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.
(click book to read book reveiw)
FORGIVENESS
One cannot survive in the clinics in PGH without professional detachment. A doctor, or any medical worker for that matter, has to learn to draw a line between his personal emotions and the job he has to do, if he is ever going to be able to do it well. Even as he inevitably gets to know his patient not just as a medical case but also as a person with a name, a family, a personal history of the usual vicissitudes of life which the doctor may find personal references to, the doctor still has to consider that developing personal and emotional ties with the patient and his family may cloud his professional judgment and his course of action in treating the patient. Surgeons operating on members of their own families are usually frowned upon, and rightly so.
Thus there are doctors, especially surgeons, who have steeled themselves to be perfunctory with their patients and their families, not only because they may lack the time to be friendly, but also because they are afraid to come too close. Of course, they run the risk of being labeled unfeeling and callous. But that is a doctor’s professional hazard; and a much preferred one than having to be emotionally eviscerated every time a patient takes a turn for the worse or dies on him.
But there are unavoidable exceptions.
Cherry was a 6 year old female child brought to PGH by the Department of Social Work and Development (DSWD). She was a battered child who was finally snatched from her mother by the neighbors who could no longer stand the little child’s screaming from their hovel in a squatter area in
According to the DSWD worker and the subsequent newspaper reports, Cherry’s mother, Louella, worked as a dancer in the clubs that line the highway in Bulacan. Through the years, she lost the bloom of her youth and descended the depths to drug use and dependency. She never knew who Cherry’s father was as she shacked up with one man after the other.
The last man she lived with was also a drug dependent. He disliked and maltreated Cherry, and when he left them, Cherry’s mother blamed her for his leaving. So she continued the maltreatment of the child.
The child’s screams of pain would be heard regularly in their squatter neighborhood when the mother would come home from hustling in the nearby bars. In the morning, the neighbors would notice cigarette burns and bruises on the Cherry’s arms and legs. But the neighbors were afraid to intervene.
That particular night, Cherry’s screams for mercy were too agonizing for the neighbors to bear, so they broke down the hovel’s flimsy door and found a stark raving mad Louella holding a bloody bamboo barbecue stick. She had just put out both of Cherry’s eyes. They bound her and brought both mother and child to the police station. Cherry was subsequently rushed by the DSWD to the PGH.
In PGH, the ophthalmologists ruled that there was really nothing much they could do for Cherry’s eyes except to cover her with antibiotics. But hidden from the view of her neighbors by her flimsy dress were second and third degree burns on her back and front torso, caused by the repeated application of a hot iron by her demented mother. These were in various stages of suppuration and were the immediate threats to her brief and brutal life.
So they brought her to the burn unit of the Department of Surgery. Cherry was just one intense raw nerve when they brought her, blind and cowering, to the hospital. She had to be fully sedated for us to assess her physical condition. A child psychologist and psychiatrist were assigned to her on a 24 hour basis.
And wonder of all wonders, as the days wore on, we found a very pleasant child who showed no anger and resentment at all the viciousness that she had gone through. She never even questioned the fact that she could no longer see. She had a ready smile for everyone of the PGH personnel who regularly dropped by her bed to talk to her and to bring her whatever goodies they could, not to pity her but to show her that the world was not really as cruel as what she had gone through in the six short years of her life.
As the burn unit resident, I brought her a little radio that she liked to listen to all day and she would happily sing to me the songs she learned the day before. I marveled at Man’s capacity for evil; and in my mind, I gladly tore her mother from limb to limb everyday as I treated Cherry’s burns. It took a lot of time, determination and prayers for me to learn not to hate her mother. I cut out Louella’s picture from the newspaper and pasted it on the inside of my locker door to remind me that this wild, wide-eyed, disheveled mad woman was as much a victim as my little patient.
I learned a lot from Cherry.
Treating second and third degree burns requires daily washing and snipping away of the dead burnt flesh to prevent the focus and spread of infection that could cause severe septicemia and death. Such procedures are intensely painful and in spite of the biggest dose of sedatives and painkillers her small body could stand, this was the only time Cherry would cry and call over and over again, tears brimming over her blind mutilated eyes:
“INAY! INAY! NASAAN KA, INAY?! BAKIT MO AKO INIWAN…..?!”
It broke my heart every time.
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