Was making rounds a couple of days ago in the peripheral areas of the hospital, and having done most of our stuff in the Cancer Institute we sometimes find that it requires extra effort just to walk to these peripheral wards. First, because it indicates that our patients who are usually okay enough to have outpatient chemotherapy or uneventful inpatient chemo in the CI become sicker and would need to be brought to the emergency room or the medical wards. I sometimes let out an audible girly shrill whenever I see one of my patients in the ER wasted and extremely toxic after having just seen him well a few weeks ago.Second, it’s a chore to walk. In fact it’s a chore to stand up. Or wake up every morning to take a bath, brush my teeth, or groom myself. “Groom yourself? AHAHAH AHAHAHAH AHAHAHAAHHA” is what some of you might be thinking, and that is absolutely fair. As I was walking to the ER yesterday I saw Fulet Esplana and she said “You look so pagod!” I was, in fact, pagod–from sleeping, having woke-up quite late at 8 am AHAHAHA AHAHAH AHAHAHHA. It elates me whenever I see my Internal Medicine batchmates prowling the hospital, those five seconds of interaction are essentially the only social interaction that we get to have, until the next PCP convention.

After making rounds in Ward 3 I stopped for a while in one corner to reply to the many text messages I have received that morning, mostly from patients. I found it essential to give my number and e-mail away indiscriminately and discovered that it had more advantages than annoyances for both me and the patients. I sometimes forget stuff, and it’s comforting that I can reach someone from Aklan if I forget to reiterate that they take prednisone for their CHOP chemo, or tell someone from Bicol not to come for follow-up the next day because of some surprise clinic cancellation. Annoyances include getting a few weird text messages, and getting a lot of that bane of all text message closers: “Text back ASAP.”

As I was frantically replying to these messages who should approach me but some girl and some guy, whom I thought were med reps. I didn’t know them, but seeing as it was one of those weird days when I was wearing my white blazer with  a steth around my neck, I thought that they might have just needed one final signature from any doctor for the day so I just signed on their signature sheets without looking, after which they handed me a flyer and said thank you. I mindlessly put the flyer in my pocket thinking it was some drug promo material. While eating grass later that day I read the flyer, and it wasn’t some drug promo material. It was from some weird company, telling me their mission vision and stuff etc etc. The triteness of the mission vision with the stock words “proactive”, “family”, and “wellness” got me interested, so I kept on reading. Finally, at the bottom of the sheet was a telephone number, which I should call if I want to be… a medical transcriptionist.

Apparently people pick-up on my ennui and strong sense of world-weariness that they think I would require no more than a few gentle shoves to change professions. And they are absolutely right. Except that I don’t want to be a medical transcriptionist, I want to sell comic books.

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