Meet my study and non-study buddies Carlisle (big pinoy guy) and Sam (korean dressed as a mormon for halloween). We all went to UCLA together for smdep. Carlisle lived right next to my suite and Sam lived across the hall. We all spend long hours studying at the University library and we all wanna be doctors. Carlisle is an aspiring dentist. Not sure which specialization still. Sam is pondering ER or neurosurgery. And the guy with the driver wants to be an orthopod. Carlisle is about to transfer to UC Berkeley, while Sam and I are to remain at Cal State Long Beach.


Yes, our lives right now may be sucky relative to the regular college guy but one of these days you may present to a medical center with a broken jaw, a brain tumor, or a broken thigh bone and don't be surprised if one of us will be that person who will make you better.

halloween sucked for me

Here I am whining again. It's friday, halloween. I think I should be having fun tonight- probably kick it with my hommies at the Thirsty Isle or go to this party I was invited to at Riverside. It seems apparent that I would not be getting home tipsy tonight, much to my dismay. My planner has dictated so. So what does my halloween look like?

This morning I came to school early and I tutored. I was waiting for people who needed help but no one came during my scheduled hours. I decided to stay for a little bit. A few minutes later, I got three girls asking about GChem (which, by the way, I am glad at- they were actually doing their job in school: homework) and my classmate in biostatistics benefiting from my notes. Nice. Although I stayed overtime, I didn't mind. It felt great helping out.

I decided to come home to eat lunch and take a nap. I didn't want to spend another $7 on subway on campus. I woke up before 2pm and I drove back to campus at a speed that is against the law. Cerritos to Long Beach State in less than 15 minutes. Not lying at all.

I started doing my assigned task in lab- dissecting and staining fly ovaries with antibodies. Man, this thing is whack. It takes you about two days to finish the whole thing. That's bench science and research- you do really time-consuming, tedious things only to find out that the whole plan did not work out. I still have to wait til monday to find out how this procedure worked out. I'm glad though- I am turrning from a lab tech to a real scientist.

I am writing this while waiting for my dissected fly ovaries to get saturated in some solution not known to the populace.

And after this ( I have about 2 hrs left before I finish- that's about 7:20pm), I will head out and go home. Not to prepare for any party or whatnot, but to work on my physics extra credit problems. I bombed my exam yesterday- I'm keen on doing anything to get an A in that class. And I am desperate. Oh, I need to finish my Kaplan MCAT Scholarship application too. And I gotta jog and workout. And maybe eat. Or scare trick-or-treaters. And some sleep, perhaps? I gotta wake up tomorrow early to finish this project in lab.

That's halloween for me. Yes, I know. It sucks to be me. It's sad. But whatever. I strongly believe that all these tons of bull will payoff in the end. Whatever.

Puke Room

[READ THIS FIRST- I've modified the patient names and some situations in order to preserve protected health information (PHI)]


I brought in Sarah from the ER Waiting Room to the only available bed in the only available 2-bed bay in the department. She was vomiting a lot and she was totally dehydrated. Jack started the IV, did some phlebotomy, and charted her history while I helped her get settled in and took her vitals. She asked for a big basin in addition to hers so she would have more storage space for her seemingly unstoppable puke galore. A few hours, nausea meds, and lots of tissues and buckets later, she finally ceased from sharing us her previous meals that we weren't really interested in. Thank God she is okay.

"EKG to the screen room, EKG to the screen room". Realizing that I was the only one around who is getting paid to do an EKG, I went to the screen room and got this patient with chest pain. I was having chest pain myself too, kinda- It is already 3 in the morning and my heart misses my bed so much. I did the EKG and found an irregular heart rhythm on Loida, a sweet old lady. I showed her EKG to the ER doc and he signaled me to bring her over to the next available bed- right in the same bay as Sarah's, and right next to her. Cool. Sarah's asleep, this bed just got cleaned 3 minutes ago after another patient got discharged, and It's a good location for treating chest pain patients- it's close to where the crash cart (that stuff with the defibrillators and...stuff.) is. We got Loida settled.

After a repeat EKG that showed a normal heart rhythm, the ER doc figured out that it was just epigastric pain...Loida was just having indigestion.

