Preparing for Independence Day

In exactly 15 days, I'll finally stop being the "fungus that feeds on pond scum" in the PGH medical hierarchy. Oh well, perhaps, not exactly fungus, since there are IM residents and nurses and residents from all other departments to bully and spread shit around. But you're getting my drift, do you? In two weeks, I'll stop being a first year Cardiology fellow - fodder for the Cardio gods and goddesses during Hemody, brunt of all pent-up frustrations of seniors, consultants and disgruntled staff, front-liner for whatever storm and trouble is brewing out there, a doormat, a flower pot, a soul-for-sale, a worthless individual walking around the hospital like a zombie with a dazed look on her ugly face, while flaunting evidence of one-year worth of fat and flab she gained from too much free meals in exchange for her prescribing soul. Ahh, I'm exaggerating, of course. It wasn't really all that bad.

Hmmm, yeah, I'm not being phony here. It wasn't really so bad after all!

How does one prepare for Independence Day? If you're a caged bird stuck in a rut for so long, how do you look forward to a transfer to a bigger prison? If you're an inmate in Manila City Jail, how do you prepare for Alcatraz? Because all kidding aside, this is how I look at March 1 - a move to a bigger prison - a place with more air and free time, but still a prison just the same. It's my silly existential angst attacking once again. But here's how I imagine the next few months, anyway.

I'll be running daily along Roxas Boulevard. 2010 will be the year I'll join my first marathon. I will lose 10 kgs, at least. I will look so pretty, fit and fabulous you would all wonder why I even work in PGH and not in ABS-CBN or some modeling agency. I will get a DSLR and start a new blog - a fabulous photo blog at that. I will travel to Palawan, Baler, Cagayan and the Babuyan Islands, Marinduque, Mindoro, Cebu, and Bohol, and I will have a mysterious, smart and handsome man traveling with me. I will not set foot in the PGH-ER ever! And never will I have the hem of my white coat touch anything in the OBAS again! Wahahaha! I will be fabulous, cool, hot, you'd all look at me and wish you were me.

Obviously, all this crap is written on a duty weekend - which makes it all irrelevant and downright revolting. All the same anyway, let me do a Holden Caulfield, put on my red hunting cap and scream at the top of my lungs, "Goodbye, all you silly motherfuckers, all you phony sonofabitches!" Then I'll get the hell out and run out of PGH as fast as I can. Of course, some stupid patient will have his blood all over the floor and I'll slip like I always do and I'll damn near break my disgusting neck. That's how stories should end, right?

Everything above's bull, of course. I'm still here, on duty for the next 18 hours or so. Still very much the fungus that feeds on pond scum. Or the bacteria that lives in the gut of the fungus that feeds on pond scum. Oh please, Jean, write another word and you're dead!