Now that Smoketh and the rest of the gang have fled from the hospital and are now studying their brains out at home I am having some extreme withdrawal symptoms, my daily routine now drastically altered. No more music appreciation sessions! No more pot sessions! No more unabashed whining! In an attempt to develop new daily itinerary this afternoon I ill-advisedly ran to Quiapo to look for those surplus, cheap cameras. And of all the stupid things to do too, to do it on a church day and two days before Christmas. I never did find the source of Smoketh and Thines’ contrabands, but I did see a lot of optical shops and porn DVD stalls. You would think that porn DVD buyers would have some level of sneakiness and have sheepish looks, but one guy was carefully inspecting the cover of a DVD and looking at it from different angles, checking out the minute details of anatomy and such. I failed to find any camera shop, but at least I didn’t have to walk—I only needed to stand and the constant movement of the people transported me from the abortifacient stalls back to the jeepney terminal.

Which reminds me, back in internship in OB…. Mmmm everytime I try to recall OB internship I am always assailed by smells of lochia and blood. They were everywhere—the smells were—on the chair, on the cold Wendy’s hamburger, on those many, confusing, OB forms. Back to the first sentence—which reminds me, back in internship in OB, one resident ordered the husband of a pregnant woman to buy some drug and gave him a prescription, telling him that only Mercury Drug in Quiapo probably carries the meds. Excited husband went to Quiapo and came back with… a Tanduay bottle with brown fluid and some twigs in it. Sometimes you just have to spell it out.

Eventually my routine would have to change anyway, entering the final year of residency and crap. Which reminds me, now that I am one of the people required to facilitate the student endorsements and such, back in clerkship we were always trembling in fear come 7 am, clutching our X-rays and ECG’s and photocopied charts as senior residents were already screaming and scolding us for something even as they were entering the room. Yesterday tried to attend one such morning endorsement, sipping my coffee as I took my seat. In the room were Marth V., Hurricane Katrina, and Pyro, asking questions from their wealth of knowledge. Pyro has the tendency to ask very confusing questions, ie, “What laboratory finding, which if you do not find it, will not suggest, but probably—not possibly—but probably confirm, that the patient does not have pulmonary alveolar proteinosis but some exotic interstitial lung disease?” After two sips of coffee I whispered to Hurricane Katrina, “I’m bored. I shall leave now.” And I left. And went back to the callroom to re-read my hardcover Superman/Batman: Supergirl. In it the one true Kryptonian Supergirl is re-introduced to the DC Universe after twenty years of being an earth angel/morphing goop/matrix substance. Getting easily bored is fun, it enables you to review your complex DC Universe history.

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