Sure enough she needed a basin because she's been wanting to vomit the entire time. She required less basins than Sarah, but hers was worse. Her emesis had some sort of fecal material. What does this mean? The entire bay (picture this- it's an isolated room with separate ventilation ducts and temp controls) smelled like FUCKING SH*T! AND PUKE! Combine the two and you get an olfactory disaster! The freaking puke smell woke up Sarah, and guess what? She started puking again! Both of them had vomit in their containers and ALL OVER their sheets.

In a matter of seconds, that isolation bay turned into puke bay.

The worst part about it is that Jack and I had to help clean them. Thank God I'm premed- I'm not gonna deal with cleaning crap for the rest of my life! What's bad though? I had to dispose of the puke buckets. With puke in it. And lots of it. Not in the trash cans in the room, but in the waste room- a small, humid room about the area of a phone booth that houses a huge crapper and the cleaning materials. I had gloves, of course, but the unfortunate news was that the masks were nowhere near accesibility.

I had to bravely stride to the waste room and threw the good stuff into the flusher. Man. I had the most animated exit out of a room ever. I think I was laughing and shouting aaaaah as I was rushing outside.


Before the end of my shift at 6am, I thought of checking the bay where Sarah and Loida had been (they got beds on the medical floors by then)- the signs of the previous disaster were undetectable. It was solid clean (thank you, housekeeping). I then checked on the waste room, like a mischievous kid looking for trouble (and fun).

I thought I've already had my most animated exit out of a room ever. Until that moment.

Lack of Sleep

I have this really big problem of having an effed up circadian rhythm specific to my sleep pattern. Lack of sleep does wonders for me- it makes me switch moods in milliseconds from being a person who will give you the nicest smile of your day to a cranky, intolerant grouch; from an active and enthusiastic advocate to your cause to a very passive, nonchalant asshole; from a peaking action potential to a flat line. Above all, it's a very potent agent of procrastination fo

Crossing Language Barriers

I was dragging myself to the dreaded ER and had just got settled in when Terry, one of the RNs, asked for my help. Great. One minute into my shift and I am about to be slammed by work.

"Marunong ka mag-Spanish, Rein? (Do you know how to speak Spanish, Rein?)". I said I'll try my best to effectively utilize my pathetic preschool level Spanish skills. So I went in to room 10 and found a Hispanic lady, whom I'll call Maria (not her real name, of course), in her twenties, complaining of pain and full of evident frustration towards the language barrier ( espanol solamente). Terry was giving discharge instructions thinking that Maria was just in pain and the prescription for extra strength ibuprofen would solve her problem. Maria, upon seeing the guy in green scrubs whom she probably assumed to be another physician (ME- but I am no physician...not yet.), expressed an unexplainable relief in her eyes. Finally. Some Doc who can at least contextually understand what she was trying to say. Some doc who can understand what's going on. Someone who can understand her.

I found out that she was not really concerned with the pain at that point-it's been there, and it's not gonna go away- what she needed was gallstone removal surgery (as recommended by her very recent visit to a surgeon), and she can't have it. Why? She has no insurance.

An undocumented resident in this state would have no access to healthcare insurance at all, except for emergency medi-cal. This is an insurance type where one can only use for emergency room visits. Her case was elective. Unless her surgeon decides to admit her for well-warranted reasons that are unbeknownst to my knowledge.

Since my spanish skills were borderline retarded, I had to verify the accuracy of the conversation with someone who actually knew Spanish. Thank God the admitting rep was there. I took the chance and ruthlessly commandeered the clerk into doing something that she is not getting paid for.

I got the whole conversation wrong. Just kidding. It was all accurate. I then told Terry about it and she was able to arrange something with the attending ER doc (the real one, not the idiot writing this). The plan was executed then- Maria was sent home, she called the surgeon, the surgeon called back the ER and gave us admission orders for her. A few hours later, Maria came back and we got her all ready for her room.

As I am writing this, Maria is recovering right now from her operation.

Had the conversation never happened, she would still be suffering from excruciating back pain, and she would not be able to take care of her household, including her 5-year-old kid with autism.

Whew.

Oh, Man...

Saturday night. A time when every college student is supposed to chill (partying is usually Friday night). And here I am, in Starbucks Los Alamitos taking a break from my studying. Looking back at my week, I realized (only now?) that most of my time were spent in academic pursuits (what else is new?). I am thinking that Lauren, my mentee, was probably right when she said that it sucks to be me. Here's a piece of evidence- my week from last Sunday:

Sunday- 6:30am- I got off work. Went home ready to pass out.
6:45am- After blatantly disobeying the speed limit, I got home and passed out.
~2pm- Woke up with drool on my pillow. Got up and went to the library with my brother to...what else?

