Country Needs Broom

I feel sad again today. As you can see, this is my "sad blog" and I am a sucker for sad news. It has been more than a month since an oil tanker chartered by Petron sank off Guimaras Strait – that bit of sea between Panay and Guimaras island just like that bit of Atlantic ocean that forms a channel between France and Britain. What makes this even sadder is the fact that as you read this, bunker fuel continues to leak from the sunken ship at the rate of 120 litres per day. Since that sad stormy afternoon of the 11th of August it has already ravaged more than 300 kilometres of coastline and displaced thousands of people that are continuously growing in numbers as the oil spills reach other island shores.

Guimaras Island is one of more than 7,000 islands that make up the Philippines. It is an idyllic spot for cheap island trips during my heydays as a poor nursing student before I could afford ‘Boracay’. Boracay is the Philippines’ world renowned beach where a cup of tea is as expensive as a cuppa in London and I have to say, nearly as good. Unlike the posh Boracay however, Guimaras is charmingly simple and serene where food and accommodation is fairly cheap and with a wonderful community feel. It is a small island which I thought you can perambulate in a day, or perhaps cycle- both I haven’t actually tried, but you can sense that everyone knows everybody. Most of the people are fisher folks and farmers that will make your stay most enjoyable as possible. I stayed at a friend’s house when I went there, and once the neighbours knew that I’m not local they made it a point that I go to a village disco – it’s a dance event organized by local youths perhaps similar to a rave of early nineties Britain where they set up massive boomboxes in their backyards that blasted wicked ghetto tunes to bust your eardrums until the wee hours of the morning. The difference is: when here you get to pop a few ecstasy tablets, there you gobble perfectly legal organic pest free mango. What is illegal I learnt later is when you bring ‘seeds’ from other islands- as local authorities will confiscate it to keep the province pest free. That is what a typical English bloke here would probably say as: “Quali-ee, aye…?”

Pinoy Travel Blog

The disgusting part of the story is that corporations- as monsters as they are only have one purpose in their minds: to make the most profit for their shareholders.

“Petron Corp. said on Wednesday it has no obligation to cover the cost of cleaning up the massive oil spill off Guimaras Island in central Philippines, nor even to extend economic aid to the communities devastated by the tragedy.”
GMA News

“An investigating panel by the Department of Justice (DOJ) on Tuesday cleared Petron Corp., the country's largest oil firm, of criminal liability in the sinking of the MT Solar I.”
GMA News

Corporate Social Responsibility which is in place to protect the people and the planet is obviously “broomed” aside. The Philippine government owns 40 percent of the corporation and this just makes the word “broom” in perfect context. As long as my memory can remember there is an overfamiliar slogan in Philippine politics that says: “Sa ikauunlad ng bayan, walis ang kailangan…” A banality that roughly translates to: “A broom is what a country needs to prosper “ which again may prove to be valuable to clean up the sludge left by the oil in Guimaras and of course, may yet again become a popular byword for politicians implying the muck in a society that just trundles itself in a vicious cycle.

BBC News

Pardon me if I’m going to digress. The Philippines is a country unlike any other country in the world where history just keeps repeating itself.

I lost count of the countless people power revolution. Edsa I, Edsa II, Edsa Bloody Trilogy.

I get confused with flip-flopping allegiances. Where you will find a senator who is a sister of a Filipino martyr supposedly downed or whose demise was supposedly perpetrated by a former President whose wife the former first lady whatever you call them, now goes to the same prayer meeting together with this senator to renew their relationship with God. Only God knows how you can still follow me on this one.

I am tired of the superficiality. This same senator believes that you can’t have God’s blessing without forgiveness. She was the one who did an impromptu dance on the Senate floor when prosecutors walked out when they were doing their bit to impeach the President. Obviously, now she is implying that God won’t forgive you lot if you don’t forgive her. That impeached President was an incompetent prick from the entertainment industry that has a godson from the same industry that now sits in Senate alongside that "twat" who danced about.

The way the relief operations are being done right now in Guimaras showed a government who remains out of whack. It is like watching a bad soap opera full of incompetent actors that cater to a certain group of audience that are just too doped to change channels.

What a bunch of utter fucks.

