The Last Mon Standing

I was buying 3 Peso worth of bond paper in a retail store. Since I saw thousands and thousands (ok that’s exaggeration) of spare 25centavo coins on top of my drawer, I thought that I might as well use them.

So I paid the loot, but before I can even go home, the tindera (the owner of the store) stopped me. Then she held a huge magnet that was supposedly taken from a broken speaker (you know the circular thing inside your appliances like TV, Radio, etc).  I noticed that there are 25centavo coins sticking on its surface.

She held the money that I paid then one by one dropped them on the magnet. Unfortunately half of the coins I paid are fake. They stick on the magnet. So I went back home and fetch one peso and two 25 centavos. I made sure that they are not fake by sliding them on our cabinet’s magnet.

According to the lady, the fake coins are usually dated in 2004. So I should be careful with coins that are made during that year. Specially those shimmering ones.

Anyway here’s the other criterion to spot the fake counterfeited coins (thanks to this blog):

Look at the texture;

Rough coins are fake.

PS Fake coins come in different forms. Five, ten and one Peso coins were also counterfeited. (Batteries are not included.)

remember the dying old lady? well, she’s waaay better now. She can now wink, she can now nod, she can actually respond positively to every stimuli inside the ward. Unlike yesterday whe her eyes were almost white.

She’s still using the manually operated breathing apparatus, the ambu bag, for her to breathe and leslie was always on her side suctioning her lungs if ever she needs something to be suctioned (saliva, mucus, phelgm) to let her breathe. we were really amazed.

personally, my prognosis would have been 8 hours and she’ll definitely snuff it, but hey, she survived, and she’s getting better.

Unfortunately, I overheard her relatives that they are planning to go home soon. And I was like, hey she’s getting better and now they want to kill her just because they cannot afford the bills anymore, so what’s the use of their crying and weeping yesterday ha? Now that she’s alive, they now want to kill her… ARGH…

But honestly.. i really cannot blame her daughters, what if they really are penniless…

… man. God save alll the sick.

Leslie’s patient has been in a very bad condition since yesterday. For a thin (very thin and tiny), 72 years ancient woman, to be hospitalized in the Female Intensive Care Unit sure is not a very good news.
Her eyes were teary, drooping as she struggles to breathe.

Things went from bad to terrible this morning. Her pulse rate rocketed to the moon and she can barely respire. Her chest ballooned violently as she tried to inhale as much Oxygen that her frail little body could get.

My classmates tapped and massaged her back, but still everything was getting worse. Her Vital Signs were far from normal and my classmates heared gurgling noises in her throat. She suspected an aspiration from her own saliva. So she immediately reported this to the fourth year who handles us for her Head Nursingship duty. Our appointed Student Head Nurse immediately called our Clinical Instructor and the doctors.

Just as what Leslie asked, they took their Suctioning Device to suction whatever was choking the old woman. Since, I was just a bed away from her (my two patients were her bedside neighbors)they trusted me with the ambu bag to keep her breathing.

I haven’t done a really life threatening case before since I was always assigned to Dengue Stricken spoiled brats in the private hospital, to the newly given birth women in the OB ward. I was new to this stuff. I asked the Doctor if there is any count in squeezing the Ambubag on the patient’s nose, she said that there is non, all I have to do was to keep up with the breathing pattern.

Then I took away the ambu bag when Leslie had to start the suctioning. She suctioned all the saliva from the lady’s pharynx. The saliva was too much that it filled half of the bottle in just 10 minutes of suctioning.

They were all now in a comotion so i decided to go out and have my break, they don’t need me there anyway. I was assuming that she might be dead when I’d come back, but I was wrong.

Her daughter was weeping beside her, and the staff nurse told her not to because the patient might hear her.

Everyone weas thinking that she’ll die. I just hope she’ll survive.
Let’s pray for her.

the bus that I was riding home this afternoon stopped beside this unfinished, and already deteriorating stonewall that should have housed a bus terminal. i was looking laziliy at the window which I comfortably left open to invite the virtually non existent wind to kiss and quench my oily skin that has been exposed to a multiple of microorganism from the hospital that I just had my duty….

then suddenly a red dragonfly caught my attention. It was hovering left right in front of me… this was when I realized that there were 20 or 30 more of these red dragonflies that glides along the placid air of afternoon.

I was quite content looking at them when I saw another one, perched, unlike the other, on the rusty iron bars that sticks out on top of the cement wall. But what was odd about this insect was that in that sea of red dragonflies, it was the lone green creature and it has a fold on one of its hind wing. 

the first dragonfly that I saw seems to be inviting the little thing to come with them and fly… I saw the green one fluttered its wings and jumped into the atmosphere… but it has not yet gone 3 inches away from its iron bar, it immediately returned. he tried this incessantly but  he was unsuccessful that little fold has certainly did a lot of damage in its fragile helpless wing until i saw all the other dragonflies slowly thinned in number, until non, even the its red companion was on the site. they deserted him.

i felt so much pity for the little dragonfly but at the same time I was quite amuse on how hard it tried to fly even after his herd left him.

plus my favorite color has always been green.

Nursing is virtually non existent in my town. In fact, I have to travel 1 and a half hour a day just to go to school.

This afternoon, after I went with some of my groupmates to get our report next next week done, I decided to replenish my dwindling Nursing stuff. i have ran out of cotton balls, my Alcohol was dry, I do not have a clean surgical mask and cap and all of my clean gloves has since been used up when I cleaned our house after the plumbers did their business in our bathroom.

My allowance for the day was not enough so I decided to wihdrawfrom the ATM. But when I went to the Landbank of the Philippines, their machine was again, AS USUAL, was everything but working. It was off-line again.

So I thought I might as well go home and ask my father some money (the Landbank branch in our place might be in the same condition as its wretched brother 44KM aways).

Then I went to three drugstrstores to buy my things, to my surprise they do not sell clean gloves, surgical mask and cap. One drugstore even asked me what type of glovesI would want tobuy… the guy ( he’s just a salesperson, the pharmacist behind the shelves) asked me, "Anong gloves ba? Yung pangpaanak o yung panglaba?"(what type of gloves the one used for delivery or the one for washing the clothes?)Then he went to the storage and then when he came back he had with him his samples…

…one was a sterile gloves (for delivery) and one was a pair of orange rubber gloves for… yeah washing our dirty laundry.

SIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIGH

This semester could be the MOST TOXIC SEM of my college life.

The term TOXIC is colloquially used inside the hospitals not to mean infectious or hazardous but for busy or hectic duties.

Here’s my sked for the coming five months, Thursdays to Saturdays :