Comic Strip: Eating Time!

I am a Daddy

Hi guys! Sorryit took me a while before I was able to post again. As you all know, I am here in the Philippines enjoying the company of my family. I am also busy preparing for the Christening of my son next month. I am personally attending to all the details so hopefully everything will be okay.

Meeting my son for the first time was an amazing experience. My happiness was overwhelming.

My son was sleeping when I first saw him. However way we tried to wake him up, he was just so sleepy. I could not blame him, it was 11pm!

My much-awaited bonding time with my baby Inigo.

Cheers!

I feel like my life has just began

I am writing this a few hours before my scheduled flight. In a few hours, I will be some thousand meters above the ground on a plane. Let me share to all of you what I am feeling at this very moment.

I am sure you guys know how I am feeling right now, as I have been writing my excitement for the last weeks. My coming home is one of the best things that are happening to me this year. How I looked forward to this event in my life.

I feel like my life has just began. I am not taking the good things that has happened to me during the last years for granted. But I just feel like I am evolving into a different person quickly. When I left home, I was a husband. When I worked abroad, I was single again (I mean, I lived alone in a house again). Now, when i come back home, I will be a father.

First-time fathers usually adapt to their new role slowly, because they grow as their baby grow. They learn to nurture their small family life as they lived with their loved ones together. But for me, the baby has grown up when I see him, and I will have no more time to adapt to the role. I am the father, and I have to be it as soon as I see him in the airport.

My home will be different now. My married life has a new focus. My family will not be the same anymore.

I just can’t wait to be home and begin this exciting new life.

Packing for home

I rushed to my flat after my day shift today. It was a very busy day. But what the heck, I felt like nobody could ever ruin my last day at work. This was the only shift when I felt like patients can be demanding as long as they want, doctors can write the longest orders as they wish. Whatever they do, nothing could stop me from taking my flight tomorrow morning!

I started packing my things in my suitcase. It was an odd feeling. I only packed a few shirts, and a few of my personal stuff. The rest of the bag has the things I bought for my family and friends.

How come I am packing only a few of my stuff? Isn’t home a place where I should be staying longer? Staying at home has seemed to become a temporary situation. I guess, that has been the case for quite some time now in my life. For the last 10 years, I had many homes.

But I guess, no matter how I look at it, home is still the place where you find your refuge. And that is where I am going.

5 days to go!!!

5 more days and I’ll be home. I feel a different excitement.

I cannot count anymore how many times I have packed my stuff to come home. Each time, there’s a certain feeling of excitement not only because I am finally getting a long rest from a stressful work environment, but also because I am seeing my loved ones and friends.

But this time, there’s another level of excitement I am feeling. It’s because I am coming home to my very own family. This is the first time that I am coming home to the Philippines with a wife and son waiting for me. I left my wife while she was pregnant with Inigo and so this is the first time that we will be whole as a family.

It’s so nice to come home. Can’t wait.

Q.I. Project

This morning, I presented my first-ever quality improvement project for my new hospital. I have presented a lot of studies in my previous hospitals, but this one’s my first here in my new job.

My study dealt with the use of patient arm bands. I made four random checks on patients from November to December, and their arm bands were checked as to presence and accuracy. I found out that although nurses are compliant with putting an arm band on patient, what’s written on the arm band itself is not accurate. The MRN and name are correct, but patient location is different. That is because nurses fail to change arm bands when they receive trans-in patients from either ER, ICU or HDU.

I presented some recommendations during this morning’s presentation. I also designed a poster to remind nurses to check their patient’s arm bands carefully.

I came from the night shift and so I was not really my best self when I did my presentation this morning. But nevertheless, I was able to do it well. Kudos to myself!

9 Days To Go!

The countdown continues…

9 days to go…

few shifts to surpass…

few patients to care for…

few injections to give…

and I’ll be with my family…

and I’ll be meeting my son for the first time.

You may be a nurse if…

A South African friend who used to be my co-nurse in Riyadh and who now works in the UK, sent me this funny email about nurses. This one made me laugh, realizing that some entries are true. Let me share this reality-check to all, especially to all the hard-working nurses out there. Enjoy!

You may be a nurse if…

You believe every patient needs TLC…Temazepam, Lorazepam and Chloropromazine

You would like to meet the inventor of the nursing buzzer system some night in a dark alley.

You believe not all patients are annoying, some are unconscious.
Your sense of humour gets more warped each year.

Your kids get their presents in TED stockings and hospital pillowcases…and their presents are wrapped with Micropore tape.

You know the phone number of every late night food delivery place by heart.

Almost everything seems funny…eventually.

You can identify different causes of diarrhoea by the smell of it.

Every time you walk you make a jingling noise because of all the keys, scissors and clamps in your pocket.

You can tell the pharmacist more about the medication they are dispensing than they know.

You refuse to watch ER/Casualty because it is too much like the real thing and triggers flashbacks or…your family refuses to let you watch ER/Casualty because you spend the whole time correcting everyone and pointing out upside down x-rays.

You avoid answering your phone on your day off in case anyone from the hospital is trying to call and beg you to work.

You’ve been telling stories in a restaurant and made someone at the next table vomit.

You notice you are using even more 4 letter words than you did before you started nursing.

You’ve seriously considered catheterising your children before a long car journey.

Every time someone asks you for a pen you can find at least 4 of them on you. Most of them with the names of laxative companies on them.

You don’t get excited by blood unless it’s your own.

You live by the motto ‘to be right is only half the battle, to convince the doctor is more difficult.’

You’ve basted your Christmas turkey with a 50ml syringe.

You’ve told a confused patient that your name was that of a co-worker and to shout if they need help.

Eating chips out of a clean sick-bowl is perfectly acceptable.

Your bladder can expand to the size of a Winnebago’s water tank.

When checking the level of a patient’s orientation you aren’t sure of the day yourself. Or if night shift, or of the month.

You find yourself checking out other customer’s veins in supermarket queues.

You can sleep soundly at the tea room table on your dinner break and are not embarrassed when you wake up.

You avoid unhealthy people in the shopping centre for fear they will drop dead near you and you’ll have to do CPR on your day off.

You throw a farewell buffet for a co-worker and use a bed sheet for a tablecloth and bedpans to hold the nachos.

You often stay awake for 24+hrs at a time when you work night shift and realise that you don’t need alcohol or drugs to hallucinate, just lack of sleep…

Your finger has gone into places you never thought possible.

You’ve seen more penises than any prostitute.

You’ve sworn to have ‘Do Not Resuscitate‘ tattooed on your chest…soon.

If you are not a nurse and have read this because of a  friend who is, it’s just to help you understand our mindset and questionable mental state!

16 Days To Go!

The countdown begins!

I am finally coming home to see my family this month! I am so excited especially since this is going to be the first time that I will be seeing my first-born son. I left the Philippines last June to work here in the UAE while my wife was still 8 months pregnant with Inigo. This means I have not seen nor held my baby since he was born last July. I have only watched him grow in pictures. He is turning six months old this month.

I can only imagine how it will feel like to hold and embrace your very own son for the first time, until I actually cuddle him in my arms.

Can’t wait.