Immigrant Overflow?

While some Americans complaint about foreign workers taking jobs they say is rightfully theirs, it is perfectly ok for the medical and health system to be flooded with immigrant nurses and assistants. And I can understand why.

Other than the doctors themselves, virtually every single one of Grace’s nurse has been an immigrant from elsewhere, but more frequently, Philippinos. Considering Philippines used to be a U.S. “territory” (and the fact that English is their official language), perhaps it’s somehow easier for them to be infused into mainstream America.

But strangely, at the labor and delivery department, there were very few immigrant nurses there. I wonder why the discrepancy.

Some nursing institutes advertises a quick nursing or doctor’s assistant degree in less than two years. And with the supposedly severe shortage of nurses in the U.S., it’s said they get their own Green Card process of less than six months (compare that to 3 years for tech workers). And depending on the hours and the nature of the job, they get paid $80k or more a year.

Am I really in the wrong profession? Damn it.

But I still love computers. And I don’t like blood… either seeing, drawing or being drawn… So stuck with being poor and Green Card-less, it is.

Hello from Croatia

I didn’t think I’d actually hear back from Vedran when I sent him my mass “Hello World” email. But alas, he replied…

bok bok [bok bok = “hello” in Croatian] bryan chu. ines and vedran want to wish you a croatian warm welcome to this world. zivjeli mali! you stats are very impressive, little guy. PS do not worry about anything… your parents will take very good care of you… after all, you have an american passport. 🙂

The “American passport” joke never gets old… Thanks, jerk! And he never stops poking fun of me…

chu… even though you only put in 2 minutes of ‘work’ one romantic december night, you still deserve a lot of praise. good ‘work’ buddy. PS there is a secret formula you should know about… if you take your son’s length, divide it by 3.78… you get the father’s ‘length’… not very impressive, sir. 🙁

Even more impressively, he attached a picture of Ines, his long time girlfriend, with her iBook!

Ines with iBook

Uptime on My PowerBook

I don’t think I was able to keep a Windows machine up, un-rebooted, at work (or home) for more than a couple of weeks. There’s always some updates or patches out that needed the Windows to be restarted. Or the entire system just craps out for no reason anyway…

So this is why I love my Mac… It’s been up for 33 days!

PowerBook uptime

Human Bio-Clock

Bryan is one of those babies one might consider a sleeper. He only wakes up for certain things, specifically food, diaper change and sometimes some affection. I continue to be amazed how precise this little wakes up right on the dot. His daily rituals are almost identical — and that’s a good thing; it’s comforting and reassuring for newborns, infants and babies to have repetitive, consistent and predictable patterns in their daily routine. But instead of us imposing that onto Bryan, he’s actually teaching us on how it’s done…

Since I am on this topic, I’d like to demystify this — that most people “think” parents of newborns get 2-3 hours of sleep between feeding at night. Try cutting that down to hour between waking moments.

Here’s my logic from personal experience:

1. Baby wakes at 12AM for food.
2. Takes about 20 minutes for him to consume 2 oz of milk. Takes the clock to 12:20AM.
3. Takes about 10 minutes to pat his back to make sure he burps to get all that air out of his tummy. 12:30Am now.
4. Takes about 10 minutes to actually get the little one to completely fall asleep (sometimes not necessary; but sometimes longer). It’s now 12:40AM.
5. Baby sleeps for an hour; wakes up for diaper change. 1:40AM.
6. Takes about 5 minutes to get him back to sleep. 1:45AM.
7. Baby wakes up for food 1 1/2 hour later. 3:15AM.
8. Repeat steps 2 through 7.

That’s my routine on a daily basis. Sometimes he’s extra playful and won’t go back to sleep for an hour or two. So on some days I miss out the entire “break” time in between. Running purely on adrenaline for a week straight is a strange feeling. I am thankful that men don’t have to give birth though, or else the entire species of mankind would have been wiped out millions of years ago…

The upside is Grace has been getting plenty of sleep at the hospital (more than I can say for myself). But she does get woken up every four hours or so by the hospital staff to take her vitals. But she gets out of the hospital today. Hopefully she won’t have anymore fevers.