Duck or Get Squashed

If you think working in our unit is like going to a fancy dress ball with all this tiny benignly naughty nurses with cute skintight knit hoses – doesn’t mean that tights is still fashionable after 1989 or knit hoses are still pre-requisite to the job, but that is still the stereotypical image of a nurse by a stereotypical bloke ain’t it? Think again. Our ICU is like an Amazonian world where alpha females constantly mud-wrestle to oust another alpha female in ruling a pack of Amazonian women.

Imagine Eve Nazi sister you never see smile when she comes to work. She always got the churned up look every time she works with a new overseas nurse. She doesn’t allow them to touch the bedside computer believing the whole network will crash because of their technological ineptitude. She would make you believe that women Nazi soldiers are worse than men in the treatment of war prisoners during the holocaust.

Then there’s the overly patronizing sister Rebecca who likes to think she is a reincarnation of a Sylvia Pankhurst – type character from the industrial age. She is into Buddhism, Rastafarianism, communism or council bolshevism, holistic medicine and all the isms and alternative crap that you can think of. She is into a lot of them, that she admits she gets confused with her political agenda. She gets premenstrual all the time. Very unstable. At times she is laidback, other times she is a slave driver obsessed with work output and productivity. Gilda said, “she is sex deprived by her chav-scum toy boy.”

The same with her twin Trotskyite Sister Petra who has interesting views on why she hates Lenin and why she thinks the former Soviet Union was actually a capitalist state as it was run by party bureaucrats and all that, but is also an intellectual snob who would quash creative input from the ICU “collective” in say, what kind of food to bring for the unit barbecue. “Nuts”, I’d say.

Thank God, lesbian sister Stella left. I actually thought she was a man, until I saw her wearing a skimpy PVC skirt when we went to watch a local production of “The Rocky Horror Show”. It was so hilarious when a newly hired overseas nurse confessed of getting her sex advice from her before she went home to get married in India. Imagine what happens when a young straight boy had sex education from a stroppy old queer. Stella then found a better paying job with better looking uniform as infection control adviser in another hospital. Apparently, she disliked the very generic non-gender-specific look of our hospital scrub suits. Her new job suited her very anal personality.

What we put up with every fucking day. These are women in huge bondage boots who could easily bundle you in the trunk of their cars or run over. Duck or get squashed, tell me about it. Not that a few of us male staff cared as most of the aggression are directed to their own amazonkind. Considering the profession’s military past – picture stiff heavily starched uniforms and navy shoulder pads.

Pic of The Sisters - Canada's Military Heritage

See any bloke there?

I can understand. My girlfriend left three years ago disgusted to what she called too much “bitching” in the unit. We certainly need more male staff here.

Sink, Swim.

I met the student nurse again today. She was in the coffee room and looked really shattered. I sensed that she had been crying. When I asked her if she’s alright, she told me that the patient that we looked after the other day, passed away. I’m not surprised. He was already on a maximum dose of adrenaline yesterday, and required a lot of filling- you give them lots of IV fluids to maintain a decent circulating volume or at least a decent central venous pressure. I wasn’t sure what the diagnosis was but from what I can gather, he probably died from cardiogenic shock – basically what happens when the heart gets tired from pumping really hard to compensate for low blood supply as a result of acute ?MI, ?PE or pulmonary embolism that we talked about in great length yesterday. These are all purely conjecture, but this was the most probable cause of death that I can think of by just connecting all the dots and without actually looking at what the doctor wrote in the notes.

I felt sorry for the student, obviously her first time to witness a tragic scene in ICU. You do indeed feel a strong sense of empathy to the patient’s family when this happens. Not for us though, we have already developed tough emotional shields to deal with it. It is stressful, but at the end of the day, you got to do what you got to do. I wonder if this is a reason why ICU nurses are the most soulless and insensitive ‘unprintable’ colleagues that you could ever work with. I’m not gonna push for it, but it’s an interesting theory. She told me that she is going to finish her course after a year and will soon be a proper nurse but still feels ‘out of whack’ – her own words. She asked me how long I’ve been working in the unit blah-blah: Hinted interest to work here, so I felt obliged to give her some encouragement. You don’t really want to scare them, do you? So, I told her:

“Oh, it’s lovely to work here. People are really supportive.”

