I know. I did promise a follow-up of my adventures in Bohol and Cebu last month but I wasn’t able to foresee that I would be busy the few days that followed. Anyway, I just made a quick update to tell everyone that I’m still alive and kicking.

Finally, I’m a medical clerk. It was a rough and tough junior year but everything’s behind me now and I’m off to a fresh start. How fresh is fresh? To start off, I moved in to a new apartment which is nearer the hospital. If three minutes of driving seems near enough for you, well, I’m happy to say that I’m just less than 5-minutes worth of footsteps from the front door of our apartment to the hospital. I’ve given up my car - albeit against my will. I don’t know how well I can survive without it though but so far, I’ve lived two weeks without my precious Jazz. There’s not really much need for a car actually since I live very near establishments and any popular food franchise imaginable: Mc Donald’s, Pizza Hut, Starbucks, Shakey’s, Goldilocks and Greenwhich to name a few. There’s also a laundromat, an internet cafe, a water refilling station and yes, even a Crocs store is just a few meters away from our building. Still, I find it a challenge to travel to far places like malls and what-have-yous but I believe in time I’ll be able to adjust as well.

Speaking of adjustments. We’re now into our second week as medical clerks. Fortunately for me, I was assigned in the out-patient department of the Pediatrics unit which is said to be the most benign assignment in Pedia. I didn’t have to deal with STAT calls on my first day as a clerk nor did I have to attend to a delivery for an OB rotation; but I think a little toxicity in my first week would have helped me to adjust to the way of life in the hospital. Now that we’re bound to be assigned in the emergency room tomorrow, I can’t help but feel really anxious about what to expect on my first day - or should I say first night - as an ER clerk.

Just this morning, we witnessed a number of my batchmates rushing to a STAT call in the medical ward. There were around five of them running the length of the hallway, one or two of them perhaps were even from duty from the night before. I wonder how soon I’ll be attending to a STAT call for my duty at the ER. Will it be 5 minutes into it? An hour? A day? If there’s anything that’s leaving me all anxious about this rotation, it’s the uncanny feeling of not knowing what to do when the situation is already at hand. Yes, of course I know that an arresting neonate needs a two-finger CPR technique and that the chest compressions for both children and adults is 100 beats per minute or to the tune of “Staying Alive”. But like what Dr. Manrique reminded us this morning: “clerkship is all about applying in the clinics what you’re theoretically learned during the first three years of your life as a medical student”. To put it quite frankly, I am scared of making errors. At least back in the college, errors meant a few points deduction from the examination grade. But here, in the real world of the hospital, errors in judgement call may mean someone’s life. Perhaps, it’s the part of making an error and losing a patient’s life from that single error is what bothers me at the moment.

But then, there’s also the reminder of how we’re not born perfect; how we’re bound to make mistakes every now and then and how doctors are just simply humans.