Because I forgot to greet him on his birthday last June, I decided to pay a tribute to Ting Tiongco. And since he is one person I know who wants to tell stories and share it with different people, I wanted to share part of him to some of my friends here by featuring four stories from his latest book. These are actually four of the my favorite ones. I was planning to feature just three but i can't choose which one to drop, so four, why not! LOL. I could feature the whole book, but since it is the University of the Philippines(UP) Press who owns the rights now as the publisher, I cannot really get away from them by just sweet talking them into forgiving me... if it was the author who published it, that would have been an easier one to deal with. lmao.
Anyways, without further ado, here's the featured story#1 of 
(click book to read book reveiw)
BOARDERS
They called them Boarders. Patients who practically lived in PGH. These were people with incurable or recurrent illnesses who had no homes or people to go back to. Nobody claimed or cared about them. Abandonados.
PGH tolerated their long term presence in the wards because they were truly sick and even if they were sent away, they always came back. These were people who had frequent recurrent asthma, or non healing wounds, or chronic TB infections of the lungs that had abscesses that drained pus through multiple holes in their chest. Pinagdidirian ng mga tao. They found places to sleep in the filthiest corners of PGH. They also received daily scraps of food from the kitchen. Some were officially admitted in the PGH and had charts that were thicker than medical textbooks, having been there for years.
Badong S. was a gaunt 50 year old long time boarder who was practically an institution in PGH. He had a festering wound in his right leg that oozed pus all the time from an infection in his tibia, his main leg bone. Osteomyelitis. No amount of antibiotics could cure the infection unless they operated on his leg by curetting or scraping away all the debris that the chronic infection had accumulated inside his leg bone. But Badong had other diseases in his heart and lungs that made him a high risk patient for an operation. In a way Badong was glad he could not be operated on because if he were cured, then he would lose his meal ticket. Badong knew and toadied up to everybody in the hospital that had to do with his continued stay in the wards. Except the Interns. For some reason, he really hated Interns. Being officially a patient in the wards, Badong was assigned rotating interns who had to write daily progress notes on him everyday. But by mutual consent and convenience, Badong and the intern assigned to him usually avoided each other. The intern in charge would take down his chart everyday, write down progress notes like: ‘Up and About’ or ‘Good Appetite’ without seeing him at all, because most likely he would be hiding somewhere until meal time. Nobody really cared much about his progress. Nobody read his progress notes.
But Badong aroused my curiosity as his intern in charge. So I sought him out in his hiding places. He first reacted rudely to me until I discovered that although he spoke perfect street Tagalog, he was born in Negros Oriental. Speaking to him in the language of his childhood broke down his defenses. Slowly he recalled the language his mother talked to him in. We became friends. I found him a very interesting character study. We talked a lot in the two weeks I had him in my patient list. So instead of “up and about’ and ‘good appetite’, my progress notes brimmed with details about his non healing wound, his lungs, and his heart. Towards the end of my rotation, I even recorded his feelings of helpless hopelessness as a social discard. I found it a good diversion from the usual notations Interns put in their progress notes and if I deviated from the norm, I was convinced nobody read the progress notes of any of our Boarders anyway.
But I was wrong.
Grand Rounds is an institution in PGH wherein once a month, the important doctors followed by the medical students, all in their finest whites, hair combed, shoes shined, made rounds on interesting patients in the hospital, led by the Hospital Director himself. A consultant discussant expounded on selected patients at their bedsides as presented by their resident doctors in charge. This was a way for a consultant to display his vast store of knowledge, his clever analysis of the patient’s condition, his wit, and his impeccable bedside manners. Show time.
It must have been somebody’s idea of a joke to present Badong S. in the Grand Rounds. But there he was, freshly hosed down, wearing a new hospital gown, finally sitting on his bed, and woefully showing his pus-laden leg to the crowd of white-gowned doctors, nurses and medical students.
The consultant discussant was casting about for a reason for Badong S’s extended stay in the wards. He lit upon the Interns’ progress notes. He ordered the resident presenter, Dr. Tony N to read them aloud. Dr. Tony N, who was a bit of a showman himself, slowly shuffled the stacks of progress notes in Badong’s chart and picked out mine! He glanced at them for a moment and declared that he could read them but doubted if anybody would understand them. This irked the consultant. He testily asserted that as the discussant, HE would determine whether the lowly Intern’s notes were intelligible or not.
So Dr. Tony N dramatically cleared his throat and in a loud voice began to read my notes. There was complete silence after the first sentence. Then everybody, to a man, surged forward to listen closer. And indeed, nobody, not even the consultant discussant, understood what Tony N was reading aloud. Because I wrote my notes in the Spanish of Rizal - straight out of the Noli and the Fili. Tony enjoyed his moment as he gleefully continued to articulate every syllable to the stunned consultant discussant who eventually shouted at Tony to stop.
A titter came from the clinical clerks, a giggle from the interns, and then a wave of hysterical laughter broke over the white-gowned crowd.
After the Grand Rounds, I was practically dragged by the ear to the Director’s office. The Director himself and the consultant discussant, together and in turns, berated me for what I did. They accused me of tampering with public records (Badong’s chart); a criminal offense, punishable with imprisonment ranging from two to seven years. Was I ever in hot water! But Rizal himself must have been whispering in my ear because in the middle of the Director’s vitriol, I reminded him that Spanish was still an official language of the Republic of the Philippines, along with English and Tagalog. He stopped in mid fury, turned dark as a beetle, then exhaled, slow and heavy, as the wind was taken from his sails. After a while he quietly told me to leave his office.
When I left, the Director was holding his head in his hands. His troubles were just starting. Next day, another intern insisted on writing his notes in Tagalog.
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