Pac Profile

Sadly, Mommy Dionisia was left in the cutting room floor.
The best time to rob a bank in the Philippines is when Saturday's fight will be beamed.

Grumpy

When it comes to patient interactions, I usually follow the David Mamet school of acting (and playwriting):
Only NOW matters.
History is in the periphery, if at all.
Took care of a patient I've labelled as grumpy.
In previous admissions, even when he was ambulatory, he was grumpy.
When he was admitted acutely ill, he was grumpier.
Yet, his children has showered him with patriarchal affection.
I have no doubt they really love him.
He's loved by all, except me.
I don't see what is lovable in him.
I know that my compassion reserve has been running low for awhile now.
But I don't believe my feeling that way towards him was from that.
What I needed was to see who he was -
An "aha" from a qualitative research presentation that said having a picture of the patient before his or her illness has helped nurses in caring for the whole person rather than treating the person in the bed as a bundle of symptoms.
Maybe if I knew about him better,
I would've felt about him differently.

Rated A, B, or C

Again, it amazes me that NYC has always been receptive to health-related changes - even if those changes border on over-regulation, e.g. the smoking ban on restaurants, visible displays of food calories.

Starting in July 2010, New York City is requiring restaurants to post letter grades that correspond to scores that it receives from its sanitary inspection. An inspection score of 0-13 is an A, 14-27 points is a B, and 28 or more points is a C. Grade cards must be posted where they can easily be seen by people passing by.

Started noticing the posted grades this weekend. Below a C means they must be shut down.
Would I still walk into a place I frequented with a C by the door?
Probably.
Old habits die hard.

Gut Feelings

We nurses use a lot of our gut feelings -
it's not scientific, but if the Spidey sense tingles, we tend to be more vigilant.
I don't know if I lost that sense the other night.
Called in to consult on a patient that another nurse was taking care of.
She said she doesn't look right and that we should call a Rapid Response or RRT.
I said not yet. I guess I needed to wait and see some thing before we activate the RRT.
More from the other nurse's insistence than my own gut feeling that we activated it anyway. (She had probably more nursing experience than I did).
Everyone else seemed to see something and I did not.
I didn't have that gut feeling this time,
but all around me, the other responders said the patient's vital signs were normal, but there's something quite not right.
Did I second guess myself?
Am I not in tune with my gut feelings anymore?
I felt like Chip in "Beauty and the Beast" when all around him sang, "There's something there that wasn't there before."

Fall Back

Nothing sadder than looking at the automated clock go from 02:59 to 02:00.
Not looking forward to changing the clocks in the patient rooms the rest of the night.

THE SECRET IN THEIR EYES

THE SECRET IN THEIR EYES (2010), d. Juan Jose Campanella

Catching up on this year's Oscar nominees (meaning last year's movies).
I'm going to judge this movie unfairly.
Because Ricardo Darin stars in this,
the ghost of Fabian Belinsky hovers above this movie.
All throughout, I wondered how superior it would be had Belinsky directed it.
The neo-noir story would've been a perfect fit for him.
The twist at the end only made me ache for Belinsky's more assured touch.

Hand-Drawn

THE SECRET OF KELLS (2009), dir: Tomm Moore & Nora Twomey

For those who mourned the loss of aesthetics in animation with the advent of "Toy Story," there was hope in last year's crop of animated films.
Disney's return to the hand-drawn form with "The Princess and the Frog" was an unsatisfying meal for me. "The Secret of Kells" excels in its visual look. It's like viewing illuminated manuscripts. The new batch of hand-drawn animated films advance the old form, such as "Persepolis" and "Waltz with Bashir," mainly for using it to explore a wider range of themes. With the dominant hand of Disney now far from the old form, hand-drawn animation has become more adventurous. Two that I'm looking forward to this year are "The Illusionist" and "Chico and Rita."

Research Day

You can never escape your teachers.
Spent all day on nursing research -
a symposium at work, then class.
Don't know about other professions,
but no matter where you practice nursing,
you are bound to see your teachers.
Nurses in academia conduct their research in order to be utilized in practice. You meet them when they disseminate their findings.
Sitting in front of my teacher from 3 years ago,
being informed about a research she had done (in which I was a survey participant) was surreal.
I thought to myself I hope she wouldn't embarass me in my place of work and I hope I made her proud.

I'm afraid I'm leaning towards being a qualitative researcher.
In class, my research professor, who's big on quantitative,
heard her previous class jeer last week's lecturer who used aesthetic inquiry.
She told her class: "You need more humanities!"
If nursing is a science and art, the art part is lacking and that'll be my part.

Live! Nude! Models!

3 years of bedside nursing and I finally got to see a normal vagina:
on a live human model for a GYN exam in Advanced Health Assessment class.

Still not sexy to me.

PSYCHO

PSYCHO (1960), d. Alfred Hitchcock.

Overanalyzed, yes.
Lost count on how many times I've viewed this.
Each time, certain aspects flit to the top.
After seeing it again this weekend, these things came to mind:

1. Anthony Perkins was masterfully creepy.
The actors are the last thing you notice in a Hitchcock movie.
He treated them like cattle, remember? (I think it's a misunderstood comment.)
Found so many layers in that Norman Bates smile this time.

2. "We all get a little mad sometimes ..."
To extend the theme of dualities,
Hitchcock offers two different types of voice-overs:
Marion's imagined voices while she's driving,
and Mother's voice as heard by Norman.
Never wanted to work in psych, because I'd question my sanity all the time.
There are voices in my head.

3. Water cleanses.
Hitchcock used the act of cleaning to create audience sympathy for Marion and Norman:
Marion showers to cleanse herself of the sin and gets murdered,
while Norman cleans after the crime to protect his mother.

4. Arbogast.
Just a little idea that came to mind:
I'd like to write his backstory -
an origin story of sorts. "The Case Files of Det. Arbogast."
What cases has he tackled before his grisly end?

5. DSM-IV.
It's been awhile since Psychiatric Nursing,
but what are the differential diagnoses for Norman Bates in the DSM-IV?

Still had the same feeling as when I first saw it as a teen,
I will lick stamps for John Gavin.