Friday, June 12, 2009

Sense and Sensitivity

Scenarios that totally piss me off:

#1 It's a Sunday morning and you're waiting in line for the PGH elevator. (As a trivia to those who are not aware, there is only one elevator servicing the entire 1500 bed capacity hospital during Sundays.) The line extends up to the ATM machines. After 3 trips, your turn to be stuck in the sardine can finally comes. Then a loud-mouthed woman with foul-smelling hair, tagging along a noisy brat, cuts the line and takes your place. Elevator closes. You have to wait for the next trip.
Isip mo lang, mag-brownout sana.

#2 You're almost done with your 15th OPD patient. You skipped lunch while all other fellows pigged out during a pharma-related soul-depriving activity in a nearby fancy restaurant. It's almost 3PM and you still haven't made your rounds. You're going to be grilled on Hemodynamics Conference in a few days. You're packing up your stuff when... Nurse comes to you and brings you 3 charts of 3 patients. New patients for the other fellows, who already left, enjoying pig heaven. You look at the patients. They're as hungry as you are. They're sick but you're not. You look at them.
Isip mo lang, good karma, good karma.

#3 The sun is up and it's 7AM, you're already harrassed and you smell like a DM foot after spending so many hours at the emergency room. You've inserted a temporary pacemaker on someone you eventually did a CPR on for 1 hour and 15 minutes because your senior fellow told you to. You're ready to hand over the phone to the day-fellow. It's 10 minutes to 7:30. You're enjoying your first 5 minutes of being seated, and your coffee smells good. Then the duty phone rings. OB resident tells you of a patient with a heart rate of 110. You need to see the patient, consultant orders.
Isip mo lang, yeah right. Difference between heart rate of 110 and 100 is the same as 7:30 and 7:20.

#4 It's a rainy Friday afternoon. 5PM, traffic in Taft Avenue is a mess. Streets outside are flooded. After a week of running around, you finally have time to relax. You're thirsting for that cold bottle of beer over long, ponderous and intelligent conversation. And just like manna from heaven, a good friend you haven't seen for months texts. Beer? Come over. Because he's the one who has a car, you ask him to pick you up. He texts you back, sorry, I can't brave the traffic.
Isip mo lang, ASSHOLE! (affectionately though. because, hmmm, what else is new?)

Some people just need crash courses in sensitivity! Yeah, you can always say, "Sorry, but I didn't know!" Who says you have to know? A bit of sensitivity is the same as common sense! It's as simple as the Golden Rule. You don't have to know it. You feel it! You do or do not do some things because you know how it would feel if you're in the other person's place. Come on, show me a bit of sensitivity if you got a bit of common sense in your system!

#5 There's only one functioning computer in the CVS office, where I'm typing now. Been hogging this unit for an hour already. Batchmate comes, bringing along his flash drive. He's complaining to my other batchmates he's got a dozen echo reports to print. I'm deaf. I didn't hear anything. I keep on blogging.

We simply and deliberately disregard common sense sometimes. Pretend we don't hear. Pretend we don't know. The Golden Rule is just too much to be obeyed all the time.

Some people need crash courses on sensitivity. But then again, perhaps we all do.

4 comments:

leds said...

hey doc, first time reading your blog. addictive! you should write a book ^^ bisita ka naman dito sa singapore. ciao!

Walking on Water said...

thanks leds. would appreciate your comments. hehehe. i miss you old folks to argue with.=)

Anonymous said...

you're a doctor? Cool. that's one of the coolest professions in the milky way. :]

hmmm. perhaps I need to visit sensitivity island and hide their for a while. I was told many many times that I am one hell of an insensitive dumbass.

Reena said...

i also get irritated easily by 3 things: 1. noise 2. traffic 3. tardiness. i easily get stressed with these.

:)

i agree with the insensitivity part. bakit nga ba we don't have trainings on it? :)