My last friday...

Thank the maker! Whew. Today was a nightmare. Rough clinic day.
And I HATE the last couple days before taking off--so crazy and hectic and things to do!
But I have good news--I didn't talk about this earlier because I wanted to wait and see what would happen: in order to graduate I had to have 3 continuities of care, ie. 3 patients I follow through their pregnancy, labour, delivery, and post-partum period. Sounds like a tall order to complete in 7 weeks, right?
My preceptor, Vicki, referred to it as a 'miracle'.
But I have in fact completed all 3 continuities of care--plus a fourth, just for shits and giggles. (Who came up with that? It's so rude.)

Here's the third continuity of care with my Mum yesterday. He was a cutie--but so much like an alien. I called him ET.
GAH! I'm just sitting here waiting for the picture to load and I can't sit STILL because there's too much to do and I'm leaving in 2 DAYS!
So, gotta run. I don't know if I'll post again before I go. But be assured I will again once I get to Malawi.
Hey friends--why didn't you all tell me I was crazy to do a back-to-back missions trip? This would have been an appropriate opportunity to intervene and say something. Sheesh. Thanks a lot.

Centennial Post!

Happy 100th post to me!
To celebrate here are some pictures from the last few days since Mum has arrived:

Yes, they are pictures of me. But Mum TOOK them. I have lots of video of Mum, but no pictures yet. I will.
This is me with baby Cedric. He looks like a Cedric. I thought he was kind of an ugly baby when he was first born--but he's really grown on me. I'm rather attacehd to Cedric now. His mother, oh MERCY, had a hemorrhage in post-partum (after delivery) and her blood pressure dropped to 50/20. Pardon? Yes. 50/20. A normal bp is 120/80. That was shock. It was terrifying. But she recovered. And now we're onto the drama of her not breastfeeding and everytime I walk into the room she has a baby-bottle of WATER in his mouth. BAWAL TUBIG BABAE!!!!!!!! Water is forbidden for baby!

This was hilarious: I was posing Cedric with his cousin and sister (one guess who his sister is) and the one little girl just takes ol' Ric from me and starts rocking him and saying 'Tuh, tuh, tuh, tuh' the way a Filipina mother would soothe her baby. This little girl is no older than 3. Very cute.

Moments of note:
-When Mum thought the Filipina midwife was saying the breech-baby's position was 'bridge'.
"Bridge?" 'Yes, breedge.' "The position is bridge." 'Breedge.'
-Maricor only remembered she had met Mum in 2004 once Mum doned the frozen gel-pack head-band. "Ohhhhh, yeah. I meet your mum before."
-When Mum realized her power:
"I just pointed out that baby was jaundiced so I told them what to do, and look, they're doing what I said!"
So, she's adjusting well. She's finding her place here at Shalom, which is giving her purpose and a reason to like it here. I've tried, unsucessfully to get her to start her own blog. Perhaps one day.
The heat, of course, will always be an issue. It still is for me, but now I'm just used to being shiney, drippy, zitty, and occasionally smelling. It's a process.

This is a picture Mum took in the Hong Kong airport. Mountains (which I will always type at 'mountrains' until the day I DIE) are a phenomenon to us Torontonians. Hamiltonians however, we're soooooo used to mountains. We have our own "mountain".
It's pretty eh?

I've been trying to download some video onto youtube with much difficulty, so in true form I gave up, and you'll all just have to wait until I get home and can actually function on my Mac.

So--I leave for Malawi in four days. Sweet Jesus! I'm not saying that in vain. Jesus IS sweet and I really am calling out to him like that. There's a lot to do in the next few days, annnnnnnd a lot of obligations that I don't WANT to do. BA!
But I'm sad to leave--very sad. I think I might even cry. I actually love these girls, and these people. I never had an experience like this before.

But, on to more adventures!

