Dissecting a Frog =D

No one's been writing in this blog for a while now... and I'm bored ... so anways, today I dissected a frog in Science class and it was really cool. We got to cut it up and see all the little organs and stuff. The preservative they used smelled like the Tofu Dessert that Adhi likes after it's been left out for like, ten years, it wasn't that bad though, not as bad as I've heard it to be. So, that's all I got and now I'm bored again so I'm probably gonna do my Religion CPT D=

My weekend away

Haven't updated the blog in a while....so I will today while there are some time to kill.

My 2nd week in ICU is getting better, things are going well. I'm not getting grilled by the staff as much as before, so everything is actually going quite well.

Here's the highlight of the week though: I have NO rice!! T_T there's no more regular rice :( I still have some Uncle Ben's though so that's allright...should last me until next weekend =) 

@Iyan: how was the Christmas concert??? What songs did you guys play?? any videos/pictures?

@Mom and Dad: Thanks for the transfer!! I hope it's OK that I'm keeping the car over here until next weekend

I broke my phone yesterday!!! :'( now it just freezes when I try to turn it on....and now I'm on the hunt for a new one :( .....no I didn't break it on purpose!! Come to think about it though...this phone has been used for 4+ years, I'm thinking around 5 years actually so I guess it was bound to retire sometime, unfortunately. 

OK, that's all the stories I have...everything has been very routine. 

@Everyone: WHAT ARE YOU ALL UP TO?????

Supper Encounter

I met this lady on Friday. She was selling her commercial freezer because her business closed down. It's called Supper Encounter, a place where moms can come and cook without the trouble of doing the preparation or the cleaning. Apparently it was a good business in the US. But this lady opened just before recession hit, also I guess there was not enough promotion, that she has to close down only after a year or so. She said she spent her life saving, about 200K, on the business! What a pity!
It makes me realize (again!) how much blessings God has poured upon our Lunch Lady. The fact that the business is doing well and also that He always provide me with the helps I need.

Just last Tuesday my 'assistant' cook quit. This job (and working with me :-( is too stressful for him. I didn't like him anyway, he is too slow. It so happened that one of my previous employees called about 2 weeks ago to ask me if it's ok for him to use my name as his reference. (All this time I thought he already got a job as Malou has told me so). So on Wed I called this Albert guy and what a coincidence, he was going to take his final exam on Saturday and after that he is avaialable at least until he got a permanent job which could take a while. So now I have Albert helping me in the kitchen (he used to do delivery only), he started on Friday, and he is good! He is fast and smart. That's so much relief for me. God is good and His timing is perfect!

My sense of familiarity

Before anything else, I found an extra hour of sleep today! I think it's the one we lost sometime last Spring :D I put it to good use indeed....an extra hour of sleep is SO effective in improving one's day hahah

Anyhow, I went to church yesterday, they had a 5:00 pm mass here and the priest was from New Brunswick! He said he was from Acadia so he had a bit of a French accent, anyhow when he introduced himself I remembered our trip to the East Coast and how the Acadian flag kinda looks like the Filipino flag (I think...). By the way, the choir for the 5:00 pm mass was just like the Bosses who sing at the 5:00 pm mass at St. Josephine Bakhita...imagine that lol the choir had a bass guitar, acoustic guitar, and a group of singers...who actually are pretty good! They had melody/counter-melody thing going on....it was pretty impressive I have to say. The Psalm was said though, not sung =(

Aanyway, while the priest made a pretty good homily..he was talking about how we have to be strong and stand our ground even in a secular culture that is the norm these days. He made a few jokes that it's easy for him to say a prayer before eating at a restaurant because he's always got the collar on and thus, people expect him to say something...but for us...it takes courage to do so. In an analogy, he said something like: we know the final chapter and that is we win...if our life was like a movie, the Bible spoiled the happy ending, but we still don't know the action, horrors, sadness, and joys that stand between the present and the end of times...and thus, stay strong and be courageous because we know the end of the movie. As a final statement, he quoted the letter from St. Paul to the Philippians, "I can do everything, through Christ who strengthens me."  I thought that homily was very inspirational to say the least...there were other things he said to make it even better, but I forgot how everything kinda fit =P 

So when leaving the church, I realized that one of the great things about going to Church is that it gives us a sense of familiarity with home and the family, wherever we may be. Partly it's because the priests tend to do same things during Mass - as they should, but even more so because going to Mass remind us (at least for me) that we belong to a family that is much bigger than our own families and going to Church is like going home all over again...where we get resupplied with stuff, whether it be for the mind or body.

Even though I didn't go home this weekend, I still felt very much at home when I went to Church. Honestly, when I went in, I felt "Gahh finally!"...and when I walked out, feels akin to the that feeling you get when you're just getting out of the shower: refreshed and ready to start the day. 

K that's all I got...gotta run out for groceries again sometime soon x_x I used up all my maling and about half a bag of Shells pasta =_='' still got half an apple pie though =P

My Grocery List

Okay...today's lesson: I am really bad at shopping for "essentials-only" groceries! I went out this morning to get some milk. I came back with an apple pie, a bag of raisin bread, 3 bags of PC Chips, and a bottle of Pasta sauce!! oh and a box of Milk too...

oh and Mom, Fortino's does the 50% off thing too, the apple pie was 50% off =P so it was $4.98 for those big ones that we usually buy hehe

So breakfast for today: raisin bread with peanut butter....yes it was toasted, i felt like frying it with egg actually to make French toast, but there's no brown sugar so....anyhoo, breakfast time!

TGIF!

FINALLY! it's Friday!!!! I feel like I have been undersleeping for the whole week! 

