The whole day I resolved to be nice. Because it was the probably the best way through.

And I was nice. I greeted every patient good morning. I asked them how they felt, even though most of them felt like I’ve been smoking some cow dung whenever I asked them “whattup?” I’ve entertained every unscheduled patient who would stick their heads into the cubicle, and calmly stood up and walked all over the clinic looking for forms on which to write their prescription and diagnostic needs. I’ve apologized whenever I had to take a swig from my coke lite can (whatever’s in that can) because my throat was hurting, and apologized whenever I missed IV insertions. I’ve made CTTHL as I was making timpla the chemo drugs, CTTHL being a forgotten skill I developed when I moonlighted in Boracay four years ago. CTTHL is Chika To The Highest Level, so much so that I’ve gotten weird looks when I would comment out of context as I was pushing the red IV drug, “So mahilig ka pala sa kape.” I did not go berserk when someone interrupted to ask for prescriptions for Ensure and Nutren, because truly they must taste good. When someone asked me to rewrite his admitting orders because he lost the two other admitting orders I’ve given previously, I calmly rewrote the admitting orders and said thank you let’s hope there would be a vacancy soon. Later I noted that a patient was hypotensive and hasn’t been referred, and calmly told the monitor that we should be more vigilant for total patient care. Before going home a resident once again wrestled me to transfer the patient to our building, and I said yes we absolutely should for total patient care.

After twelve hours of non-stop zombified niceness (niceness by my standard), I developed dysphagia, all sorts of abdominal pain, uncontrollable arm twitching, and the resolve to stick my fucking head in an oven.

Niceness kills.

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