Little glories:

Today I realized something cool about God and His "Glory" fanaticism. It changed my whole perspective on MY role in this life.
I realized that God wants to show his glory to us. Wha? That's what I realized? Yeah. It's too simple.
I believe His primary goal in regards to Glory-showing is that He wants me (and you) to see and be in awe of His glory. Individually. His Glory is for me to be amazed over. He loves me so much and I am so important to Him that he is content with just me realizing how Glorious He is.
I'm repeating the same thing over and over again just so you'll all understand.

Because it was a kind of overwhelming thing--to be his display of Glory to all of mankind! And yeah, just like love, His glory IS shown to all men through an outpouring of glory in our own hearts and lives. Make sense? But it first has to start individually. Otherwise we're just hypocrites.

So anyway-I've started cherishing moments when God has been Glorious just for me. I feel like few things give him greater pleasure than that.

Anyway! On another note--My mother arrived safely and happily yesterday morning. She's been sleeping for, ohhhhhh, almost 16 hours. I think she's ok....
Will post pictures...

QUICK!

Does American Eagle fit big, or are their sizes still pretty normal?

Tell me the truth...they fit big, don't they?

Love poem in Taglish.

If you haven't been here in a while--read the last couple posts. They're funny if I DO say so meself.

So I have an admirer--well, he's become more than an admirer. He's a lovah.
His name is...no let's keep this anonymous because although I may not like him as a boyfriend I still respect him. He's an architect. He lives at home. (Hey! I'm still respectin'! Living at home is a desirable thing here.)

Here is the poem he sent me the night before he introduced me to his GIRLFRIEND:

FrNdsHip is 1 of d hArdst tiNgs 2 kip,
coz sOmewEr in d miDdle nEw friEnds mAy cOmE,
bt i hOpE u'L stiL kEep mE in ur hEart
evEn if tHerE wUd B sOmEoNe New.

Then, just now I received another text:

LUV: Once in a while, right in the middle of an ordinary life, love gives us a fairy tale...it started when I met YOU.

Something's always happening in the middle!!!!!!!

He gets an A+++ for effort.
Now if only guys pursued girls like that more often.

And here's a kinda emo picture of myself--I took it in reply to a friends' bands' request for girls in striped tops. I'm a sellout. I know. No need to tell me. But nevertheless I liked this crazy shot. I look like one of those Bratz dolls---with the huge head and big eyes. Actually, don't look at it too long--it starts to get creepy.

Trying days...

God better be up to something because today's been a rough day. (Is it 'wrong' the threaten God?)

***Warning: profanity and bloody fluids (not mine)...ah I mean bodily fluids. What is WITH the typos these days?***

Today was out clinic/prenatal day and the students are back so it's insanely busy busy around here with blue-scrubbed students shuffling around or purposely evading their supervisor to get out of work (now that's the spirit!), 100+ patients, the two regular midwives and me AND as an added bonus a neighbouring missionary dropped off two women to 'help' IN ONE ROOM.

Oh, I felt so bad for the two women 'helping'. The person who usually checks patients' blood wasn't available, so we enlisted them and then we had to explain how it worked and how to take samples and THEN the machine didn't work after 45 minutes of messing around. Finally they just went home saying 'We'll come back later when it's not so busy.' I knew I wouldn't be seeing them again. Our clinic is not for the faint of heart.

So when I wasn't making sure the visitors were 'having a "good" time', I was tracking down nursing students, filing in charts and generally doing the work of all the students put together because as far as I'm concerned they're incompetent and I don't feel comfortable having them look after my patients. The other day they let a patient go home with a fever that she'd had for 5 days. Her chart said 'has fever'.
I asked "How high was her fever?" Don't know.
"Did she complain of any abdominal pain?" Didn't ask. Ah. Well done!
"So she's gone home then." Yes. "And she's coming back?" Not sure.
"But you let her go home?" Yes.
"Did you tell anyone that she had a fever for 5 days?" No.
"Did you think it was abnormal?" Yes.
Ok. Thanks. I'm glad we cleared that up.

Wait, let me reiterate. Their supervisor is incompetent. Today she actually AGREED with a woman that 'Yes, you probably don't have any milk to breastfeed. Here's a bottle.' I could have strangled her.

