Doc Ahmad Hajiri

Assalamu Alaykum! I've been trying to sort things out in my new life as a barrio doctor, and among those "to-do lists" is freeing some disk spaces in my phone. I was sifting through my gallery when I realized how much of an adventure the past 12 months had been for me. In this post, using screen caps from my gallery, I will try to share what happened in my life last 2017. Here goes! *WARNING: Some photos may contain graphic pictures. Those with blood/wounds were turned black-and-white. Photos of patients here were shaded to respect their privacy. Thanks! January:  Unfortunately, I do not have my January folder in my phone. I think I already transferred my files to my external drive by then. What I can remember here is that... I am still an intern in Internal Medicine, of course! haha. Maybe in the wards? Was this the time I went on JWAPODship? (JWAPOD: Junior Ward Admitting Physician on Duty). I gotta check my old files.

Assalamu Alaykum! (Peace be upon you all!)   [NOTE: This is a really, really old post! For those applying to UPCM for school years 2021 and beyond, it is best to visit the UPCM website for updates. Download and read the latest primer here . The details in this blogspot may not be applicable anymore. Read with discretion.    You can send me a message on my FB Page here :    Thanks!]  This post was originally published in January 2015, almost two years after I entered the great hallways of Calderon in UPCM. Now, it's January 2018: roughly 6 months since graduation, and here I am, a full-pledged UPCM Alumnus and now a licensed physician! Wow! Then I realized in this blog that this post reaches more hits that the other posts I have published , and I know I badly needed to update this...And so I did. I tried... And so... To those aspiring future martyrs amazing medical students who will sacrifice their social lives really enjoy learning the wonder...

Two years ago, I posted this in my FB wall: Every single day I spend in the community, I hear various cases of health problems suffered by me fellow men. Simple problems that could have been solved long time ago. And they all have the common answers when asked "why": "Wayruun siyn" (We had no money) "Way hipagsukay" (We had no means to pay for the expenses/fares) "Way Duktur " (There are no doctors) And yet, every single time I tell them that they don't have to worry for so long, for someday, some doctors would come and stay in sha Allah... they would only sadly reply: "Hisiyu ba utu' in mariy? Magluug hadja sila sin baran nila pasal wayruun mausaha diy. Misan in katan maguy magpalayu' dayn diy, hati' awn mariy?" (Who would even come here, son? They will only make themselves suffer coz they will never earn here. Even people here would want to go out and escape, so who would come here to serve?) W...

Clerkship Day 253/253 Today is the last day of Clerkship (known to UPCM as Learning Unit 6 or LU6), my fourth year as a Medical students. No, maybe it is not yet the official end of the Academic year as we still have our 5 Final examinations and 2 Comprehensive exams next week... But yes, this is the end of our final rotations in the different departments in UP-PGH. I can't even believe I am all done with all of them! We started with Pediatrics, then Family and Community Medicine, then Obstetrics and Gynecology then we had a one-month elective, then we went on to Surgery then Emergency Medicine and Anesthesiology, then the dreaded Neurosciences, then longest rotation which is Internal Medicine and last came the not-so-fun-anymore "fun four": Rehab Med, Orthopedics, Otorhinolayngology (ORL/ENT) and Ophthalmology. Wow! It felt like it started years ago! But it still feels like it just happened yesterday! Maa sha Allah! And as I struggled to "relearn" the ...

March 30, 2016 Clerkship Day 208 Day 3 on Rehabilitation Medicine I received a text message from my dear cousin yesterday: "Ungud (couz), are you free tomorrow? Ama is asking if you're free..." it read. Yayang (as we call her way back then) is my first cousin and a childhood friend, a humble daughter of my favorite maternal uncle. She's also in Medschool and we're on the same year (4th year). Right after reading her message, I was immediately reminded about something: IT'S HER GRADUATION DAY ALREADY! I was not on duty that day but I still have to go to PGH and attend to my patients. I was only free after 4:30 PM, I told her and her father. I really wanted to attend the graduation ceremony and witness and feel that "feeling" of seeing your batch-mates (from other medschool) finally stepping up to the stage... receiving their fruits of labor... their diplomas... and being called "Dr. So-and-so". Maa sha Allah! But I just can...

Assalamu Alaykum! (Peace be upon you!)  Today, our Integrated Clinical Clerkship II a.k.a. "The Slave Trade" officially started. I still can't believe it's already begun, my fourth and second-to-the-last year in Med School. *Spine chills* If this is still a dream, I really have to wake up. We will be rotating first under the Department of Pediatrics, one of the "Big Four" departments in the Med School World. We will be staying with them for 4 weeks: each student must rotate for a week in Pedia ER, another week in NICU (Neonatal ICU/ Baby Catcher in the Labor Room) and two weeks in one of the two Pedia Wards (9 and 11).  I am with the Pedia ER group. At first it actually thrilled me: "Oh yeah! First day of clerkship and it's already under ER! Things about to get real!".  And yet my first day as a Clerk was not that eventful as expected. After the release of the ever-changing schedule, I was the fortunate (or the unfortunate) o...

