Christmas House

If ever you're in Dumaguete City for a visit around Christmas time, don't fail to squeeze in a visit to this one house. This annual christmas decor show fest is the brainchild of one of Dumaguete's more prominent anesthesiologists Dr. Prospero "Rico" Absin.

Kids love it, teens and adults visit it to have their pictures taken...and certain twenty-somethings (like this one) have visited it to take pictures to post on their blog (among others.)

This year's theme is "The Nutcracker Suite"...but it really shows a lot of other stuff too, antiques and new stuff both. I'm not really into antiques, but i personally loved the effort and the care taken into preserving the beautiful pieces of Christmas decor.

Miniature Christmas Village. There are many of these inside. I love miniatures...I spent a little longer time than usual on this one.

Santa Baby. After all, what is Christmas without the jolly red giant in red?

A city-style Belen, I suppose, with all the characters strewn around to conceive a funky christmas story. ;-)

Bathroom drapes. Interested? :-)

I thought the facade was pretty.

The christmas house. Piapi, Dumaguete City

A Fashionista Angel Christmas set-up
- i thought this was a very fashion-forward set.:-p















Dr. Absin (left) gets to entertain many celebrities. In this picture, he is with the (in)famous Imelda Marcos.


















Christmas balls are always good, they add class and life (and nostalgia) to any christmas tree.


















Chandeliers make great centerpieces.

















There were hundreds of pretty, twinkling lights. This one is in the foyer.










I loved the holly and poinsettias intertwined in the grill at the doorway.


Little drummer boy.

Close Call

It was 2AM two days ago when my father and mum came into my room and told me the news.

"Your Inse had an aneurysm. She just collapsed, and now she's in the hospital in a coma."

I blinked my eyes in disbelief, and partly because it was 2 in the morning and I wasn't even fully awake yet. I remember having tried to explain to them what a burst aneurysm was, and what to expect, then promptly rolling over to the other side, and going back to sleep.

In the morning when I asked, i found out that yes, it was indeed true, and that things were really bad. My aunt had just undergone minimally invasive surgery but was still not conscious, nor responding to pain stimuli (which was, a bad sign). I cried in the car on the drive to work. "Wipe your eyes, it's going to be ok," my father said.

Maybe it was because of the fact that I never really lost anyone before, because I simply couldn't imagine what life without that particular special person would be like, and i was struck with such a sense of sadness so strong it made me weak. Death, or even the concept of it, is such a hard thing to deal with.

My work as an intern affords me the privilege of seeing and dealing life and death matters that most people would not regularly see, but you never really know how it feels like until it's a loved one of yours that's involved. It's scary.

------

My aunt is a strong, fearless, but warm and generous woman who has worked her way from the simple life in a small barrio in the province to the fast-paced cosmopolitan in California. I am especially proud of her, and I look up to her. We're pretty close too, and she had been a role model for me for as long as I can remember.

Losing her seemed unthinkable, and death was not something i could accept quite so easily.

-----

She's recovering now, they said.opens her eyes and tries to respond, even trying to pull out her tubes. (She is quite feisty..:-) But that is always a good thing, of course.) Her doctors there think it's a miracle, and her nurses are very happy about it.

I do hope this good course will go on.

~ S.

Pain

One time, a few days ago, there was this twenty-something young woman who had a motorcycle accident and needed some stitches. I was on duty at the ER that afternoon, and when I checked her, I saw that it was a deep wound, full thickness, some subcutaneous fat already coming out.

She told me that she had lost her balance on the bike, and gotten those injuries. When she saw that she was bleeding at the knee, she doused it promptly with mineral oil.

I resisted the urge to laugh. It’s a pet peeve of mine sometimes, when I hear people talk about things like these. Instead of cleaning the wound out, they do many, (some are downright silly) things to it. There were those that try to douse it with alcohol (ouch!), stuff it with leaves and other “healing” twigs, or just plainly scratch up some banana fiber to put on it as a poultice.

And they say it so matter of factly that I am almost tempted to give them some credit for it.

So, I told her that she didn’t need to worry and that I was going to fix it up and stitch it. And so I did. I took care to make it as painless as possible and very carefully infiltrated it with local anesthetic, as was expected. When I was about to start and to clean it with saline and peroxide, she started crying out in sobs. Worried, I asked, “Is it very painful?” “No,” she said, “it just feels funny.”

Gee thanks.

The people outside waiting for her to be done probably thought I was butchering her. Tsk tsk