this iridescent life…

(I wrote this post early this year, lost it in the morass that is my laptop, and totally forgot about it.  i unearthed it recently and i cannot, for the life of me, remember who i wrote this about.  one thing’s for sure: he must be one amazing, unbelievable man.)

***

If he asks me to marry him…

 …it will be unbelievable.

 And no, I’m not being figurative.  It will literally be unbelievable. 

 I will not believe it. 

 He may have to repeat the question several times.  He may even have to get very credible, serious people (like a priest or a judge) to vouch for him, that he indeed wants to marry me.

 And even the presence of a ring (oh and if he’s reading this, I would like a platinum band with a single diamond) may not give much credence.  I may still think that it’s a practical joke.

 When he proposes, less will not be more.  Simple will not be better.  Subtle will not do it.

 The enormity of my disbelief can only be conquered by insane declarations of undying love.  (Did I just write that sentence?)  A plane writing, “Will you marry me?” in the sky.  A choir singing his original composition.  He would have to stage a fake concert of some sort.  Get all our friends and family to be there.  As he’s walking towards me, he’d be singing his own song about how we’ll rock on for the rest of our lives.

 And I still may not believe it.

Because he’s too wonderful to be true.  Because he’s too brilliant for words.  Because I’ll keep asking, “Why me?” 

Brought a patient to 2D echo today.  This is pretty cool stuff.  If you think about it, these are just sound waves bouncing off tissues of differing densities.  Like shouting at the edge of a cliff and getting an echo.  But in this case, I didn’t just get sound.  I got a picture of a heart, a very sick heart.

one day the body said to the heart, "When I’m sick the doctor heals me."  then the body asked, "When you’re hurt, who heals you?"

r

The heart said, "There’s no one, so I have to heal myself."

I’m in my first year of OB-GYN residency at PGH.  You will hear me repeat this throughout the year: my life here is hell. And to think I really didn’t want to be a doctor.

R

I’ve always done well in school.  And you know how it is in our culture.  If one is really intelligent, he or she will enter either one of two fields: law or medicine. 

R

For me, it was a case of choosing the lesser evil.  I’m naturally laid back.  I cannot abide by arguing and maintaining strong opinions.  Naturally, law was not for me.  I was a nerd though.  I loved to read.  And (I shit you not) I really loved to learn.  So the wonderful world of thick med school books was the thing for me.

R

I originally wanted to be a nun.  I remember buying a huge crucifix necklace and wearing it to school every day.  So cool huh?

R

And then I wanted to be an archaeologist.  I was in third grade then.  After school, I didn’t go to the playground to play.  I went to the library to check out books about the pyramids of Egypt, about the Incas and the Mayas, and the temple complex of Kampuchea.

R

Then in high school, I discovered writing and performing. It was at this point that I wanted to get into film or TV production.  But a teacher discouraged me from taking up Communication Arts at UP Los Banos, saying I’d only be wasting my "intelligence" in such a field. 

R

She was way out of line, but I was gullible.  So here I am.  Ten years later.  A government doctor, the lowest paid member of CSA-Binan’s Class of 1998.

R

There are still days when I want to be working behind the scenes in entertainment.  There are still times when, instead of going to the hospital, I wish I’d be going to a new dig in China.

R

I’ve always maintained that one should enjoy work.  The idea of enduring a job from Monday to Friday and then letting your stress out only on weekends is (as Anna would say) bull crap.  We’re at whatever job or career we are because we chose to be here.  And (unless you’re a masochist) we chose this path because this is what we want in life.  A job is not something to be endured.  It’s something to be enjoyed.  We’re going to spend more than half our lives at work anyway, might as well have fun at it.

R

And do I enjoy this work?  This life? 

R

(See current friendster pic)  This is what my office looks like.  I don’t have a nine-to-five job.  I have a 7am to whenever-we’re-done-the-next-day job.  There is no glamour in what I do.  I go where my seniors tell me to go; I do what they tell me to do.  I get shouted at, I get reprimanded.  I haven’t received a salary in four months.  This is my life now.

R

Seeing as how life my life here is like hell on earth, I seem to be contradicting myself.  Work is hard.  But after two days of staying awake and smelling like something the cat dragged in, I find myself still smiling.  Still lighthearted and happy.  In the midst of hell, I have found something that satisfies me here.

R

I will get cranky.  I will fall asleep in the middle of what I’m doing.  I will cry some days.  I will miss sleeping and staying horizontal for long periods of time.  I will miss what regular people call “a life”.  But having all the things that I’m supposedly missing cannot replace the peace and contentment that this life brings.

R

I have another call.  Hell begins again.

one doesn’t go to the market late.  to get the best catch, it would seem like the proper approach would be to get there early, haggle, jostle, and grab to get what one wants.

r

but i’m just too tired.  and just too cynical.

r

i’m not going to haggle for you.  i’m not going to jostle them out of the way just to get to you.  i’m not going to grab you for myself.

r

because i’m too tired…because i’ve had no sleep…

r

…and because you have no idea.

trusty, white Adidas rubber shoes + gale-force rain = warm feet
r
warm feet = my own personal sunshine

I was doing the nerd thing and reading an article on the Large Hadron Collider when I spotted a link to a world renowned physics institute.  I click on it out of curiosity.  At the home page, my eyes are drawn to a link for recruitment. 
r
I click on it and find that the institute, located in Switzerland, offered fellowships.  I fill out an online application form only to find out that their work mostly dealt with particle physics.
r
And I am totally depressed.
r
I was a mini-physics freak in high school.  I actually loved the fact that the equations made sense.  And I was already aware that this was Newtonian physics and was nowhere near the high-tech, I-am-having-a-nosebleed-right-now-from-all-this-jargon world of quarks, leptons, bosons, and the like.
r
I suddenly felt like being a doctor was so blah, so uncool. 
r
And I suddenly wanted to have a particle physicist as a boyfriend.  You know, someone who worked on one of the ISOLDE projects, someone who has a study in line for the LHC.  So cool!  It’s the nerd equivalent of a guy in a leather jacket and big bike.
r
I was still depressed.  Even if I marry a very cool particle physicist, that still doesn’t make me cool.
r
I click on other article in my über-nerdy webzine.  And I perked right up.
r
There’s a place in Florida that does cutting edge trauma surgery.  It’s where the US Army sends all its medic teams to train before they’re deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan.  It’s where a guy with a gunshot wound gets slit from chest to groin.  After which, six hands grope around his innards looking for the source of his bleeding.  It’s where studies are ongoing to test a $200,000 robot that enables a surgeon in Florida to operate on a trauma patient in Germany.  It’s where you gain enough confidence to cut off a person’s arm pinned underneath a truck right there on the road.
r
You enter the place as an ordinary doctor and you come out a rock star.
r
At this moment, I am rubbing my hands with glee, complete with an evil professor cackle.  There is hope yet.
r
Rock on!!!

one of the items on this morning’s ticker on GMA7 was this: "85% of pinoy health workers abroad".
r
that means that i’m one of the 15% left behind.
r
if a really small number of us are left serving the country, why the hell are we being punished for it?
r
we work inhumanly long hours for a pitifully small sum.  when we charge our professional fees, patients often haggle with us to reduce them.  there are even patients who refuse to pay us.
r
it’s like people are purposefully trying to irritate us into leaving.
r
and if we do, who’s going to take care of you?

…does not imply direction.
r
Just because you’re moving doesn’t mean you’re actually going somewhere.

Malabo na ang mata nya.  Siguro naman makikita na nya ko.