the last day of summer

Today is the last day of my summer. I’ll be saying goodbye to having hours to waste, to afternoon naps in the summer heat and to shorts and flipflops. I don’t want it to end. I don’t care if the weather bureau says that the Philippine summer is just starting to heat up. It’s as good as over for me, because starting tomorrow, I’ll be confined once again to the fluorescent-lit halls of the hospital. The only time I’ll see the sun is on my morning commute to the hospital. I won’t be able to wake up to the sound of the wild birds chirping, not because they will have gone south but because I’ll have to get up on the hour when the birds are still sleeping.

On the other hand, I do miss the excitement of the ER. There’s nothing like the rush of adrenaline when a patient is wheeled into trauma. I just love seeing the bleeding stop with every stitch I make. Then there’s that wonderful feeling when you bid farewell to a healed patient, the joyous thanks of husbands after you tell them the news of a successful delivery by their wives and the amazement I feel with every profuse thank you after doing what is so trivial to me, but apparently something short of a miracle for the patient and his/her loved ones. There’s also the camaraderie, among colleagues and superiors. They’re the people who stay with you through the long nights, both of you keeping the other sane and awake and are always there to back you up. These are the things that make me go back.

What I’m dreading are the inevitable downsides of my profession. The deaths, for instance, no matter how many I’ve witnessed, I could not get used to. Although sometimes, you just can’t help but feel relieved when a chronically ill patient breathes his last. A great amount of guilt accompanies this relief: guilt for feeling the relief, as well as guilt for not being able to bring back to health this patient. Another downside, a rather big one for me, is the delivery of a still-born or an anencephalic, especially if these babies are in their third trimester. Then there are the people who just make it more difficult for you. These are the prima donnas of the profession, be they come in the form of a patient, a personnel or a colleague. These people just reek of bad energy and they just make a long day even longer.

Well, you really can’t have it all good or all bad. That’s just how everything is, I guess. Summers just can’t last forever.

written on 30 April 2005