RIP, Kitty

I am so sorry to report that the kitten we rescued had been put to sleep. In case you haven’t been following, I wrote about it here, here and here.

We feel incredibly guilty for having turned him in, thinking he’d receive a good life in a nice home. Apparently he’d been just a little too aggressive for adoption, and it’s the San Jose Animal Shelter’s policy to “rid of” those that aren’t fit for living because of budget problems. I wish they’d do a spay/neuter and release instead though… I don’t believe a government agency of any type should have a say in what/who lives and dies.

I have a hunch this must be what he was feeling…
Sniper cat

Image via [Gizmodo]

Kiss Your Baby, Go to Jail

I can’t help but to think Americans seriously need to use their resources on more important things after reading this article.

Excerpt:

The father and his wife, Teresa, dropped off some photos for processing at a local Eckerd. The role included a shot of Charbel kissing his baby on the tummy. Next thing the parents know, they’re being charged for sexual assault, and their children are wards of the state. It took six months for an investigation to conclude that there was zero abuse in the household, and for custody of their two kids to be restored.

Relax, America…

And to add to this, I’d like to say that corporal punishment shouldn’t be a crime. It has its place in families, especially that of Asian origin. It’s silly to argue that kids who were punished with some spanking will grow up to be abusive and a burden to the society… I mean, crime rate in the United States is among the highest in all of developed countries, isn’t it? Taiwan, Japan and Korea, where corporal punishment has been consistently used as a discipline method, are incredibly safe countries. No “Columbine” there! Maybe gun control (or lack there of) is the problem?

via [BloggingBaby]

Daily Delight

Bryan has been a delight since he came home. Lack of sleep aside, it’s been fun taking care of him and just looking at him sleep in his crib or in my arms. He smiled for the first time in the hospital the other day. Even though infants at this stage have no cognitive ability to truly smile (it’s just a muscle reflex), it’s still nice to think otherwise.

Brian used to tell me how it’s fascinating to see how the babies see the world for the first time. In a way, we are also seeing the world for the first time through their eyes. I experienced that with Bryan for the first time the day he was born. When I held him, his eyes were wide open. Though he couldn’t see a damn thing (new-borns are practically blind), the way he rolled his eyes was as if he was scanning the room, studying everything that was in it; fascinated.

Lack of sleep can get to people sometimes. They become cranky. But I felt alright waking up every two hours feeding him or changing his diapers. I don’t even feel indifferent; I feel almost happy to do it for him. Is this what parenthood is like? Mysterious joy that just creeps up my spine when I go out of my way to do things for my own child? Damn it feels good. Or… maybe next week I will take these words back. Hah!

Fever

A 103-degree fever brought Grace to the E.R. last night at 6PM. She was admitted almost immediately. That was pretty fast (I will explain why later). But the actual care, meaning, having someone to look at what may have caused the fever, took another four hours. And then it took another two hours after that to decide if she had to stay the night for additional observation.

An ultrasound showed that Grace had some clogs of blood in her uterus from giving birth, which may have been what caused the fever. Though the E.R. staff were helpful and friendly, the time we spent waiting was excruciatingly long.

So this brought me to talk about the American Emergency Room system. While sitting in the waiting room until Grace was cleared to see visitors, I overheard some people complaining their wait time of 8+ hours. To add to that, when I left the hospital at the end of the visitation hours (around 1AM), I saw a young couple who were there long before we got there, but were still waiting to be admitted.