Basically, I didn't tell her what I've been through. If it isn't too over the top, I could have described a hippy commune where everyone group hugged after a task is done, and working here is like playing ball in a lovely white sandy beach where everything is warm and you work hand in hand as a team, when I thought: Yeah, right. They will throw you in the middle of the deepest ocean, and you either sink or swim, so I told her instead:

"People will help you and guide you every step of the way."

Chaos, Control.

The unit is like the double sided painting of Wassily Kandinsky called Chaos / Control in that John Guare play: Six Degrees of Separation, although it looked more like chaos all throughout and not a smidgen of control when I came this afternoon. They are about to tie the tube on patient’s mouth to keep the airway, whilst the doctor is bagging/hand ventilating him. Meanwhile, poor Galileo – our ever so reliable breathing machine is screaming low oxygen. I thought I could be useful by trouble shooting the bloody machine and hopefully shut him up. I’m not really sure if he [ the machine ] is a he as he sometimes get premenstrual and become so hysterical. You got to learn how to press the right buttons with him. I tried to check if any of the tubes are kinked, checked if the machine is plugged to the main oxygen supply, clicked menu screen, with that really annoying smug look, I thought I looked smart whilst I was doing it and I'm not really, so I clicked the buttons, hell - any button because I really didn’t have a clue what I was doing, but it worked. Man, I was good.

“Okay, Howler. You take charge of this one.”

“I’m not yet here, sister. Remember I’ve just arrived in the unit, [ thought I could have a cuppa tea but this bloody-ancient-heretic-piece-of-science-not-ashamed-to-be-called-Galileo is having a fit. ] I’m just trying to help.”

Sister gave me the Naomi Campbell look.

“Oh, okay. I don’t know this patient.”

“Neither do I. He came this morning, but he’s not in the system yet. The notes are with the doctors.”

I can see what seemed like notes scattered on the work station. “Yeah, right.”

“Honestly, we have been busy.”

Fair enough. It looked like they have done quite a lot indeed. The poor man appeared to have lots of invasive looking lines in various parts of his anatomy. Arterial line, CVP, Femoral cath, you name it, he’s got them.

“So what happened to him?”

“Oh, nightmare.” Sister hissed, then sashayed off and disappeared from the hallway like it was a catwalk. Lovely.

“They think he’s had PE’s whatever that means.”

“Blimey.” The curtain just spoke like that ‘voice’ that sometimes lent itself to cute farm animals or burning bushes in the middle of the desert. I opened it, and there she was. Student Nurse. Poor little bugger looked really terrified.

“You gave me a fright, dear.” C’mon in, and see what we have here."

Wished she hadn’t because she then asked me a barrage of questions.

“Hold your horses. I don’t really have a gift with translating gobbledygook either but let’s say PE is a plug, sometimes gunk, but mostly a blood clot that travels from your legs to your lungs then bugger off your heart, basically. I was told 10% of patients who develop PE die within the first hour and 30% die subsequently from recurrent embolism. They sometimes call it economy class syndrome. You know, you go to some beer festival in Germany, but you’re trying to save your booze money so you took the cheapest easyjet flight where it’s so cramped and you end up having a massive heart attack and a dead brain [ similar to what you get if you watch a lot of old american musicals, usually with Julie Andrews on it ] somewhere in the mountains in Salzburg where the Sound of Music was filmed in the 60’s.”

“Oh, DVT.” She said.

“You’re a rock star.”

I wanted to show her the PICCO machine as I was getting inspired, and I was explaining to her how you could inject cold saline to the patient’s heart and then the machine will pick up this cold saline at the end of the art line and be able to calculate cardiac output by analysing the thermodilution curve using this algorithm called the Stewart-Hamilton, when she looked at me terrified.

“What is it dear?”

“Is it like that Pulp Fiction thing? When they draw that circle on her chest with a lipstick and jammed a fat syringe of something into her left breast?”

“Naaah.”

“You inject the saline through the tube, of course. Then it will tell you the patient’s CI [ cardiac index ] which is basically cardiac output indexed to his weight. If it’s low, maybe patient is dry, so you give him lots of fluids. Or SVRI [ systemic vascular resistance index ] when peripheral blood vessels suddenly turn hip-hop and hang out loosely like a baggy trouser, so you loose that pressure. Then you need to give a drug called noradrenaline to act like a belt and squeeze that trouser up so you won’t have blood pressure down to the floor.

