[Allow me to repost an old blog content from a previous hosting platform. This is a post from four months ago while I was frustrated with the upcoming board exams and the general Philippine society.]
28 August 2020
I am approximately two months away from the Philippine Physician Licensure Exam’s tentative date and here I am procrastinating. I have had tough several weeks largely due to several non-pandemic related deaths in my life and the growing uneasiness towards the general national situation. My anxiety has been through the roof, but I seem to get by. I think I have been used to being anxious all the time for the last 5 months that it will take a major anxiety attack to topple me over.
I am sure a whole lot of other people have it worse than I. My basic needs are met, and my family is doing okay in all aspects. However, the shift in normalcy and the constant uncertainty about my future has brought me to knees, nonetheless. The moment I pass the licensure exams, I will be out there in the frontlines and the thought terrifies and excites me at the same time.
I was supposed to take the licensure exams in September. The Professional Regulation Commission of the Philippines, as guided by the Inter-Agency Task Force for Covid19, announced that the September boards will be done for the March 2020 takers whose exams were interrupted by the national lockdown. At the time they announced this, I was already 2 weeks into my review. Well, a week before they formally announced it, rumors have been going around, screenshots of conversations among high profile personalities in my career were being sent, false announcements were retracted; all these adding to the subsequent dying down of my motivation to a 10 day “what-the-freak-is-this” situation wherein I did not touch my review materials at all. I prematurely ended my coworking space subscription along with it.
Since then I have not been as fired up as I was in June when I was reviewing. I am hoping today or the next few days, the fear of failure will catch up, and I will start my “intensive” review.
This month, my aunt died from septic shock. She was diagnosed with kidney cancer and brain metastasis last November 2019 and she has been gradually deteriorating ever since. We knew she was going to die one way or another but not the way we expected it. He daughter and I have been close since we were children, and several months ago we have discussed her possible passing soon but did not expect her death was going to be influenced by the lack of isolation facilities. It took us two days of hospital calls just to find a hospital that could accept my aunt, and out of pity the hospital her daughter and I worked in finally took us in albeit certain conditions had to be followed. I will discuss more of this in a future post but suffice it to say, she did not die from Covid19 but from complications of a comorbidity which she did not need to die from if prompt medical services were given.
Also, this month, one of my friends was brutally murdered in my middle-class neighborhood. She was gunned down by an unknown assailant who was in a motorcycle as she was on her way home from buying supper. Her name was Zara Alvarez. She was a human rights activist and a healthcare advocate. I will also discuss more about this in a future post.
There is nothing exciting about my life, but certain events rocked me to the core. I am starting to question the whole reason why I wanted to be a doctor in the first place, when I could have done other things with my life instead (or did I really have other options? Hmm Idk.) Was medical school the right decision? Was being a medical student worth it?
You may probably find me superficial with my issues. As I have said, I am sure a lot of other people are going through this pandemic in their worst. These are my anxieties and others have their own, and all these, big or small, have been caused by man’s poor response to mother nature’s doing.
Musings of a Filipina Doctor 