All set to go

I've finally received my license. Will travel next week to Pennsylvania. In the meantime, crazy packing is in the agenda. Apartment/house hunting is in full swing.

Jon and Kate separating

Jon and Kate Plus 8 is a reality television here int he U.S.. Essentially they have twins and sextuplets. They've been chronicling their lives for the past few years and I first started to watch when I came back to the U.S.

The kids were cute and you can actually learn a few parenting tips along the way. Watching it makes me cheer for them.

But then, reality really did set in and now it is confirmed they are separating. I feel bad they they are and I feel worse for their kids. Hopefully, the kids will be fine after the mess.

Moving

I don't want to jinx anything but soon enough we will be packing again and moving. First up, looking for a place to stay which we've found it to be a challenging thing. Who would've thought that looking for an apartment complex would be difficult. So far we've been getting the "There is no space at the inn for you". All the complexes are full. We need to be more creative on where we look. Now back to the the For rent section of the paper/Internet.

Purge

I love being a doctor. I love the hard work, the mental challenges, the compassion that you need, the art of getting your patient's trust, heck let's be honest even the prestige of being one. No shame in that. I invested a lot of my youth in it so I should be proud that I am one.

But, to get to this point there were plenty of dumb moments, sleeplessness, exhaustion etc, etc. But the most significant are the patients that helped you learn with each of your success and your mistakes. Somehow, through the years I only vaguely remember the patients that I had no problems inserting an IV line on, or were an easy blood draw, or I had no problems with the diagnosis or their management. The ones that stood out for me were the ones I knew I made a mistake and the outcome for the patient was not good.

When I start becoming too lofty, I think of them and they keep me anchored to earth once more. It humbles me whenever I remember them. I wish I could've done more, could've been more conscientious, acted a bit faster, suspected much earlier, knew a little more. Maybe, things would not turn out the way they did.

You are not alone

You remember that posting months back, I was saying that I was scared about having a second baby? That posting. No, we are not yet having one. But this posting is somewhat related to that one.

I don't know if this is a good reason of why I now definitely want to have another child. But an incident last week made me think and just fortified my resolve on this matter.

I saw a patient a week ago, she was having a lot of knee pain and emotionally she was just a wreck. She said that her father just had a really bad stroke a few days ago and it's affected her a lot since her mother is gone and she's an only child. I could see the distress that she was feeling, the fear of possibly losing her father and maybe being alone in the world.

It got me thinking, if in the future, my parents leave this world, I still have my siblings to rely on; we'll have one another to support us during those trying times. (Now don't be difficult and say we have our spouses to do that for us, that's not my point. It's great that we have spouses, but what if we didn’t?) Which then made me think that if Carlos and I were not here, then who will be there for Rachel?

This led me to think that she must have a sibling so during times of stress, heartache and sadness; they will have one another and not feel that they are alone in the world.

One of the scariest things that can happen to anyone is be alone. I don't want that for Rachel. So, by hook or by crook she'll be getting a sibling in the near future whether she wants one or not.

Drained

I just spent 3 hours trying to transfer my patient to an acute hospital. I'm super tired and pissed. When an ER doc tells me that the reason he's not accepting the patient is due to the high probability of mortality and that doesn't look good, it makes my blood pressure go through the roof. Last time I checked, that is not a justifiable reason for not accepting a patient. There's a reason why I'm transferring patient to acute, the patient is unstable and may become exactly that, a mortality rate, and I definitely don't want that to happen. Kainis talaga. Of course when I tried to get the assistant chief of staff involved the ER docs reasoning became more reasonable. He said that due to the fact that they do not have a neurosurgeon to evaluate the patient they cannot accept the patient. It's pure baloney but it's a bit more acceptable, however, the patient does not need a neurosurgeon, he just needs to be stabilized damn it.

I finally found a hospital who is willing to take him in. I'm happy now.

Visiting

The hubby's grampa is in town. He's been here for a week now and it's been a long one. Longer still since he'll be staying another week with us. Grandpa’s okay but we find ourselves with nothing in common. It's an effort to come up with any conversation with him especially with my limited Spanish and his extremely limited English. But that's not the problem; we just can't come up with any form of conversation, which is fine with me since he's not one of my favorite in-laws.

Lest I give a an impression Grampa that I hate him, let me dispel that and officially say he seems to be an okay type of guy. Not my cup of tea though. Carlos finds him and his stories hilarious. I don't.

I find him difficult at times. I make sure that there is plenty of food for him. Carlos lets him buy anything he wants in the grocery store; you know to make sure he is not hungry. And yet, the guy complains that if he stays any longer here he'll starve. I make him some Tortilla soup, he hasn't tasted any of it. I ask him what he wants he says nothing. We cooked eggs for him since he says that he eats that but didn't even condescend to have a try. Actually he told us that the egg is still raw. That thing had been in boiling water for 15 minutes already!

I realized yesterday, or was it the other night, that he wants the things that he is used to. If it's not that then it's no good. It has to be cooked a certain way. Anything that deviates from the norm seems to be no good.

He told the hubby that I should get cooking lessons from a few of the ladies (family members) where they live. Now, I have tasted the cooking of the hubby's family and let's just politely say that it's not good. Sure, some of it might be cultural differences but the bottom line is the food is NOT good at all. About the only thing that was actually good were the homemade tortillas.

The other thing with Grampa, he douses himself with cologne. I'm sure you are all familiar with the Polo Green scent. Try waking up to that scent in the morning or being stuck in an enclosed vehicle for 2 hours. Not pleasant at all.

I love my mom and dad in law. They're awesome folks. Can't say a bad word against them. When they're with us we always have a good time together. I would say this is the first in-law that makes me tired.

The one thing nice about it having Grampa here, the little Rachel frequently points at Grampa and says Lolo. When asked where her daddy is she'll say papa and a bunch of incomprehensible words then Lolo. I guess she's telling me her daddy is with grampa somewhere.

One more week.