The ICU is a field of knowledge. It grows theories and ideas that hovers on all of your senses. The beeping cardiac monitor wakes you up and speaks to you among its eerie lines. The sound of your patient’s breathing alerts you to start moving. The look and feel of your patient’s skin spells out the pages you’ve brood over in college. The smell of burnt air also gives you its own dire signs. Imagine these raking your senses all at the same time.

EKG

Bunny Ears

#leftbundlebranchblock #ecg #heart #tracings #nurse #workstuff #ICU #amused

I solemnly stare at the murky depths of a chocolate drink hoping to find solace from my random awkward loneliness

It just gives me a much deeper undaunted  paranoia that kept my head from whirring. My pensive thoughts refuse to be stopped so I succumb and drown, realizing how I’m truly physically alone. I am so hungry for anything that could bring back a spark. I seek for a physical touch, a hug perhaps, that would give out the warmth I couldn’t recognize. I need to listen again to voice that could encapsulate me and keep me amused. I realize how I’ve become a slave of anything sweet like a chocolate drink and how it seems to temporarily mend the failing cracks from the edges of my mind. 

8.24.13 

On Helping People

I once came across a quote here that says about one person drowning while the other person was just standing three feet away screaming to the drowning person to just learn how to swim.

In reality, if you see somebody in need of help and he’s just right there, would you just stare at him and say that he can do it by himself? Wouldn’t you compulsively do something to help him?

I go through so much of this at work recently. I see my colleagues sitting there watching me while I move about doing the things I’m supposed to do. I’m the junior, the bottom of the food chain, the person who get’s most of the tasks, while most of the time, they relax on their chairs waiting for time to go by. During such time, I just go on with my work, most of the time in a hurried pace, so I’d finish everything on time. Within 12 hours, I’ve got so much things to do and I feel like I’m always on the run. And yes, during that time, they’re just watching me.

I simply don’t get it. Is there some sort of wisdom they are trying to instill in me every time I go through this? And if there is a lesson in it, I can only name one and they speak of it too often, it’s like throwing paper on a rock. They always emphasize time management as the key to what ever I’m going through.

I thought I was way past that stage where I have to suffer on my own at work. I thought the people I work with aren’t what I thought of them on the first place. I always thought, whenever I’m “drowning,” they really wouldn’t help me because I have to learn to swim by myself first. I thought that when I actually do learn how to swim, they’d return back to their normal helping selves. But no.

There is a difference between letting somebody get drowned a little so he could learn to swim and a person who do knows how to swim but is actually drowning.

A hint of inspiration goes a long way

It starts like a budding feeling of happiness followed by hope. Then it slowly turns into a desire for more. That inspiration then becomes a need for you to breathe. A daily dose seemed enough but you begin to ask for a little more. A few more sparks and a parade of signs, you will begin to thrive until there comes a day when a spark isn’t enough and you shall seek for something more. You will realize that it is no longer just a hint you seek. You realize you’ve grown attached. You fight off the odd feelings you’ve made, ignoring possibilities and trying to get yourself back.  However, that inspiration has dug deep into your depths leaving you powerless without it.

#pokerface

Teachers

How does a learner act when his teacher doesn’t act by how he has thought his student?

I think teachers are one of the best people ever made. They teach everything in a wide array of topics you either want or need not want to hear. They make you think, act and keep you nurtured like a growing plant hungry for facts. They readily feed you with all the possible knowledge they can muster. They will lead you on to different paths of information, give you a clearer picture of things you can’t understand and keeps your mind wide open to endless possibilities of the unknown. If I would be inspired by someone, it would probably be a teacher.

One of the best things about teachers is that you can’t only meet them in the four corners of the classroom. They are actually everywhere. You can meet them at the park when you are wondering why things are what they are. You can randomly meet them in your work place when you seem to be lost from where you are. Sometimes they are actually some people you know. They can be your helpful friend, giving you another dose of advice after a hard day. They can be your witty colleague who never fails to lend a hand during another toxic work day.

Your teacher is supposed to be your role model. He is supposed to practice what he teaches. By living up to what he imparts to his learner, he portrays a role that his learner will follow because he simply believes in him. As a learner, he looks up to his teacher as a foundation of how he is to be.

Now what if all the things you were taught were simply words left out carelessly for you to rigidly follow? Now your teacher, whom you look up to, makes these guidelines, imposes them for you, and you had to do it. As an obedient student, you then obey these rules, come to the point where you compulsively live up to perfectly follow these rules because it is how you are taught. Then one day your teacher does something that alters whatever perfect guidelines he has plotted on you. He diverts from what he has taught you and does something unnervingly wrong.

How do you even function after that? Do you think that still following the lessons you were taught would make you feel any better? How do you even start to decide whether what you are doing is actually right? 

I wear pajamas to work. They seem like pajamas.

