First Salvo Is Fun!

"People grow through experience if they meet life honestly and courageously. This is how character is built." - Eleanor Roosevelt

I don't go crazy over  horror stories much less if it begs your apology for visual incapacity. What is required of you is just a pair of attentive perfectly working eardrums all to get your time tricked into passing.  The room is no mundane setting.You have to submit to proper etiquette and compassionate instinct.The storyteller is gushing with hair-raising tales of the paranormal. Linda Blair and Emily Rose figure prominently at the ghostly scenario, not the fictional superstars but the 'made-up' stories and characters he insists to be real-life experiences. His audience is keen to add life to the deathly plot by agreeing to the script.  Though no loud reactions. Only a couple is in tune,  in fact there is three. And that makes them four together.

While three are visibly active, the fourth person is the real protagonist but hardly exists yet taking command of every scenario. Everytime  mucus inundates his airway and prompts wheezing, he takes  the attention of all, and their touch. The reciter of tales who loves spotlight on him quickly picks up an undersized pair of plastic gloves to lend a hand. And we are back from virtual world. Nurse Jennifer is quick to fix the machine and the tubings. She will be extracting mucus secretion from the patient to clear his airway. We are pretty quick too. We tilt the head and assist in the method. We extracted a bounty. Breathing suddenly normalized. The patient has been comatose since one week. A case of intracerebral hemorrhage with severe hypertension. He is a 66-year old  African. And the bad news is - the prognosis is not good.

It was my first OJT and my assignment was ICU. Nerves was all over me. I was not alone though. Benjie and I were picked to assist at the ICU. He is a PT grad so more or less he is inclined to doing this and stuff. After taking down notes on patient's profile and medical history, we proceeded to don our gloves and plastic apron. The patient is being fed via nasogastric tube and so we had to assist in his feeding. Turning the patient every two hours is also necessary to avoid bedsores and skin ulcer. The patient is on foley catheter so we had to drain his urine every now and then. We also did oral care on him to contain the stench coming from his oral cavity. His BP has been consistently abnormal and so cardiac arrest could be imminent. He has to be under our careful watch. Other than that everything is pretty normal and peaceful in the ICU.

The yawning gap in between administering care for a comatose patient could steal one's sanity away, says Nurse Jen. Gladly, we came that day to her aid. So she won't be humming around appeasing those naughty unseen gliding over the room in a cold breeze. Nurse Jen has had company that day. To shun away  lulling moments  in the ICU, Benjie had spooky stories dug up from his footlocker. Deathly tales, exorcisms, nightmares and creepy adventures made good fodder for the three of us. There was no escaping from pinning your auditory cells to the convincingly credible storytelling of the "cold compress king". Did I say he used up more than a dozen pairs of gloves for his cold compress regimen on his inert listener? :-)

If there was an award  for tibial stamina we could have run away with it too. And surely the fun diminishes when you feel some grumbling within. And this is what Benjie has been blabbering about - tons of pizza that he ordered that made my midsection even loudly complaining. Little did we know, down a ceiling below, some of our co-trainees were already on a frenzy over a huge pizza and salad that Chris had ordered for the batch. He happened to be the birthday boy (it was announced at school) and so he had to oblige us. (Poor Chris! :-)) Benjie surely had eavesdropped on the activities below. He made a trip quite a number of times down. (He must have bullied reluctant Chris into obliging for a pizza treat :-)) Of course there's no way we could miss out on the 'plunder'. We eventually found ourselves sprinting down the stairs.

Now I won't have to weep with envy everytime I see a flatter belly. Pizza is the single most atrociously irresistible reward you could possibly get for enduring the day. The  smell and sight of it is going to make every carb skeptic crawl out of the woodwork and ignore a beeline for a first grab of a bigger slice, pepperoni at that. Apart from the pizza, salad and cookies, Jasmine too had brought a basin of pancit  with matching white loaves. There you go a food trip in the hospital. Haggard faces suddenly lightened up. A co-trainee recounts how his boy patient is practicing high jump in his bed. Another, his patient touring around the hospital with  the entire socceer team with him, you would think there is a football match in the lobby. Ours though is not exactly a happy one.

At the onset, everyone thought our OJT will be an entirely nerve-wracking experience. On the first foray, we were overwhelmed with nerves and pressure, but it wouldn't take long before we realized that the experience helped boost our morale and self-worth. And yes we had fun too. Patients are people with varying needs. A little tap on their back and reassurance that everything will be okay already lights up their faces, and it does contribute to their recovery. True healthcare providers don't just focus on the patient's physical well-being, they are bound to go the extra mile too. Expertise and science alone do not at all complement the healing of the infirm without compassion. After all, homo sapiens is not only made up of flesh and blood, there is more to what our eyes can't see. Good luck to all Batch Four!

He Is Deeply Missed

"It was nice growing up with someone like you - someone to lean on, someone to count on... someone to tell on! I wish  you had stayed longer."