I was really enjoying it. It was like Beauty and the Geek. "My favourite is the GEDI…" And before I finished, I knew what she was going to say.

“Oh, I see. Obviously, you like Star Wars. I love them.”

Global End Diastolic Volume Index is the volume of blood contained in the four chambers of the heart.

“Bloody hell, you've seen way too many movies.”

Mad, mad.

“When the person prays, the prefrontal cortex is focused on the words. The left lobe processes information about our position in space and time. It gives us the idea that we have a distinct physical body. When the parietal lobe shuts down, we can no longer distinguish between our self and the rest of the world. As a result, the subject believes that he or she is in contact with the timeless and infinite power of God. It feels like a spiritual experience, but it’s really just a neurological illusion.”

I just read this book by John Twelve Hawks called: “The Traveller"

And it is really mad fiction. Take note: Fiction. But I'm not trying to avoid dissing someone's religious sensibilities here. Make no mistake. The cover will tell you that it is the new “Da Vinci Code”, but I think it is actually more engrossing. A cross between Masamune Shirows’ “Ghost in the Shell” if you like Japanese cyberpunk manga, or ‘The Matrix’, I can understand if some people would compare it to that movie as most of it was taken from the Japanese anime and George Orwell’s “1984” if you’re serious with your books. Sorry. I have been reading a lot of ‘trashy’ novels lately, but I can say that trash is good.

The author could have added a bit of Michelangelo’s painting of the “Creation” in Sistine chapel to illustrate his “God is a creation of our neurological system” theory.

God superimposed on the mid-sagittal outline of the human brain.
id blog

"The Creation of Adam fresco shows Adam and God reaching toward one another, arms outstretched, fingers almost touching. One can imagine the spark of life jumping from God to Adam across that synapse between their fingertips. However, Adam is already alive, his eyes are open, and he is completely formed; but it is the intent of the picture that Adam is to "receive" something [life/knowledge/spirit] from God."

The Brain of Creation

It has posed some controversial issues regarding which one is the creator. God or Adam?

Does Michelangelo just like Da Vinci had some issues with the church?

Si vis pacem para bellum! Pope Benedict XVI has wittingly or unwittingly joined the politico-religious mayhem. Check out Hillblogger's take on the latest religious extremism.

So, which is mad?

Religion or science. Any of the two can blind you. Take your own poison.

Although, it is not fair that people always refer to UFO believers as nerds and weirdos, as when you think about it, the universe is a vast space with perhaps millions, if not billions of potentially livable planets that may actually have life-forms with more brains than the rest of us, whilst those who believe in an invisible all powerful being from the sky are feared and venerated.

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infection. the almost sterile. sanitised climate. of the white tiled room. belies. the bleaker side. just as the fetid odour. of the amputated. diabetic leg. reflects. deformities. should perish. derived pain. mollified. by anaesthetic. more potent. than. the opium. healed. the spirit. what the high priests. have. which the people don't. when they make. revolutions. to cure aberration.

Funky Neuroleptic Malignant Soup

I’m off today. Yippee!!! Last night I was made to look after a very interesting case. It is not often that we have psyche patients in the unit, unless of course you count those that OD’d [overdosed] on some bizarre mix of whatever tablets they found in their toilet cupboards and those that fiddled and got carried away with whatever vegetable they found in the kitchen fridge.

This one is really catatonic schizoid and was sectioned 5(2) which translates to being actually legally restrained and detained in hospital when deemed necessary by the medic as sanctioned by the UK Mental Health Act. I thought, this is going to be very exciting – although, after a rethink I wondered why do I always get a sick patient? I know, patients come to ICU when they are really, really sick but I was also thinking along figurative lines like: Yeah, let him deal with an antisocial mind and of course, violence. I can sense a bit of sexism in the allocation as I am the only male staff, but I can understand as this chap is really ‘huge’. Not a politically correct choice of word, but this one really tipped the scales and the bed.

