Musings of a Butterfly

December 24, 2020 - I suddenly received a photo from my best friend. It was a photo of her, Quenie with a ring on her finger - apparently Rhian her boyfriend for how many years already proposed marriage to her. That very moment tears welled up in my eyes as I made an IG story about it, I was beyond happy. Quenie and I became classmates for the first time on 6th grade. I was a transferee sitting upfront because I was small and needs adjustment to fit in my new section. Quen on the other hand was seated 4-5 rows back, if I’m not mistaken she was seated next to Kevin or was it Dexy. We barely knew each other then. On our first year in High School, we became classmates again. We both were sheltered girls, our parents would bring us to and get us from school, still we barely interacted with each other. Until we started carpooling together. I can’t even recall now how we started talking then but I know for sure it was February 5, 2008 when Quenie and me along with Darwin declared ourselves a...

Letting go is never easy Five wonderful years. Five years of not just beautiful memories, but also those that are not so and those in between which were needed for me to be who I am now. For the past 5 years, I’ve been using the same mobile phone - a silver iPhone 6. I’m not the type who wants the latest gadget. For as long as it serves its purpose, I don’t find the need to get a new even if it’s old. But unfortunately I had to say goodbye to that phone. Admittedly, I’m a clumsy person. I fall down a lot when I was a lot younger and until now I get bruises here and there without me noticing. I drop things quite often, including my phone. My phone had cracks every now and then, I actually had to replace its LCD 2 years ago when I accidentally dropped my phone as soon as I woke up. I even got myself wounded. This time though it was my nephew who dropped the phone and inadvertently broke the LCD leaving a big black zone. I have the option of changing the LCD once more but this time I chos...

  September 23, 2021 – Papa’s 58 th birthday. In 2 years time, my Papa will be a senior citizen. I’ve been asked before who my favorite superhero was. I answered – “Batman”. Partly because I love Christian Bale and because in real life, for me, Papa is my Bruce Wayne, my very own Batman. Why Batman though? He doesn’t have any superpower unlike Superman, Wonderwoman and Green Lantern. Well, aside from being filthy rich Bruce Wayne is just a human. The fact that he is just a mere human but does everything to the best of his abilities and his resource for the sake of Gotham (and well his revenge) is what makes him my favorite. In all honesty, I couldn’t properly celebrate my father's birthday because we were waiting for the result of the recent Physician’s Licensure Examination that I took just 3 days prior. It was a 2-weekend exam and every morning of those weekends my parents would wake up at 4am and help me prepare for the exam – prepare my breakfast, my uniform, and my sn...

  April 1, 2021 – one of those where I question myself why am I in this profession. It’s Holy Thursday, a holiday and the roads are cleared off traffic. And yet I am on duty. Worse of all, it’s my mother’s birthday.   The night prior, I’ve been brooding over the thought that I have to go on duty. Maybe because I’m also guilty of not preparing for the new department. Pediatrics was my first department during clerkship so my knowledge probably is not at its best. But as I started my day, I prayed fervently that the day would go well. I told my Dad about how anxious I was and he told me that most of the times what we fear won’t occur. And with a heavy heart I left our house and went on duty.   The residents were really approachable and kind, and it gave me some sort of comfort that I somehow knew some of them. As I attended to one patient, as I was looking at the crying mother, I was reminded that I was once a pediatric patient and my parents had the same grief as the parent...

March 16, 2021 – I woke up to my alarm at 4 o’clock in the morning, I was asleep for seven straight hours. My legs feel a bit sore and my head is throbbing a little bit. A little voice is telling me to take a day off but I reminded myself that this is the profession that I dreamed off. So I prayed and finally got the strength to get myself up. It is still day 2 of our face-to-face clinical rotation as post graduate interns, it’s too early to give up.   Let me tell you of what happened yesterday. Excited and anxious, were two emotions that I felt yesterday. I woke up 3 times before my alarm, at 12 midnight, 2AM and 3AM. I tried to get more sleep in the car but I couldn’t. Maybe my group mates felt the same because we all arrived early.    It’s almost a year since I last set foot in the hospital as part of the working force and it feels strange. Part of me is scared because I feel like I don’t know how to be part of the medical team anymore and because I’m entering a territ...

So, I got vaccinated yesterday with the vaccine that I originally did not trust. And 19 hours after I still haven’t turned into a Titan.   Starting next week, I’ll finally be starting my face-to-face clinical duty. And as requirement of the department that I’m currently rotating in, we need to provide a negative swab test – and so I got swabbed too. On my way to getting swabbed, we received news that our department didn’t give us a go signal to get swabbed.   I thought – “this must be Divine intervention”   For the past few days, I’ve been pondering on whether I should get vaccinated with SinoVac. The said vaccine has been the center of controversies - its low efficacy in comparison to the other brands, the overpricing in the acquisition of it, the rushed approval of EUA and being a staunch anti-DDS I did not welcome the idea of getting vaccinated with the vaccine that the President has been advocating. Aside from that, I am immunocompromised with an autoimmune disease – ...

  Back in Bohol, there were 8 of us sharing one room. Me, Arnita, Rabina, Den, Ralina, Lorie, Diane and Lochelle. First time we shared the room was quite awkward I guess but I actually don’t remember how we went about it – maybe because we were too busy that time. The second time we were in Bohol though, we knew each other better. We were in different groups - Me, Loch and Den, Arnita and  Rabina, Diane and Ralina and Lorie by herself. We also did not share the same statuses. And when the lockdown dawned on us, we finally got the time to know each other better.   Prior to the lockdown, February last year, we managed to squeeze in 2 outings. One was to Sikatuna’s Mirror of the World and the other was to some beach in Panglao. If I remembered it right, it was a Sunday and I was on pre-duty status when we drove up to Sikatuna. And then we went to the beach it was a weekday but a holiday, I was from a 24 hours duty. If I remembered it correctly, I was the one who initiated bo...