Nurse's Notes

Currently feeling wasted after having two consecutive, almost-sleepless nights.

Tuesday night was spent reviewing readings from renowned philosophers and economists for our SocSci2 finals. Marx has quite made a point in his Das Kapital, while Durkheim’s view on suicide was interesting.

The exam itself was fun, especially with the bonus questions. One actually asked you to draw the shape Weber’s and Marx’s country, or the country’s flag (indicating the colors). Another asked us to create a haiku regarding any of the topics covered in our exam.

Given the unforgiving nature of “finals week,” rest and relaxation was deferred to another time. Thursday meant our final exam for Nursing Leadership and Management.

And so, this morning was spent in reading hundreds of pages of Powerpoint presentations and Word documents.

And now I’m sleepy. 

During Group A’s (All-stars Ampalaya) meeting a while ago at GAB caf, post-SocSci2 finals.

Last March 20, our Philippine Games finals was held at the Sunken Garden at the Diliman campus.

It all boils down to it… of how I keep on shunning that one crazy thought into a corner of my mind’s attic.  It is fear, I tell you, fear of being rejected once I open these gates and let loose to you these three significant words. Incredulous it may seem, but it all boils down to the fear of losing you.

• Medical Paper on Tongue SCCA
• Nursing Research defense
• Community Duty revision of papers
• Nursing Leadership concept paper
• SocSci2 Finals
• N181 Finals (still hoping for an exemption, but FAT CHANCE)
• N107 Finals (hoping that this is nonexistent)
• Community duty oral exam (I don’t see the point, though)

This morning, I came across a curious case of lipoma excision. The patient was a 53-year old female who have had the soft, movable mass for around 11 years. She had ignored the slowly growing mass until she felt “a tingling feeling” and weakness on her left arm. The lipoma itself was located on the left lateral chest, just under the armpits.

(Image from mdguidelines.com)

Since it was only the subcutaneous type, the actual removal only needed a few useful surgical tools: scalpel, army navy retractors, Metz scissors, and Alice forceps.

Upon removal of the huge globule of yellow, greasy, fatty tumor, I asked the surgeon (still an intern) what causes lipomas to form. He only said, “lipomas belong to the benign class of tumors.” Sadly, my query was not adequately answered.

Having read upon a few reliable sources here in the internet, I have found out that the cause can either be from genetic origins or from trauma, though the latter is still unconfirmed.

This makes me want to go take up Oncology. But that’ll have to wait.

It’s our finals tomorrow on Philippine Games which will be held at UP Diliman. Yaay! :)

That is the question I ask to myself.

Coming from Sentro Ophthalmologo in PGH, I decided to go for a more direct route to UN Avenue instead of passing by the white colleges along Pedro Gil. The smoke coming from the speeding buses along Taft was a “refreshing” change from the usual scent of stagnant urine near Pedro Gil station.

Walking alone (being alone, actually) uses some of those unused gears deep inside my mind. I usually think about things a lot, until Nursing somehow limited my time for that kind of activity, making me dwell on the shallow and routine process of interviewing patients, caring for patients, reading about statistics, and analyzing abstract concepts such as leadership and management.

Whether the environment was in in torrential downpours or in humid sunsets, UN station never failed to provide me that place for thinking.

(What a random post. @_@)

Nursing Research

Counting bacterial colonies from hand imprints is no easy task - well, at least for our research participants who washed their hands properly. Our group collected 26 samples last Thursday and left it at the incubator of the College of Public Health.

Given 24 hours to multiply on a blood agar plate, our results were quite surprising (and horrendous-looking as seen below).

The last time we were at the Microbiology lab was in 2009 when we took Microbiology for Nursing. The familiar smell of broth and sight of colorful liquids was quite nostalgic.

We’re group B, by the way. :)

Aiming to have 3 records of me as a circulating nurse.