I wasn’t really convinced that he was a proper ICU candidate looking at the working diagnosis from the wards. It’s quiet often that those patients go to ICU because they are physically rather than medically demanding. I don’t mean to slag off the colleagues from the wards because I know they are really hard working and understaffed, but it’s quiet funny to see patients that you have just attached to wires and monitors one minute and then offered tea and newspaper the next. They are not on an aeroplane, and definitely not in business class. It is ICU for crying out loud, and it’s an absolute waste of hospital resources.

Looking at his notes:

Query CVA [ Stroke ] – found in dumpster / skip , not responsive, GCS 12/15. I thought: Oh, okay. But also, he is catatonic and he is psychotic.

Query Septic, UTI smell. – I wasn’t sure if I’ve read this correctly, but this was in the medical notes. Honestly. And I thought, wow. If you happen to have this wonderful sense of diagnostic olfactory skill, think of the hospital money that can be saved.

Who needs that lonely git with the Petri dish and culture bottles in that sad cubbyhole called the lab when you can go round the park and sit beside a group of greasy ragbags that stank of horse piss then tell them:

“Oi! You mingin’ little bastards take a couple of tetracycline three times a day because you lot got a urinary tract infection.”

Query Neuroleptic Malignant Syndrome, on Quetiapine , Amesulpride – Very fancy and had no idea of it to be honest. Mental note: Will Google the damn thing as soon as all admission paperworks are out of the way.

Past Medical History- Stroke a few years back. Old CT Scan, showed Lacunar Infarct.

Outstanding problem:

Elimination – Not peed since morning. Massive bleed from urethra. I was told that they tried to insert catheter in the ward but failed miserably. Had a look and it appeared that meatus is very, very small. Managed to insert size 10 catheter and blood flowed instead of wee. Did bladder washouts but clots seemed to block passage. Wondered if they rammed this poor man's tackle with a 12 gauge shotgun instead of Foley's invention. In the end, Doctor inserted Suprapubic Catheter – And ouch! This procedure is not for the squeamish. Made sure relative is tucked away in a corner in case there are outbursts of ‘unprintable’ language. He did a portable bladder scan then stabbed the poor chap’s tummy with the tube. I would say, it worked really lovely. Urine flowed. Well done.

Overnight, respirations and gas exchange have been monitored. Kept an eye for hypoxemia and acidosis. Intubation set kept at bedside. Monitored temperature and ECG for arrhythmias. Full blood work including CPK, liver and thyroid function. Hourly neuro observations.

By morning, patient remained stable. There were discussions of lumbar puncture to rule out CNS infection, but I was already looking forward to ravage this nasty but highly nutritious miso.

Miso Soup Simple English Wikipedia

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graveyard. inertia of the body. runs. counter to. cerebral. paralysis. agression sublimated. brought deep. introspection. vagrant matter. exhumed. the abyss. where. time is just a concept. the spirits. meandering. gave the illusion. of coming back. on exactly the. same temporal length of event. i screamed to ascertain. its reality.

A Shining Star

Four years ago this month, my gran passed away. The day I received that tragic news, I wrote this:

I feel sad today. Not because Mama as we fondly call our grandma God bless her soul, passed away. I feel sorry for my children who have lost their chance to meet the most extraordinary woman I had ever known in my whole life. I couldn't imagine Mama being frail and weak. When I was little, she came across as superhuman to me. So powerful I can only describe her in virile terms. I would cringe just hearing her footsteps cause I knew I'm off to the bath with that most awful looking scrubbing 'thingy' I had seen - not the fancy loofah you buy nowadays at Body Shops, but that horrid piece of rock: as in huge lump of rough mineral matter from god knows where on earth's crust it got blown up from. Imagine the most excruciating pain when that rock touched the skin.

As I grew older, I came to realize how graceful and exquisite she was. Perhaps still strong, what with the "language" and the pints of booze she consumed, but she was strong in that sort of Master Yoda kind of way: a wielding force of delicate composition and artistry. I remember how my sister in law got told off by her at one time. She had a rough day with my nieces and she was at the point where she was almost ready to take up the whole ammunition that a country has against her children, when Mama appeared and froze her with her words. Unprintables most of them unfortunately, but I've never seen nor heard such wisdom and discernment. That made Mama my superhero or heroine for that matter ever since, and still continues to inspire me and gives me strength everytime I face bullies and Darth Vaders of this planet. I wasn't on the hefty side when I was going to school and I learnt to use the art of clever conception to fend off and crumple my adversaries.

