Final Preparation

Lately, what we've been doing at school are all the major stuff that we need when we go on to work as occupational therapists. We begin to do full scale treatment plans from the assessments to the plans of action. I'm actually quite surprised that I enjoy the thrill of racking my brains and coming up with a plan that will really benefit the client/patient. Still, I can't help but have these doubts of what if I wasn't good enough, what if the stuff I learned from school and the experiences I gained fall short of what is needed for my professional life..? That's why in this last one and a half year, I'm trying to learn all I can, gain all I can, and experience all I can to prepare me for the life ahead.

school starts

well, it's back to school yet again..as usual, i still have hang-overs from the summer vacation and my mind isn't programmed for learning yet, but would you believe we were already given assignments on the first day..?! The first one was to do a paper on the different assessment tools for work, the next one was to read a 2chapter 66-page stuff on kinesiology.. Just aS well, I'd better get started on the reading since we have a recitation this wed. and a quiz this friday. :Sigh: so many things to do and stuff to finish, all of it seem so overwhelming... Nevertheless, it reminds me of what we were just discussing at church last few weeks or so--GRACE. 2Corinthians 12:9-10 states that God's grace is sufficient for us and His strength is made perfect in our weakness. Now, because God's grace indeed is enough for me, as I've experienced so many times in the past, I can say with confidence "when I am weak, then I am strong."

I can't believe I'm now in my 4th year of college! After 3 gruelling years, I've finally reached this stage in my life where I am now being looked up to as a senior, supposedly an "expert" on college life, with freshmen and lower batches asking me for advice and tips on the subjects I've previously taken.. Yet again I say, everything is by God's grace. Praise the Lord!

it's not everyday you get to touch a heart

Wednesday is our dissection day. As always, we don our lab gowns, put on our surgical caps, masks, and lastly, our gloves. What makes this Wednesday extraordinary or much more special than usual is the fact that we were on the topic of thorax2, more popularly known as the heart and lungs. Although it's another wednesday where we get to smell like formalin, cadaver, and mentos all in one, anticipation was building as we entered the anatomy lab. I slipped on an extra pair of gloves, just in case, and braced myself for the overpowering smell of dead bodies and formalin. The first thing I saw when I entered was the maggots lazing around in one of the long tables where a cadaver used to lay. I shook my head and thanked God that our cadaver wasn't fully ravaged by maggots yet. When I got to our John Doe, whom we fondly call 'tikboy', we said a word of prayer and went on to cut open the ribs and clavicle (collarbone), next came the heart and lungs. As we detached the heart from its attachment in the lungs and several blood vessels, we found blocks of blood clots in the arteries. We had to wash them clean before being able to section the heart and study its parts. Now, I might sound so nonchalant about this, but when I saw the heart and actually held it in my hands, it was so overwhelming. It's not everyday you get to hold a real person's heart in your hands, gloved though it may be. Never in my entire childhood did I dream that one day I'd be able to hold a stranger's heart in my hands, nor did I dream that I'd be brave enough or have the guts to do it. As we studied the parts of the heart, the coronary arteries, ligamentum arteriosum (sounds like something from Harry Potter, eh?!--accdg. to Dr. Gonzalez), and all those other weird medical jargon I can't even pronounce, I marvelled at this special opportunity I had--that once in my lifetime, I could say "hey, I was able to hold a human heart."