Monday- ~12:30am- Got home. Slept.
9am- School. Ingested caffeine.
6pm- Went jogging.
9pm- Study myself to sleep. I had no idea what time did I get to close my eyes.

Tuesday- See the 2nd and 3rd lines of Monday.

Wednesday- See Tuesday.

Thursday- See Wednesday. Add Science Enrichment Movie Night til 8:30ish.

Friday- 9am- Signed in at the Scicence Center to tutor.
10am- Aha! First question. Trig.
10:30am- Oh great. An ochem problem.
11am- Tutoring hours over. Still working on the ochem problem. Person who asked the question already left.
12ish- Finally figured out the correct answer. Was thrilled to get back to that lucky person who sought my help.
1pm- Lab. Dissected flies.
3pm- Still dissecting Drosophila mutants.
4pm- Found out GFP (Green Fluorescent Protein) in certain mutants did not fluoresce. SHIT. All that tedious
fucking shit for nothing.
5pm- Went home feeling stupid, inadequate, and a disgrace to the scientific community. Took a nap.
5:35pm- Drove through traffic. Ignored the law. Got to work on time.
6pm- Work. See you tomorrow. I will be an ER slave for the next twelve hours.

Saturday- 6am- Can't take this fucking shit anymore. Went home. Passed out.
3pm- Went to Carson, met up with mentor who's graduating from UCLA DGSOM with an MD/MBA soon.
7pm- Los Alamitos. Study.


Oh man.

It Started With A Joke

It's almost mid-October, and it's time for another event for our Science Enrichment Program Freshmen. The admin planned a movie night for them last night and the mechanics were: 1. Bring a movie. 2. We all vote. 3. This is democracy. We watch what the majority wishes.

I think it was Monday afternoon when I was doing my usual half-asleep study cum lunch break at the Science Center when a co-peer mentor asked me if I was gonna come on Thursday night. I told her, "Only if you bring SAW II". Apparently she didn't pick up on my humor and she actually brought it to the movie night.

Who wants to see a gory, scary movie with pizza and walk back to the dimly-lit campus parking lots afterwards? Probably no one. Science Freshmen are probably dorky cowards anyway. Would expect to see a movie that rivals Barney or Spongebob... It was just a joke, after all.

The effin freshmen voted for Saw II.

Outcome: three of my co-mentors/tutors took off-they couldn't stand it...And I had fun seeing their reactions. I was trying to hide my laughter like an abdominal aortic aneurysm waiting to rupture while they, one by one, gave me their rationale and excuses as I pass them by on the way to the lecture hall where the movie was being played. I had fun sitting at the back of the hall watching the variety of reactions among the freshies ranging from sheer boredom to psychological trauma. Such a joke turned into a memorable experience in the sense that the whole thing will be immortalized in the Science Enrichment Program Records... And I went home laughing my ass off.

Hatred Towards Group Study

So Sam and I went to Starbucks at LB Town Center and started popping our books out. It's another night of study over caffeinated products in another setting away from our usual study spot in the University Library. We began to sink our heads to our books and delve into absorbing, processing, and misinterpreting information.

There were three nursing students across our table. They were, apparently, having a group study session. They were LOUD. They were annoying. "Hey let's go over this...let's go over that...". One person "leads" the group, conveying information paraphrased from the book without understanding such information, while the other two just nod in agreement (and either think otherwise or of stuff remotely related to their material) and enthusiastically repeat some words.

Very annoying.

I don't like this kind of studying because it's counterproductive. You get together with people with the intent of learning and reviewing material. You end up learning about other people's lives, etc. and reviewing how X's car looks like, or how Y's girlfriend is hot, etc. Might as well just hang out.

I also believe that the number of people in a study group is proportional to the amount of time wasted in a session. Try it.

What I like doing though is studying ALONE. Or with two friends at the most working on our OWN material and not giving a shit about the other person unless a question, a relevant one, arises. This is not a group study session at all. It's a study group. There is a susbstantial difference. If you haven't figured it by now after reading this last paragraph with a ver explicit example, you are probably inadequate.