I never used to have pocket money when I went to school. My mother was a public school teacher and she never gave me money so that I can have nutrition instead of junk peddled outside school. The maid will just materialise as if some strange law of quantum physics caused her to be teleported from our kitchen to the class room at the exact time we are having our 'recess' to shove a veggie porridge and the most pathetic nutribun on my face. I don't how what sort of psychodynamics would that scene affect the other children but I'm sure it gave me the most inferior kind of complex.

I was such a wimp that my teacher had to sleep beside me as a cub scout when we got castawayed in some equatorial hell hole somewhere in Pilar during one of those scouting trips. It rained hard that day, and I heard from the 'big' scouts that there was a tropical storm boiling and that all the roads were flooded. I was so convinced that my father was going to pick me up that afternoon. In actual fact he tried, if not for the wicked ancient narra tree in Santa Fe that completely blocked the road. It was the longest night of my entire childhood life... I sure got teased as 'the baby boy' by my classmates.

There I was: a glass of milk in hand, staring at those ugly morons chewing the nastiest looking coconut candy courtesy of Nay La-on who had not only the most fascinating 'candy store' chucked by god right in front of the school, but also a dark 'gambling' den where old ladies smoked fat tobaccos and played cards - the type with the oddest pictures in them and not the usual clubs and spades. The kind with swords and witches hanged upside down.

Then I discovered that Mama was one of those ladies. I didn't mind then that I didn't have money, knowing that she was there. She was such a star literally as her name "Estrella" in Spanish implies. She would dish out the shiniest coins, and like manna from heaven they fell to my hands and into Nay La-on's till as I took some of the most heavenly tasting coconut candy. My sisters and brothers would agree that Mama was the most generous person to grace the planet. My sister 'Star' named after Mama would have her 'unprintable' gashed for that. She was the favourite "apo".

I heard from my sister two days back that Mama was so dyspneic that she needed continuous oxygen. It was comforting to know that a grandchild who is a doctor was there to attend to her needs. My big sister is also a doctor and it was natural to dicuss the matter in medical terms. We were both adamant for any escalation of treatment. Mama if I guessed it right was 98 and we favoured a more humane treatment. I told her that all Mama needed is TLC: what we call in Nursing as tender loving care. She needed loads of it. It is what I learnt from dealing with patients and families in my whole professional life as the kindest and most comfortable and dignified way to go. I'm pretty sure she would choose it that way. I couldn't imagine Mama dying. She would love to be remembered as a living force. She was a woman with so much style and magnificence, it's quite impossible for me to think that she was gone. She would continue to live within me.



It is such a shame that I wasn't there for her. Wish I could go home. Definitely not to throw ashes over rice fields, rivers and streams... not my style. I'd sit for a glass of wine (not 'tuba' of course, her preference. Couldn't take it. I had a nasty gut after a first attempt to gobble that stuff) A lovely vintage bottle of really sparkling champagne would be nice, if Mama won't mind... and get drunk.

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pulling through. wondered. how the cactus. survives. in a. harsh environment. oasis. & riches. gut feel. honey & gold. acquiesced. the warning. of the teet. damn. my body. is almost. soaked. halfway. might. as well. dip. & wade. into. the water. sand. existence. death. defying. instinct. evoked. pedantic. oddity.

Crikey!!!

Hospital Geeks:

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Back To [ bloody ] Reality

A friend quipped: "What a depressing way to start your blog..."

She suggested that I should throw in one of those cute 'smileys' here and there.

"Oh, okay."

Terribly Happy Blogs












I am stupendously happy. Although, it’s quite hard to keep an arched face without being terribly sarcastic, don't you think?

Guess I woke up in the wrong side of the bed when I wrote it. And perhaps, wrong side of the planet. I wished I had a longer holiday... And stayed a bit longer there in the Philippines.

Some people can probably relate to this: The minute you step foot on English soil, you behave like an Englishman. It's a bit like when you are in Rome-you-act-like-a-Roman kind of thing / analogy... Only this time you don't just act. You almost become one.

Strange.

