dad, i miss you.

may 31st was/is WORLD NO TOBACCO DAY.

but toDAY is june FIRST for me..and we all know what thAt means!
june 1st is?...iS?...IS? the beginning of jUne!! and soon it'll be the beginning of july. and august will follow (yes, its as simple as reciting the months of the year in order) and thEN it'll be september. The beginning of september is just a few short months away. and i.cannot.wAIt! (sorry about that..)

farewEll dear jEnn.

Jennjo has been our "housemom", supervisor, teacher, and friend since arriving here in the Philippines nine months ago (NINE months...where does the time go?!) is moving back to the states in THREE days. She graduated from Newlife back 2 years ago and stayed on an extra two years to serve the Lord by volunteering at my school and at the clinic. She basically HANDled most student affairs while the directors Matt and Krys were off on furlough for 6 months (AND she's delivered 256 babies). and NOW, she's leaving us...on to bigger and better! Jenn is looking forward to starting up her own birthing clinic in Seattle, to serve the Somolian refugee community there.

To commemorate and celebrate her time here we got family pictures taken at a nearby mall (this is a quirky thing about the Phils, group professional pics are where its at).

and THese beautiful ladiesss are the girls i've been living with. From left to right their names are: Jennjo, me, Heather, and Carmen (top), Laura, Tiffany, Elisabeth and Krystal (bottom)

the "dead shift"

ate ana showing tiffany how to insert an IV...into a blown up glove, a little bit of practice
finding a good, straight vein (of which, i have plENty) My dear Tiffany was bored during the first shift we EvEr worked together, although, there wasn't any labors so we weren't actually WORKing and she got bored and asked if she could stick me with a needle and practice inserting IVs. I have this whole tough guy facade to keep up in the phils, so I had to give in like I wasn't scared and take her inexperience.
aaaand. finally inserting it into the back of my hand. I'll spare you the pics of my face when it was actually IN...(too bad the first pic was ACTually taken last, why the practice poke came AFter the real deal in my hand i'll never knoww)..no back flow?! take it out. take it out.

it's not a contESt..

or anything, but jenny was bugging my about having more blog entries than me (which was met with a bunch of surprised faces, because EvErYonE knows i'm an excellent, up-to-date blogger :P) She ALso argues she writes nice long stories, while i just post a pic and write a little blurb. mer mer...i'll give you a stORY!

Last shift a labor waddled in with 210/120 blood pressure, +4 edema, pre-mature at only 36 weeks and 2 days, fully dilated and ready to push. Protocol says we transport with such pre-eclamptic signs. It was Heathers labour, but i assisted by giving an IV before we rushed her to the hospital, sirens still ringing as we transferred her to a stretcher.
The public hospital (DMC) has always made us cringe at the thought of bringing our patients there...but, it's all we have to work with. We wheeled her into the ob-gyne room to be assessed by the doctora. It.was.Awful.. they took off her dress, covered her with a little rag, injected her with meds (that was a good thing), and THEN started preparing her for a c-section (injecting local anesthetic into both sides of her butt, shaving her tummy and such). I was holding her hand AND the curtain, trying to give the 22 year old SOME sense of privacy.
THEN...oh gracious. She looks up at me and hands me a piece of gauze...
i hesitated, but took it from her, thinking it was probably dirty and diseased.
I spotted the sick, blood-stained garbage can a few feet away and threw it in from where I was standing.

so then, the nurse asks her something and she points to me. Somewhere in between her tugging on my arm and the doctors talking to her in visayan I realized she wanted the piece of gauze she gave me back. The labouring girl looks up at me and opened her mouth to reveal a BIG gap, where her 4 front teeth used to be...AHHhh.. the doctor asks me "where are her dentures?" I only had a split second to decide what was better: play the dumb white girl, or confess I carelessly discarded them. I reply "OH MY GOSH! I thought it was garbage.." as we all look over to the garbage can.
hahah. The doctor and nurses all start laughing, someone said "3 points", i.was.mortified...the poor girl! Heather still had her gloves on, so she went to retrieve the teeth. WOW...she handed them back to me, and I passed them off to the girls mother. Hopefully they washed them thoroughly before putting them back in!!, last I saw of her she was being wheeled off to the OR.

bRUNo.

My friend Aaron bought a DOG on the weekend, a mix of terriers. He isn't taking it home until Wednesday and so I convinced him to let me take him home instead of keeping him at office. I HAVE A PUPPY! and i'm in love. Bruno's more of a little cuddly teddybear than a dog. and he follows me everywhere. and sleeps by my feet when i'm doing my homework. i'm not going to want to give him up in a couple of days..

