Recently my patience for face shields has been rapidly diminishing, maybe because it’s just too darn hot. Well at least this morning, when I was walking from the Medical Arts Building to the Cancer Institute, and it suddenly rained, I was able to cover my head by wearing the face shield as a headband. I wonder what microorganisms my face shield must be harboring by now. As for face masks, I still wear a KN95 over a regular surgical mask, and this makes my voice sound garbled. I always end up screaming at my patients.

Back when we were fellows-in-training, I told my batch mate Alanis Cornucopia that if we don’t know the answer to something maybe we should just mumble unintelligible sounds. Doing so has saved our asses a couple of times. After running from the pay floors all the way to the then-Paz Mendoza building for the first day of our Masters’ class, Dr. M., quite irritated at this group of late comers, asked us where our Form 5’s were. Alanis Cornucopia realized that she hadn’t completed our enrollment yet. So she just mumbled, “Sir, mwersheshwermberts..”

“Ok, take your seats, make sure you show it to me next week,” Dr. M. said.

This morning I went to Fully Booked for my Book Rounds, which has slowly been replacing my “Toy Rounds”. The woman coming in after me told the guard that she had a QR Code that they could just scan. The guard nicely told her that they didn’t have a working scanner at the moment, so could she kindly fill up the paper form or scan the store’s QR Code using her own phone.

“Well it’s NOT MY FAULT THAT YOU DON’T HAVE A SCANNER!” the lady said.

“Ma’am..”

“Never mind, I’ll just leave!” she yelled.

I was just a few inches in front of her, browsing a book on the shelf. Without thinking of the consequences (such as further amping up her Karens Gone Wild Mode) I mumbled, “Arte naman nito!”

Thank goodness for the double mask, I could very well have been saying “You go girl! Fight for your rights!”

Karen stormed out of Fully Booked, yelling, “You just lost one customer!”

“As if naman bibili sya,” I hairflipped, feeling super morally superior.

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