the perils of

Just got back the from a trip to Manila with my coworkers in local government. In all my years as a working professional, this was the first work-related out-of-town thing I'd been invited to. So I was pretty nervous. But the days came and went really quickly. And I'm happy that I got to know my fellow LGU people better. And I got some sage advice from one of the older Sangguniang Bayan members during a brief, random heart-to-heart moment while standing in line for ice cream.  I told him about the pickle I've been in with Rap, where we don't know where to go after our Doctors to the Barrios contract ends in December. I've been pushing for Nasipit, while he has been pushing for South Cotabato.  SB said we have to pick a place where we'll both be happy. If I force him to go to Nasipit, where he has no roots, no friends, and no family, this could cause tensions to build in the relationship and possibly drive a wedge between us.  I could say the same for South Cotab...

These days, I've been so restless.  I woke up one night at 2 AM to two shadowy figures shining a flashlight into my apartment window. I was frozen, confused, disoriented, unsure whether I was still dreaming. As my brain powered on, I realized the shadows were indeed descending the back wall of my apartment, coming towards me, and that this was, in fact, real life.  I didn't know what to do. Ignore them? Call the cops? Make a sound? Turn on the lights? Bar the doors? What if they have a gun and decide to kill me? I should warn the other people in the apartment.  My body felt like a rock. After what felt like hours of being frozen, I managed to command myself to unfreeze, hide under the blanket, and reach for my phone.  Is anyone awake? My fingers felt heavy as lead as I pulled up the apartment group chat.  Two strangers on the back wall of my apartment. Lock your doors. Be alert  Peeping out from other the blanket, the intruders had now passed my apartment a...

It's been roughly one month into my stay here in my new area, and so far, things are going well (*knocks on wood*). My uncle who lives in town helped me set up these cork boards in my office, and now I have a nice cork canvas to get creative with. I've also spent at least one day a week going around the different barangays, joining in on the house-to-house vaccinations. It hasn't been easy.  My previous job in Butuan mainly involved me staying put in a vaccination center. The people I dealt with were all willing to be vaccinated, even if in the tiniest degree, so it was not as much of an uphill battle. But now that I'm working on the ground, I am more exposed to the proportion of people who don't want to get vaccinated. And it upsets me. It hurts even more to think that we go through such lengths to bring vaccines closer to people - which can sometimes mean riding precariously balanced motorcycles on dangerous dirt paths deep into the mountains.  What do we get in r...

As fate would have it, I am once again transferring.  The neighboring town of Nasipit is in need of a replacement Municipal Health Officer after their previous one graduated from the Doctors to the Barrios (DTTB) program. The Department of Health Central Office also (unofficially) declared this year that there should be no more Doctors to the Barrios assigned to highly urbanized cities. Butuan City currently has two. To solve these two problems, the DOH thought that the most practical solution would be to transfer one DTTB from Butuan to Nasipit. And that one DTTB would be me. Easy peasy. Except it's been hard. Not just on me, but on my staff members - my nurses, midwives, medtech - who now have to manage patients on their own. Our health system is structured in such a way that patients who can't afford a private physician end up seeking consult at a barangay health center, where they are seen by a nurse or a midwife. Those nurses and midwives take a quick clinical history and...

*** In the past month and a half, I've seen a drastic improvement in my mental health despite doing pretty much the same thing as before, which is vaccination work. A change in scenery made all the difference. I didn't realize how much of my negative outlook before was brought about by my work surroundings.  In the vaccination post where I used to work, the temperature was always uncomfortably hot and humid. It was a closed gymnasium with tiny windows, so the air circulation was awful. Also, because it had poor ventilation, it drove me crazy to see patients with their masks lowered, mouths agape, noses exposed. Poor ventilation plus unmasked people in a pandemic situation equals bad news.  If I were a Sim, my mood meter would instantly plummet into the red upon setting foot into this place. I was constantly sweaty, uncomfortable, and angry at unmasked people. But the worst part of it, in hindsight, was that work didn't feel meaningful to me. I was one of two doctors there...

I need advice.  Some months ago, I got "reassigned" to one of my city's vaccination posts, where I work as a vaccination doctor. My main job there is to handle all sorts of medical concerns related to vaccination, like when someone's blood pressure is too high before getting jabbed, or when someone has a medical condition that needs further assessment.  But in between all those things, I mainly help the screeners. Screeners are what we call the nurses who interview patients to find out if they're medically fit for vaccination. I'm not really required to do it, since there are other people hired to do that specific job. But I do it anyway because sometimes there are just too many patients coming in, and they need my help.  Screening is easy. You just ask the same questions over and over again. Is this your first time getting vaccinated? How are you feeling today? Do you have any allergies? Do you have any underlying medical conditions? Were you recently a close...

This post is sponsored by Anonymous Commenter #1. Thank you for checking in. I can summarize the past couple of months in one terrible haiku: I'm really sick of my job at the vaccination post. But before we go there, there are a few updates that need mentioning.  One, I've long recovered from Covid. Which means I can joke about it now. Two, I'm fully vaccinated. And three: I've adopted two cats !  The decision to do so was borne of a deep dark sense of mid-pandemic loneliness some months ago. With Delta cases on the rise, my mom didn't feel it was safe for me to come home on the weekends anymore, what with me working in a vaccination post with plenty of sick people. She was right. But I found myself with nothing to do, nothing to look forward to, nothing to strive for. Going home to my family was the thing I looked forward to each week. But with that off the table, every day I would come home from a bleak workday into an empty apartment and try to distract myself fr...