Bear in mind, to the American medical system, emergency doesn’t really mean EMERGENCY. What they really mean is usually one of the three things:
1. Your doctor’s not available to see you because he’s booked for the next three months. In the meantime, any medical problems you have, you are f*cked.
2. It’s the weekend/holiday, and your doctor does not see patients because he needs time off too. So you are f*cked.
3. You don’t have insurance, or that your insurance is so limited that it doesn’t cover whatever you are having problems with. So you are f*cked.

Then what does emergency really mean in America? It means, you are having certain medical issues and your primary doctor is not available to see you. So what do you do? You go to E.R. to get “immediate” treatment. Now, even the word immediate is a relative term in America. It’s all mathematics; everyone can agree that waiting for 12 hours to be admitted into E.R. is much more immediate than having to wait for three months to see a doctor. Yes?

In order to be admitted truly immediately into E.R. in the U.S., you must have a life-threatening condition or wound, merely having a terrible pain or maybe a broken thumb are not nearly enough. In our case, Grace has had high fever for more than a couple of hours, she had to be admitted and treated right away.

The ironic thing was, when I was with Grace inside E.R., there was a bum who was so drunk that he passed out on the street and got admitted into E.R.. And the staff said that was his third time THAT DAY in the E.R. and that he’s been a frequent in that particular hospital. So this begs the question, how come tax- and bill-paying customers are waiting for 10+ hours just to be diagnosed for their problems, street bums and crack heads who pass out from their drug of choice, and most likely will not pay the hospital bills, get to be cared for long before the others? It’s not to suggest that just because they choose to abuse their body and put their lives in danger that they shouldn’t be treated equally in the eyes of medicine. But it does open up a debate on just how the American society is going to approach this kind of abuse of its medical systems.

Americans used to blame illegal immigrants and foreigners for their high health insurance bills and expensive medical systems in general. It’s long been thought that the system has been abused by those immigrants so that Americans end up with the tab. But a recent study showed that just the opposite is true. It’s been the American-born citizens who are abusing their own medical systems (i.e. drug heads, suicide attempts that were designed to be rescued… which was the case of a woman next to Grace’s gurney). Immigrants, illegal or not, have not been using medical services all that frequently, even those who have health insurance.

A typical E.R. visit can cost anywhere from $1,000 to $15,000 USD depending on the procedures required to treat the patient. But in my experience (unfortunately, from stories of people around me), the average has been around $3,000 to $5,000. The cost usually includes seeing a nurse, have temperature and blood pressure and other vitals taken, minor treatments by a doctor, maybe they’ll even let you stay there for the night. For example, my brother had to go to E.R. for allergic reactions to aspirin (long story) a couple of years ago. That trip itself was $3,000 — the cost included a shot, one night stay at the hospital (sorry, no private rooms), and let’s not forget the ride in the emergency vehicle (that’s all to yourself; no need to pick up other people along the way).

Getting back to Grace, she’s feeling much better now. Her fever’s dropped back to normal (but still on the high side). Hopefully she’ll be home today. Thank god my mom’s here to help out. I can’t imagine taking care of Bryan all by myself with almost zero sleep.

Supersize Yer Mama

As we were getting ready to check Grace and the baby out of the hospital, a new mother checked in next to Grace’s bed (there are two beds in one recovery and nursery unit). The nurse was explaining the importance of breast feeding when the father walked in with two big bags of McDonald’s lunch bags.

The nurse looked at the bags and asked the mother, “Have you seen ‘Supersize Me‘?”

Reply: “Yeah, I guess. I have heard of it.” Started eating. I wonder if this has to do with the fact that she’s on the really heavy side of the weight spectrum.

Finally, the mother grew tired of the breast feeding pep-talk and rejected the idea all together. She claims that both of her previous children were not breast fed, so why should this one be any different!

God damn it, I can’t stand ignorant people who think they know all the answers.

Our philosophy is, when you become a parent, you think and do what’s the best for the baby (whenever possible), not what’s convenient for you. Why can’t people get that inside their tiny little grey matters? Are they even using the 10% some scientists think we only utilize?