I've developed a new talent. I can identify different types of bodily fluids, with 80% accuracy, just by the sound they make when they hit the linoleum. That is, of course, with a distance of at least 18" between the floor and port of departure.

So tonight I was in my room (while Diana and Maricor were with patients) and I knew there was a patient pushing, so I wasn't surprised when I heard a big splash (amniotic fluid) and then the cry of a baby. However, what wasn't normal was that seconds later there were STILL splashing noises. Sure enough our patient was hemorrhaging.
Lord. It was fantastic.
Diana was swearing 'Shit. Shit. Shit.' With each fountain of blood; Maricor was in silent-concentration putting an IV in and I was barely standing upright trying not to slip on the floor. Oh.
The patients' sisters were crouched on the floor around our feet trying to sop up the blood and her husband...well he was making real sure that her Ovaltine didn't have lumps. The other patients were just hanging out--watching through the curtain...eating dinner. It really was a sight of beauty.
Meanwhile the baby is on the counter (where we keep the babies...I'm not kidding.)and I go to see if he's breathing, check, he is. But he's passed red stool. Oh fantastic. Internal bleeding? Fortunately not, but it's a mystery.

SERENITY NOW!

So, on that note here are some pictures:
This is me this afternoon watching the jungle-mountain rain while I counted money.

And this is what I was doing before the catastrophe: sewing. And this is Mave's sewing kit.

I hope my stories, although terrifying at the time and perhaps nauseating, were a joy to your soul.

Ohhh man.

I was shocked that some of you actually liked my sermons and rants! That's nice to know. Thanks.
I might go back to that, but I'm just trying to value my personal experiences with God--less sensationalism. And I was finding myself in a special moment with God thinking how I was going to retell this experience on bugger.com
That's the equivalent of couples video-taping their intimate moments to broadcast online...as far as I'm concerned.
Oh so, about my title--for some reason my blog switched to Tagalog, the language of the Philippines, so I tried to switch it back but now somehow I'm stuck using something that looks like Dutch. So when I'm finished this post I will click on 'Yaziyi Yayinla' or I could just press 'simdi kaydet' and save it for another day.
Frig. Good thing I've practically memorized blogger.
So, here's the picture of the day; the picture du jour, you could say. Oh! That's sounds lovely, I'll have that.

It's from the food vendor across the street. This vendor is responsible for my two attacks of 'LBM' (aka diarrhea). One attack being last night. Yet I go back for more of her delicious ulams (entrees).
Anyway--this is one of their cats. As if it weren't hot enough the cat thought he'd lay on the cooling ash of the fire.
I have video of this place--it's...an experience.

Oh, I also have a music video I've been working on for about a week.
What?
Yes, I'm working on a music video. I'm hoping to complete it this week, and move on to another one while I'm in Malawi.
Any requests?
This is a music video I found on youtube.com. I really insist you watch the whole thing. It just gets better and better. And it's a little catchy--hey! hey! hey!
(DOUBLE-CLICK!)
I'll admit, mine won't be as good as this one, but there are definitely some similarities. Mainly the bad lip-snycing and the shots of the shoes. Sorry, my video won't have a gay man dancing in it.

So I'm leaving Manila soon--10 days! I'm...gonna be honest and say I'm excited to move on. But I will miss the people here.
When I was in Manila last time there were so many of my classmates that we could stay in our own little white-girl world. But this time I was alone and the only people I had to talk to her Filipinos! It's been an amazing opportunity to learn the language better, the customs and get to know the people better. I've enjoyed my time.
Ah, listen to me! It's not over yet. I have that habit of mentally leaving or arriving in a place before I physically leave or arrive.

Alright, would you rather:
Have LBM (loose-bowel movements) from eating contaminated chicken curry (Rb? Gill? You want?) every afternoon for a month?
OR
Have to navigate your way around the computer in Dutch for half a year while a gay man dances behind you? Yup, he's dancing behind you for 6 months.