This weekend will be the first weekend that I'm staying in Hamilton...and I gotta say I'm gnna miss the hockey games =[ buuuuut, my days in the OR have been hit-and-miss, my preceptor even said that I'm still working rather slow. See in the OR, as Anesthesiologist Assistants, we have to do checkouts on the Anesthetic Gas Machines (AGMs). At St. Joe's, there are 14 OR suites (therefore 14 AGM machines), we have 1 hour to do them all. This guy is so specific in what he does and how he does it (I think he has been an RT for too long to deal with some new student who is coming up with his own version of how to do the checkouts)...so anywho, in order to do 14 machines in under an hour, we have just over 4 minutes on each machine. First of all, he says he starts at 0600, but I would come in at 0625 and he'd still be changing, so that brings our time down to about 40 minutes. so now we have under 3 minutes per machine!! So I try to work as fast as I can, and I got 2 of them done in 10 minutes today....and that's still too slow for him!!! 

Anyhow, next week I'm expecting to do some intubations...which is when we put a breathing tube down someone's trachea. Some people are harder than others of course, so hopefully I'll get them done...I need 10 like the ABGs...this is kinda hard b/c the medical AND anesthesia residents want to learn how to do them too...so it's going to b a frenzy that could turn into a bloodbath if the preceptors don't take care of us properly haha

I ate the soup tonight....they were goooooood meat =P and had a lot of bawang goreng to go with it too! so good dinner tonight hahah tomorrow...it looks i'm back to Pasta, Spam, and beans...It'll b time to restock on groceries soon, and that means seeing what's on sale at Fortino's...considering there's a sale on Haagen Dazs ice cream bars there, you all can imagine wat my meals will be made up of =P oh and what's the cake for this weekend? I might run out and get some tomorrow....

newly found indian/pakistani restaurant

so we bought some foods from this indian/pakistan/hakka chinese take out today based on a friend's recommendation. it's in the same complex with the srilankan one that we patronized last week. it's $5.99 for this huge pile of biryanni rice plus any 2 curries (they have like 4 veg curries, 4 different chicken curries and some meat curries). the naan was huge at $1.25 and it is very good. they gave us samples of their fried fish and malai chicken (kebab), delicious! next time i'll buy these. well, that's the closest to nasi rames we can get here I guess.

My Baby CPR

So....I'm back in Hamilton again.

Today was a day spent in Toronto and it started off pretty weird...the GO train had some pretty weird track problems that delayed us for a good 15 minutes. But I made it for class only about 10 minutes late so it was alright in the end.

The Neonatal Resuscitation Program went okay, I had to re-do one part of the test once, but then everything went okay and we had to do a practical exam and that went okay as well. So everything is a-ok from hamilton =)

Tomorrow will be another OR day...I wrote up 6+ pages of notes today...worked from when I came back from Toronto (around 3) all the way to about 9 30...then showered.

Oh for dinner....I still had some Kimchi noodles...tomorrow will be roast pork....for lunch =P and soup for dinner hahahah

Aanyhwow, I'm going to get to sleep now, the bus will come at 5 45 sharp tomorrow...i am looking forward to it a little, I guess.

My Ray of Hope

I'm in my ICU Rotation this week...and that means there are only about 16 patients to take care of and we have to make sure they're doing OK every 4 hours...so 6x a day....it has been the best rotation YET!

 

My instructors this time are really patient with me...but the credit also goes to the rather impatient preceptors because if it weren't for them, I probably would still be very slow and seemingly-incompetent at what I do =P Today, my instructor allowed to draw a blood gas sample on my own...he wasn't even there to watch me. This isn't the one where you have to poke someone in the wrist though, there's already a catheter in their wrist and all you gotta do is draw blood from it...there are no needles involved. So it's relatively easier from a practical point of view, but equally dangerous from the patient's point of view. I feel that my instructors have more confidence in me and I feel like what I'm doing is actually doing some good for other people...feels prety good

 

The other housemates are getting ready to go to a party right now...there's a Halloween party at the school club in McMaster...No I'm not going, I'm working tomorrow and I'm not ever going to show up hungover...EVER!

 

Anyhow, the ICU is where the sickest patients go....and there's nothing much happening, yet the days are going by faster and faster...My days now usually start off with receiving report from the Night shift at 0630, then checking my patient's Chest X-Rays, blood work, and ventilation parameters. At 0730 I would be in the Unit reading over charts and thinking of how to tackle the day's workload...then at 0800, the staff RTs will arrive in the Unit and I can start implementing any ventilation changes, suctioning, and giving puffers. At around 0900, the Medical residents start their rounds and this can go up to 1200 at least...they spend about 30-45 minutes/patient...for ~15 patients...so yeah it takes a while to finish.

 

Anyhow, I'm gnna do some readings before I go to bed tonight, See y'all tomorrow! To Joshua, Melina, and Dad.....HOCKEY ON SATURDAY!!!!

 

 

We got the platinum award, again!

well boys (adhi and iman),

I'm proud to let you know that our Lunch Lady franchise got the platinum award again this year. (that's for highest sales).
Well, actually this other franchisee in Ottawa has higher sales than ours, but the HO has not come up with a new standard so they are still using the old one and as such we are still qualified as platinum award receiver, ha...ha... Maybe next year they will do a Double Platinum Award for the ottawa guy :-)

We also got the School Participation Award and a Chatty Cathy award for me (that's for being one who wrote sharpest complaints thru emails or something like that according to your dad. ). :-(

We'll celebrate next weekend along with Dad's birthday at Momiji?? That's a good excuse to celebrate, isn't it


mom