This shower was for Kuki, the preggo one in the middle! Due in a couple of months, our church threw a shower for her. I was talking to her father about how a normal 'church baby shower' would go back in vineland (both boys AND girls) because he was feeling left out of the fun...actually, he was just hanging around for the food. But we made sure all the boys milling around the church had their fill (there was an inSANE amount of food, as always). Me and Leah (the girl who just got married) lead games and whatnot.

an annonymous sponsor 'from the states' gave the clinic money for us to enjoy a pizza party! YEE. one, two, three.four.five (as sung by lou bega) there was TONS of pizza..from pizza hut, no less. Pizza Hut's slogan right now here in the philippines is "HATE LATE?" haha, however many minutes delivery of its free. I laugh everytime i see it somewhere...that hasn't made its way from north america, has it? Here are mOSt of our filipina preceptors, ready to feast on an afternoon snack!

there's no place like home!

haha. so i JUSt caught myself acting e.x.ac.t.ly like my father.
we have cherry trees in our front yard, and it the spring/summer the birds like to eat them ALL before their ripe and ready to be picked. Dad has tried EVERYthing to deter the birds (for example, nets, tin plates, streamers, and yes, even that ugly scarecrow...all the kids at school made fun of me! haha. j/k) but alas, we never get to eat off our own trees. Over the years he's given up. The only thing he does NOW is open his bedroom window and clap and yell and try to scare them off that way. haahh.
How am I just like him?
WELL. i was sitting at my computer and looked up to see a RAT crawling along our wall in the backyard. So, i went to the window (which is PERManently open) and started hissing, clapping, and yelling at the rat to try and scare it away. haah. The girls I live with were like "what. are you DOing?"
To which I replied "scaring a rat. obviously."


another cRAZy thing that's been happening around our house lately...one morning we woke up to find GOLDFISH in the ditch infront of our house! haha. Elizabeth, a swiss-german carpenter, now midwife, quite talented, can do/make ANYthing built a trap and caught a few. THese boys are trying to catch more with a little net (a net that reminds me of the cottage)

my highschool musical

i was looking forward to this PLAY for so so long!
saturday night our directors (Matt and Krys) daughter, Jessica, had a ballerina part in a production of
MY Highschool Musical. (is that movie big in ontario? because it SURE is here..)
i was looking forward to some grade-school action acting...but alas, the they lip-sinked the whole thing! ahhaha
kinda funny..i gUEss thats normal for plays here.
it was still so good.
Jessica is the little girl in the last pic, in the front..

another nightshift

i was first up last night. A labour came in at 11pm with a ragggging UTI, that kind of thing is not only VERy painful in labour but also dangerous for the baby so I took her to the hospital (in the bRANd new ambulance!). Another girl came in around 1am, but it was her first time giving birth and she was only in the beginning stages of labour, and only 1cm so I sent her home to rest and wait until contractions were more regular. JUST as she was leaving another walks in (just before 2am) she, again, was just starting her labour, but was also 36 weeks and 2 days along. At the clinic we don't deliver under 37 weeks because usually the baby requires more assistance than we can give it when its so young. So we went back to the hospital with yet another transport. I went back to bed around 3am..

Just before endorsements a labour came in at 5:45 and Jennjo showed her to the CR (the bathroom) to pee and wash up before checking her in. I saw Jennjo then at the calendar figuring out her dates (she was 36 weeks and 1 day..) when ALL OF A SUDDEN we hear her moaning, and kind of crying out. We both walk past the midwife sitting area, and around the corner to see what the heck was going on. She was kind of bent over holding tight her duster (a little dress girls wear around the house, and to be comfortable, and in labour) and kind of squatting a bit. Jennjo starts saying "eiow otong! eiow otong!" "stop pushing. stop pushing." and THEN... SROM all over the mat just outside the CR! I run back into the birthroom to grab gloves, but there were not only the midwives on NIGHTshift, but ALSO midwives from DAYshift trying to help. so i just gave my gloves away and watched as two girls picked her up to get her to a bed. i belIEVE the baby's head was out somewhere by the couch, and the body came out just as they got her onto a bed (the duster becoming a perfect sized hammock for the baby). There were like 6 midwives wanting to assess the baby, and start free flow oxygen, and trying to chart the events. so I, with my sleep-crusted eyes, just went and grabbed the mop to clean up the trail of amniotic fluid from the CR to the cubicle. Both mom and baby were good. And the birth added the spARk of excitement my shift had been lacking!

[yes, there have been other stories of CR births... baby's out while the mother was on the toilet. WE're always there though, we haven't dropped one yet! i promise.]

the ORANGe HOUse!!

this has been a "current event" for sometIME now in my little world in Obrero...this house is located just one house down from Mercy Maternity Clinic (the white 3-story building in the background) and was built back in october/november. So, we all watch this MONsterous house go up, and it just so happens that the owners are the same people who 'we' rent the clinic from. AND, they're planning on immigrating to Canada!! AND Matt is currently negotiating with them to possibly rent this house FOR THE STUDENTS! YEE. This is SUPER exciting because i have not had the chance to live with ALL the girls in my class because we were separated into two homes as soon as we arrived back in september. This brand, new PALACE would allow All of the students to live together under one roof. Needless to say, we've been praying for a loong while about this opportunity, and NOW it looks like it's just around the corner!