Assalamu Alaykum (Peace be upon you all) Last week was, if I could literally translate it, was indeed a "hell week" for us ICCs. We had our final exams on Pharmacology, Otorhinolaryngology (ORL), Ophthalmology, Pediatrics and NeuroPsychology, had our Annual Comprehensive exam (200 items presented in a time-allotted powerpoint slide) and our ever-dreaded Grand OSCE (stands for "Objective Structured Clinical Examination, something like a practical exams with different stations). After the last exam in Friday of that week, we were already in a "finally-its-over" mode until the results of the exams came in. Some of the students did not make it to the passing rate of some station sin the OSCE and so they have make up for their grades. I failed in two of the stations (Psychology and Pedia: Vaccinations station). That afternoon we finished the "repeat exam" for the Psychology station, Alhamdulillah we all passed. The repeat rotation for pediatrics was s...

As everyone hurriedly took their orders and grab their lunches in that famous fast-food restaurant with an over-sized smiling honeybee as their logo, one man was oblivious and unnoticeable of them all. He sat there in a corner, singled-out from the rest of the dining tables, carrying the most precious things he had left: his fragile, ailing daughter wrapped in his caring arms and a bag that contained everything her daughter needed (or what he can afford of at least) for her first consultation in Philippine General Hospital. His daughter has been suffering from a rare disease he could not even pronounce. She was a lovely angel since she was born, bringing light to their otherwise gloomy life in the farmlands. She was their sunshine, their love, their princess. Until that fateful day when her symptoms started to appear. It started with a high fever, then she stopped eating and she became more and more weak each passing day. On her second year of life she was already bed-ri...

Becoming a doctor was never easy. But I never thought that it was this scary. As our  ICC year (third year in Proper Medicine) approaches the end of the road, more ad more realizations and learning experiences build up to prepare us for the next years of training to come. Through those months of rotations, we e have experienced the transition from dealing with paper cases to real patients, from weekly exams on theoretics of pathology and pharmacology to their applications in real clinical settings. And From choosing which letter in the scantrons to shade, to choosing which diagnostic tests to order for our patients while (always and always) considering the financial limitations our patients in PGH have.  All these you have to decide for your patient and take responsibility as a future physician. Say, if I have only one test that my patient can afford to order, which one should I choose? Which drug is cost-effective and will solve my patients’ complaints? And no ...

Alhamdulillah! (All praise be to Allah!) After the loooong wait, the list of admitted applicants who passed the rigorous application process in UPCM is now up! We now have the initial list of LU3 students (1st year Medicine Proper) for the school year 2015-2016.  MashaAllah! I can still remember that day when I received the same news, it was still unbelievable for me! Allahu akbar! (Allah is great!) And now I can't believe I am already about to end my third year in UP College of Medicine as an ICC and a proud member of the awesome Class 2017!  It was a life-changing news for me. And I am sure this will surely be another life-changing news for the 160 applicants as well ^_^  To check the list of successful admitted applicants, just click this link   Snapshot of the official announcement of the UP College of Medicine website This year, Alhamdulillah we have 3 Muslims (that I know of) ^_^ I already met two of them. And I am not sure if there are sti...

It was a cold night after my sister's wedding in Sulu. I have to catch the last trip to Zamboanga even though I failed to buy my own ticket (the vessel was already fully booked the day before!) This was not new to me, racing with time, catching trips, no tickets. I am well aware and familiar on what to do: Find a vacant bed and wait till the ship departs. If it's still vacant by that time, then good for you. But if not, then repeat until you exhaust all measures where you end up with the last plan: the rooftop.  Honestly I have done it a couple of times. Alone. But this time it's something really different. I was not alone. I have 11 other passengers with me. ELEVEN NO-TICKET PASSENGERS! Half of them were students like me, mostly cousins who have exams the next day. While the other half (5 of them) were professional photographers my sister hired for her wedding. They, too have to join in with the unexpected adventure.  We have no choice. It was the last trip to Z...

Assalamu Alaykum! For the 12th week of the year 2015, here are the things that happened: The Exam last Wednesday was O-kay, I think. Well it was not that easy, there were essay questions that requires some knowledge of the subject matter. We were provided with enough time for our reading materials anyway, so if we failed to learn those concepts, its on us. (Oh I miss answering essay questions after 3 years of multiple-choice scantron type exams haha). The recall-type MCQ ones are tricky as well. Huh, what's new with our exams anyway. Our Urban Community Medicine Rotation finally ended with our Final Reporting last Friday. It was not-the-usual all clinico-pathological presentation that we had in other rotations. Rather, it was more of a collation of 'creative' outputs from the four groups under ComMed for the last 2 weeks. Most of the group (actually all four of them) had video presentations (from laugh-your-ass-out funny videos to tear-jerking-MMK-style ones). O...

THoughts of the Week (TOTW) # 11 What happened this week: Started with FCH250: Community Medicine in Urban Setting, Being an LO, 24th birthday and being sick, Herbal medicine.  In five hundred words, I would aim to share all the thoughts I had in this week. Be it in complete paragraphs or just mere thoughts that come into mind. Here are the things that wrapped up week #11 for 2015. The Essence of Community Medicine “Health is not just the mere absence of illness but a complete state of physical, emotional, mental and social well-being.” –Alma Ata declaration of Primary Health Care (1978) “Public health is everyone’s business”, “health is an inalienable human right”, “The ultimate goal of community medicine is to ensure equitable health for all” are just among the concepts being bombarded to us since our freshie days. And here we are again, refreshing those ideals, engraving them once again in our hearts. Community medicine has always been close to my heart....