DEFINITIVE RANKING OF WHAT MY PATIENTS CALL ME.

Long time no blog is definitely an understatement, and calling it an understatement is an understatement in itself. Wait is it even possible to understate an understatement? Anyway, I wish I had a better excuse for not writing so much over the past few weeks. You'd think that since I'm a senior, I should be better at time management. Damn it.

Sunday nights are usually reserved for calling or SMS-ing patients just to check on them, and to possibly schedule them for the coming week. I nickname this little phase as patient ordering. I know the word ordering feels so off, considering that I use the same term when I try to order food. Yes, I try to order my patients on Sundays, follow up a day before I want them to come in, and panic thirty minutes before their actual schedules. It's my thing, yo.

One thing I've noticed when I order patients is that I get called a whole variety of different things-- from the very affectionate anak, to the confidence-boosting doctora, down to the sometimes-insulting neng. In dental school, we treat patients, thereby exercising duties of doctors, but at the same time, we're not doctors yet, so it's really natural for patients to be confused as to what they should call us. Anyway, here's a definitive ranking of what my patients call me.

No, don't worry, there's no psst here :)

1. DOCTORA (Single Complete, 2016).

Okay, I know, I know.. I know it's presumptuous and assuming to actually respond to "Doctora", and believe me, I used to beg my patients to not call me that. I only started embracing "Doctora" when my Single Complete Denture patient started calling me that after saying "Doon na rin naman papunta yun (that's where it's leading to anyway)". I realized something-- My patients call me Doctora, because they believe in me. My patients have high expectations of me, and each time I get called that is a challenge to deliver well, with the exact same quality that a legitimate Doctora should. 

Oh, by the way, Doctora (abbreviated as Dra.) is not a legitimate title in the Philippines. It's a title in Spanish, of which the Philippines used to be a colony of. Modern-day official documents will never have Dra. written on them. It might work if sentences were written in Filipino (ex. Si Dra. Corine ay ilusyonada), but it simply isn't an accepted title. The only reason why Doctora is in the vocabulary of the common Filipino is because it's a linguistic remnant from decades ago.

2. ANAK KO (Compre Perio, 2016).

Anak, in Filipino (and Bahasa Indonesia.. and Bahasa Melayu..), means child. It's really normal for older people to refer to youngsters as anak, but when patients add ko ("mine") at the end, as in anak ko, it's extra special.<3 

Then again, the whole anak and anak ko situation is probably no surprise since we tend to call our older patients Nanay or Tatay (mother/father, kind of like how Koreans call older people ahjumma or ahjussi). Oh wait, some patients, I call Tita or Tito (aunt/uncle)-- because frankly, I have too many nanay- and tatay-patients already. Hahaha.

3. GANDA (RPD + Compre Resto [plus her friends!], 2016).

Oh my Corine, I actually get referred to as "beautiful", would you believe that?!

Calling someone "ganda" is pretty much the equivalent of bella in "Ciao bella".

This started when my friend, Johanna, and I started accepting patients from the housekeeping staff at UPHSD. I don't really remember the actual specifics of how the lovely housekeeping ladies of the college rest room became our patients, but I remember exiting a lavatory stall, and my now-patient turned to her co-worker, and said, "Huy, andito si ganda o." (Hey, ganda's here).

Does being called ganda appeal to my vanity? Of course it does! When I get called ganda, I actually feel beautiful. I try to put a lid on my vanity, and not let it get in my head too much, but when somebody looks at you and sees a beautiful person, you can tell that they're looking at you the way God intended you to be looked at-- and when you keep that in mind, you just end up cheerful the whole day because.. Well, just because. :)

4. ATE (All patients who are younger than me, forever).

Ate means older sister, but in Filipino, it can be used to any older female. In Chinese, this is Ah Jie. The Bahasa version for this is Kakak, except that Kakak is more gender-neutral. The male version for Ate is Kuya. Ate is what I get most commonly referred to as a clinician, and this is pretty much the vocalization of how many patients are confused as to what to call their clinicians. Please. I have a patient who is a Maritime Engineering student who calls me Ate even though he's 12 years older than me-- you can't beat that, really! 

In one of the tea sessions during IDEM in Singapore, Dr. Ray Williams of UNC said that when he meets patients, he goes like, "I'm Ray", rather than "I'm Dr. Ray", and it's so that the patient would be more open to telling the clinician what the problem is. I've been called Ate for so long, but never really realized that my patients really are open to me, until I heard Dr. Williams mention it. Being called Ate diminishes the "I'm the (student)-doctor here, and you're the patient." barrier. If barrier-diminishing isn't enough, I'm guessing that patients are more secure and open when they can tell that they have an Ate who truly cares. <3

5. MA'AM (Complete Denture, 2016).

Hahahaha. Okay, one of the most awkward things a patient has ever called me would definitely be Ma'am, especially since the patient who calls me that is a lot older than me. Hahahaha! 

Well, I've had patients studying Criminology or Maritime Engineering who have called me that once or twice, but I never took it really seriously with them, because they're pretty much trained to call people Ma'am and Sir on a regular basis, because of the "ranky" nature of the programs they're in, and it's most especially if they're ROTC-affiliated students, so when Crim or MARE students call me Ma'am, I often just dismiss it as a slips of the tongue here and there. 

Ma'am makes me cringe. It makes me feel like a boss (okay, considering #girlboss, it might not be so bad..), or a teacher, or maybe.. A married woman, yikes! My patients aren't my subordinates, I'm not their subordinates either. Ma'am is awkward. It just is.

6. BHE/ BEH/ BEBE (RPD + Compre Resto, 2016; Ex-Compre Perio, 2015).

So far, I've only had two patients call me Bhe (plus all its other spellings). It's almost a shortcut for bebe, which means baby, but because of how language just evolves, Bhe is starting to be an acceptable way to refer to your friends. It's almost like "girl" in "Hey girl, whatcha doin'?". I'm coming to terms with accepting Bhe as the "older person talking to a younger person" version of Ate. --and yes, Bhe is warming up to me.:)

..but if a male would ever dare to call me Bhe, then it would be a problem.

7. NENG, or any variants of (ex-Endo, 2015).

Let me tell you something-- There is nothing that can easily mess up my relationship with a patient faster than being called Neng, Ne, Ineng, or any other word that is used to refer to a pre-pubescent girl. Neng is something you'd call a little girl. I can't think of any other word in American English that could compare, but the closest would probably be Ah girl in Singlish.

When I get called Neng, I feel that I'm seen as a little girl who wants to hurry home and go play with her dolls. Although I appreciate the tiny injection of youthfulness that comes with being called Neng, it's simply not appropriate anymore, as I'm a twentysomething woman, and the patient who first called me that is a middle-aged male. Don't even get me started on how inappropriate it is in the clinical set-up. Hahaha.


Errrr.. That's it?