It's dawn yet, to him extended sleep is a vice. Time to violate again Maslow's assertion on requisites to exist - albeit one of the basics. His clock ticks quicker than the ordinary. His movements even quicker. Noise does not figure in his way so as not wake his wife and two kids. After all, they are the reason to his unenviable routine. He is used to forgo a decent breakfast. A glass of coffee warmer than lukewarm sometimes will do. Before he gets to the saddle of his second-hand motorbike, he sees to it that he glances once more at his two angels and his beloved.

Pastor Nilo is off to work. The journey is long and unpredictable. Still he is not privileged with the comfort of a bundy clock. Oftentimes he leaves home at dawn and comes back before midnight. Despite the day's ordeal, the smile in his face is genuine. And gladly he masks the tiredness with glee at the doorstep of his mother's home. She is eagerly awaiting to see him. The wait is agonizing till she sees him because she worries about him - all the time. She is old and weak and restless till she sees him. She knows too he had no decent meal during the day. And she always keeps a better one for him. And this routine home doesn't change as well. Before he gets to hug his wife and kids, he sees to it that he visits his mother with his present for her, her favorite 'ensaymada'. Her home is just in a neighborhood that dots alongside ponds and narrow alleys.

If one wonders why he does not work full time in the ministry?  In fact he did. For a young pastor and newly-wed at that, it was a challenge to minister full-time in a mountainous part of Silay City. The place was not blessed with electricity, not anytime soon. Almost everything man requires does not come in handy. The only accessible rarities are the clouds that sit atop the hills that hug the stilt houses decked out in cogon walls. A visit to the place can be likened to a pilgrimage fraught with penance and glorious bruises. For humans who have known and tasted civilization, a three-year tenure in such a place is a divine stamina. But the streak would ultimately be halted when their first baby warns of its arrival. Hospital or clinic is generations away to happen in such an awful setting and so it was best not to take the risk. A lot of prayers and subtle persuasion for new volunteer later provided relief. A bachelor worker finally took the stand and heeded the Master's call.

The pastor and his pregnant wife then took to the city till she gave birth. Being a man of God, he does not believe in luck. He argues that all things happen for a reason. They too are burdened with not having a regular income to support a now growing family. A high school certificate and a year stint with bible school do not at all guarantee him employment. But it didn't take long before he got his real job: a collector for a semi-NGO micro-lending company. The job requires him to be college graduate and a Christian. Obviously he was not up to the criteria save for the latter. Part of his job would be to conduct Bible studies among cell members made up of borrowers who would meet up on a specific day to pay up their dues. His job would continue for years  till he got promoted as field supervisor, till he was blessed with another child.

Negotiating dirt roads from the outskirts of the city plays part of his job. And his area of assignment would later expand. From the farthest towns and cities to hinterland barrios, he would meet up with local cell members for group BS while some members go in a hiding when they sense him coming. He however understands that it is no easy thing to oblige them when they are literally dried up and unable to pay their dues. This has become a mundane scenario until he was able to help them develop some discipline and trustworthiness evident at people who fear God. Wherever Pastor Nilo goes, he is being loved and respected. His daily routine  though is not without trouble. There were attempts to rob and harm him but he was repeatedly spared from those dangers. He knows why and he is not at all astonished.

It is just any ordinary day. His itinerary would be Cadiz City - a three-hour drive from his place and so he has to get up a little earlier than usual. There were no indications of what lie ahead. At midday, a news report on radio reverberated all over their neighborhood. Pastor Nilo figured in an accident along the highway south of Cadiz City and he was brought to the nearest hospital. His identity was confirmed from his ID but  reports would not confirm as to his condition. His wife and siblings would soon troop to the hospital praying as hard as they can for miracle. What greeted them was the most gruesome state of his body in the morgue. Only his head was spared. His chest down to his toes can be likened to a butchered animal violated of its dignity with tibia and fibula sticking out of its integuments on a display of hellish gory. Women present took turns collapsing if not simultaneously. You would not believe your eyes how graphic the way life can be lost. 

Witnesses told police that he was almost off  road giving way for large and fast vehicles when an approaching truck behind swerved towards him - instantly tossing him  under the truck and got dragged over thirty meters before the driver realized he had killed someone. His helmet spared his face from getting disfigured from his ordeal down between the tires that curtailed his young life. He was still breathing when volunteers took him to the hospital. The truck driver was said to be high on marijuana. He got jailed but was later freed because Pastor Nilo's wife did not file a case. He was reported to have eight kids.

Pastor Nilo's eldest now an eight-year old bright girl was provided a scholarship by his company (until she goes to college), aside from a monthly support for his two kids. It's been five years since his death but his memory still lingers. He lived a life of humility, never complaining and always grateful. He was such a good son, a good brother, a loving husband and father. He was closest to me too. Last night I had a dream of him -  he was full of life, cheering me up and urging me on not to forget my foundation - the Word of God. He kept on encouraging me to press on towards the goal, for he is now in a lovely place not wanting me to miss out on that place. I suddenly awakened and tears streamed down my eyes. It was very vivid. He was real I even touched him. I just missed my brother so much.