ICU Survival Guide: Junior

( I've devised a list of things I needed to take note on the day  I realized that working in the ICU isn't as simple as it seems--just when I thought working in a medical-surgical ward packed with patients is already hard. My job itself is an overdose of reality, sometimes you have to do things like this to keep yourself sane.)
 1. pray before and after duty
 2. take a deep breath and prepare to be intoxicated
 3. assess your patient thoroughly
 4. nursing is an art form
 5. develop your deep-seated obsessive compulsion
 6. answer all the doctors questions
 7. move steady and fast
 8. don't fuss about the harmless infusion pumps
 9. endorse the proper IV level
10. don't feel stupid
11. you still have to wake up the sleeping doctor at night because your patient is desaturating, gone hypoglycemic or worse, coding
12. sometimes you really have to figure out things by yourself
13. ask when in doubt
14. do what you think you can do
15. don't feel bad when you're asking help for the simplest things. you're still a novice for crying out loud and they put you in the ICU
16. learn how to insert an IV on an edematous patient
17. learn the ECG tracings
18. taking the 12 Lead ECG takes a great amount if skill
19. you can learn things when you actually do them
18. use your time wisely
19. keep everything clean
20. replace your suction catheters, sterile bottles, ET tie every shift
21. get rid of the water from the mech vent tubes
22. night shift means deal with all the papers and deal with them fast
23. focus on the patient and not on the stack of papers
24. deal with the papers anyway
24. turn your patient
25. be present at admissions, turning rounds, daily hygiene, and everything you need to be in
26. master the stockroom
27. learn how to be a nursing assistant
28. deal with the special endorsement with a legitimate face
29. don't feel like you are at the bottom of a food chain even if you are
30. your co-staffs are still people
31. don't make stupid mistakes
32. you will get used to codes sooner or later
33. sometimes, you might know better of the patient than the doctor does
34. it's okay to cry. just don't do it in front of them

35. try to live

(to be continued)

Musings

The people around me have spoken. They speak of wisdom that goes along the lines of commitment to a person they believe would be their person forever. They tell stories, rarely heard by my keen ears, where happiness and loneliness collide, overcome trials are called success, and the mere thought of having a someone even if it is far away feels better than having no one. A bunch of them hold on to these ties for they have lived with it. It taught them things I seem to have failed to learn. It is being committed to love. 

I have not yet been lost or lead to such musings. Thus, I'm doubtful, wondering, questioning what. However, I am curious, and has this utter urge to venture on these like sailing in uncharted waters. 

How do you define it? How do you set directions to find what you must seek and know if you've finally found what you are looking for? How can you know what envelopes it's entities when the only way you can answer all your questions is actually live in it?

untitled

traces of you
form the lines and scent
of the beginning and an end
a hint of your smile
strums the beat of a heart
where the wind doesn’t make
reasons for you to ask
and the colors of the sky
remains a perfect art
remember the time when
I sat next to you and listened
as you were spilling words
wandering how people are what they are
while you created stories and poetry
and grinning through your ears
I said something 
and you laughed

Taint

Standing right next to you

Is an old friend and all lost
Confused with the tainted world
Sick from flesh to bones
Resting a suffocating journey
He stands there staring
At the blank pictured faces
And broken records of a chord
You were watching yourself fall
Hurt like you’ve never been hurt
But breathing and breathing hard
You’re mind fails to rest
As much as you wanted to
For every blink of your eyes
You see a murky blot of a picture
A stained shirt and a broken wheel
But He was there all along
Protecting you on your way home
Standing right next to you

spill

there is no start in what I want to say
because as I look at the sky and
gaze at its infinity and wander off
with the misty wind that
tends to hug every part of
me, I see the details of 
the fine lines of ideas
and sparks and scraps of paper
torn and not, they lay
scattered on the cold floor
there saying something that
should have been spoken
yet still waiting to be unearthed
traces, just traces
of sweet summers
familiar laughter
meaningful glances
they were long gone
as the waves crashed upon 
the tiny ebb of
warmth, it dims its flares
as I bleed into another
torn piece of paper
I can't start what I want to say

Come Away

Come away with me
Let us sail the uncharted waters
And watch the sea
Paint things 
That cannot be seen
Come away with me
Let us walk the 
Moss and grass of earth
Have the wind carry us
And feel perfect mirth
Let us trace our steps
Make one at a time
Look up high to the heavens 
Make the trek worth a climb
Listen for hidden words of wisdom
Though walls may seem unkind
Because we will seek freedom
And define it for the blind
Come away with me
For there are far great things to see

someone like you

it can’t be helped that
one day,
i’d be singing a song for you
a song i wish i sung to you

words were the first
tiny drops that had
encased the depths of
my soul
words were the strings
that that tied me on a balloon
watched myself soar
words were the music
that kept playing on
with my thoughts

it can’t be helped that

one day,
i’d be singing a song for you
a song i wish i sung to you