An Englishman. Read: Übermensch miserable weiner. Maybe it's the weather. Or maybe it's Darwin. Adaptation or something. One of the cornerstones of the theory of evolution: Conforming oneself to a new habitat as in - this environment is full of miserable twits so I become a miserable twit. Example:

[ Situation # 1, this morning in the coffee room checking my emails ]

Cheeky sod: What are you doing?

Me: Uhm, I'm trying to check if I got mails.

Cheeky sod: Oh, yeah?

Me: Oh, yeah.

Cheeky sod: [ Breathing down my neck ] Making irritating twirp sounds...

Me: Can I have some privacy please? I'm reading my email.
Don't you think it's rude that you are having a look?

Cheeky sod: Ain't you supposed to check your bedspace? Your monitor's alarming.

Me: Oh, bugger off !!! I had somebody keeping an eye on it. I am having my break. [ Wondered whether we get paid when we do breaks ]

Hmmm... Gotta check this out soon with Matron.


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boggle. drained. creative. mental. process. sucked out. from the sink. spawned paranoia. while playing. enzymes. detergent. washing machine. ecological. atrocity. contrived. by erudition. to create. biochemical [ germ? ] warfare. narcissus. imagine. intimations of monstrousness

Hello, World.

I'm now here. Back to doing my own laundry, doing my own lunch and doing the bloody dishes as well. I'm back in England.

And I'm miserable as hell.

I don't know. Someone is always casting an evil spell on me. I nearly missed the plane ha! ha! The airline reception has been screaming for my name... And I didn't have a clue. But oh, maybe that was a blessing. The lady by the booth changed my boarding pass to businness class... Lovely. Got 360 degree reclining chair and vodka tonics every half an hour or so.

That didn't stop me from having terribly horrid little naps though.

Because: Day before my flight back, we had a terrible road accident.

We were going back to Iloilo from Capiz... And our car ran over a man - Oh yes, a breathing human being in the middle of the road. My father was driving and bizarrely, his initial reaction was to flee... First time I have seen him panicked and about to have a nervous breakdown... I couldn't imagine my own Pops doing a hit and run.

I screamed as loud as I could to stop the f ***ing car!!!

I ran back to help some locals carry this obviously passed out human body into the back of the car never minding really, whether we were causing further injury to the man... I suppose calling for an ambulance would be really stupid in the middle of nowhere in the third world. I was doing neuro assessment stuff as best as I could while screaming at my Dad not to step heavily on the gas pedal in case we ran over another live object or a really massive running vehicle and make a huge mess on the road. After a while, my patient regained consciousness and I started asking him questions which drew out some really stupid responses... Okay, the guy had a really huge [maybe 8 cm] gash at the back of his skull and oozing bright red blood saturating my new pair of jeans and heck! even my boxers. It was like:

Eyes - spontaneous.
Motor - squeezing my hands really tight and obeying commands.
Verbal - a lot of crap.

This was happening while the car was doing tailspins. I wished I was in my usual controlled environment. Only after some really hellish driving and cursing did we manage to get into the E.R. of a really decent hospital after the town. I would say they have such lovely staff. Well, they were a little bit mellow but I guess it’s that time of day. Siesta or something. I had to constantly remind them that I am not a bloody doctor… even after I had some gloves on and stuck my nose on my really really confused patient's mouth for a whiff of alcohol ( I wan’t to know if he is drunk ) then whacked him with a full blast of oxygen. After another round of Glasgow, my suspicion became true. My chap is mental. He should have been in a psycho ward and not running round to self destruct. I went out for some fresh air while the authorities were taking a blotter report from my father which I wasn’t really keen to listen to, to be honest. So I just bought some really flash slippers and duds for my new friend.

I discovered another problem in the afternoon when my friend's family finally appeared. I was told that he won’t take the pills. Like a flashing bulb that you hit from a help menu screen:

How is he gonna take them antibiotics?

I called my sister who happens to be a wicked shrink.

And so this is how I had my weekend and how I had this pretty nasty leaving do any amount of pampering by the pretty airline stewardess can't help to alleviate. My only consolation is that I got my new friend now pretty much settled in a mental facility.

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not enough. nostrum. consume. the threshold. stench of foot. blood. all over the place. reeks. of havoc. people shrieking. nebulizer. not working. smithereens. splintered images. have ear. marks of matisse. patience as an art form. shambles. his fantasy. to kill.