Endo diaries

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     Things have been quite good lately... barring all of Duterte's recent slapstick antics, the supertyphoon in the North, the police ramming through protesters. I mean in the realm of my little bubble that is Med School, things haven't been all that bad.

     The Endocrine module started this Monday, and I was / am pretty happy to be out of the Renal module. Because Renal is, and has always been, my hatest module. I agree, "hatest" is not a real word, but no other word can better encapsulate my superlative dislike for the module. Renal is my pinaka hatest. 

     So yes, I'm glad we're in Endocrine now, because I do enjoy Endo quite a lot. Endo is all about hormones and how they balance each other out. The reason I like it so much is that I studied this extensively during my college Physiology class, so it was one of the easier modules for me to digest. My biggest challenge with this module now is memorizing all those damn algorithms on how to treat endocrine patients. Like, how often do you monitor a patient who's on Levothyroxine? What are the diagnostic cut-off values for triglycerides, waist-hip ratio, or blood pressure to diagnose someone with Metabolic Syndrome? That's what I dislike about YL7 in general: having to memorize SO MANY DAMN NUMBERS. 

     But you know, the good memories I'm making in YL7 far outweighs the pains. 

     For example, Rap's mom turned 50 last weekend (which also happened to be the weekend right after Renal). We had an amazing buffet at Sofitel, and of course I made a beeline for the Cheese Room. Yes, you heard me. CHEESE. ROOM. AN ENTIRE ROOM JUST FULL OF CHEESE. I was too excited to take any pictures of the actual buffet, but I did snap several pics of this hole-y piece of cheese.


     Because how often do you see cheese with holes in it!? This stuff only exists in cartoons! Anyway, that was a really fun day for me. Oh, and in preparation for that buffet, I went to the gym in the morning to work up an appetite. It's really nice that this gym is situated on the roofdeck of the condo, so I was treated to this marvelous view.



     Often I look at this skyline and ponder on everything that has led me to this beautiful view. I remember coming to Manila for the first time in 2010 with my family and my aunts from Cagayan de Oro, and in our cramped car I strained my neck to catch a glimpse of these concrete giants. Coming from CDO, I'd always considered myself a "city girl," in comparison to the provincial bumpkins who come to my hometown just to know what it feels like to step into an SM. But coming to Manila, I had no idea how much bigger my world could get. The widest highway in CDO is about half the width of Katipunan Avenue.

     Yes, I'm really enjoying living in Ortigas. More than Katipunan, I would say. It's got pretty much everything I need - a free gym, a nice park, clean and spacious sidewalks, and study places that stay open past 12 AM. I even found a Chinese shop that sells this candy I really like.

I dont' really know what it's called, but it's salty/sour "kiamoy" covered in solid honey. Mmm. 


     But it hasn't been all good... I don't want to go into the specifics of it, but in my most recent Clinical Experience, I witnessed a woman being told she had cancer. It was very uncomfortable (and on some level, horrific). Right after doing a physical exam on her, we immediately proceeded to discussing her findings, while she patiently waited right beside us for her diagnosis. What made me feel very bad was that we were tossing around words like "renal cell carcinoma" amongst ourselves, because we knew she wouldn't understand that this actually meant "cancer." My groupmates and I were all in the room when our doctor gave her the bad news. "Misis, hindi po maganda ang resulta ng inyong ultrasound." 

The bed where she had her physical exam.
      My heart really went out to this woman. She is a poor vegetable vendor who cannot afford the imaging tests to confirm the location of the cancer. And in some sick twist of fate, her birthday was in two days. Imagine finding out you had a terminal cancer on your birthday.

      My heart felt so heavy in the taxi ride home. I think the thing that really disturbs me is that poor patients like her have nowhere to turn for help. Sure she can scrape some money by asking barangay officials and politicians, but I think it's unlikely that this will be enough. There has to be some systematic way of giving care to the average Filipino. (I'm not sure if PhilHealth will cover the costs of imaging and medications for renal carcinoma patients.)

. . . 

     Okay, now I'm gonna go study and resume my life as a med student. I'm sorry to end on such a heavy note. Here, have a picture of my guinea pig, Piggly. He likes crawling under blankets.

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