of it, that your RHUs or health centers don’t have doctors or even decent hospital beds, that you have the right to neglect your health—it is because, we own our own bodies, and we are all responsible for our own lives, or maybe even for the sake of our families and loved ones. Then maybe at that step, our Filipino communities would not need immersion students, and maybe even doctors, in the future.
JI COMIA, Maureen Via M.
Team Kabulusan
