You Again

Oh no. I'm sorry. I tried to avoid this. This blog is supposed to talk about anything substantial (ie something people can learn from, laugh at, or ponder on), but this is the second consecutive post about you. I don't think anybody is reading this blog anymore, anyway. My last entry, which was entirely about you, only garnered 11 reads as of now. So I figured it's probably safe to just blabber on. I need some form of catharsis for my thoughts. And since you're my secret crush, there really is nobody I can talk to about you. So I might as well put my thoughts in writing, lest I would someday forget about it.

Honestly, I feel weird writing about crushes. Geeez, I'm old, old enough to be labeled a spinster, actually. I wonder why I still get these silly "kilig" feelings whenever you're around. Can anybody give the exact English translation of that word? I don't think anybody can. But I know how that feels. Thanks to you.

Anyway, what I'm trying to say is this. I miss you. Terribly. You're out there somewhere far away right now, and it would be several days before you'll be back home. Knowing you're away makes me lonely. Well, we really don't see each other all the time, even if you're home. But the fact that you're around, just a few kilometers away from where I work, energizes me somehow. I always look forward to this little possibility of bumping into you in the most unlikely places, in restaurants, in malls, in streets, wherever. Fate has given us several chances of bumping into each other, actually. I said "it's a small world". You said "it's serendipity".

Since you left the city, I've been in a daze. I walk around mindlessly, not looking at people's faces, not staring at license plates of lithium-colored trucks. I've been having breakfast and coffee at the usual places, but I didn't really care about the next person who walks through the door. The certainty that I will never bump into you drains me of my usual enthusiasm for the city. Since you left, I feel my age more. I'm an old lady who feels old.

Do you ever think of me from where you are now? Are you also staring at the scenery mindlessly because you know you will never find me there? Do you also look forward to coming home because you miss our conversations and our laughter and this tiny weeny possibility that you'd bump into me in the most unlikely places?

I hope you do.

I look forward to having you home. Please come see me as soon as you can.

An Open Letter to A Secret Crush. From a Girl Who's No Longer Young.

I have a confession to make. I like you. I really do. I wish you'll never find out. But I'm writing this anyway. I don't think you read my blog so I think my secret is safe here. Or maybe I wish you will find out somehow, without me having to tell you in person. It scares me that you'll find out, and yet I would really really like you to know how I feel. So here goes. I'm shrouding you in a veil of anonymity, translucent though it is. I'm not making sense here. But my point is, I like you. I really do.

I know I'm no longer young. And you're far from young either. As a wise and grown-up lady, I should just have told you how I feel, straight, without metaphors or jargon. There's nothing to be scared of, really. I'm sure you've been through this before, with other women. And I've felt this way before too, for other men. But for some strange unexplainable reason, I still could not muster enough courage to tell you in person.

Call me a coward, or a sissie, or childish and immature. Call me a prude, call me frigid. But when you're with me I just become quiet. I am speechless for things that matter, but verbose on the less important things. Things such as politics and waterfalls and India, things of no consequence at all that I tend to forget about them in a moment.  Why do we keep talking about these little things and so painstakingly steer away from talk of feelings and dreams and family and past relationships? It's unnatural. It's tiresome. It's making us drift apart just as soon as we as we get an inch too close for comfort.

But still the same, I like you. There's a mystery about you that I could not explain. Your ideas fascinate me. Your kindness and your vision impress me. I enjoy the way you make me laugh, love the way you make me think. I very rarely meet a man who knows the books I read, sings the songs I sing, and dreams of the adventures I long to do. But maybe they're all in my head. maybe you're just being you. Perhaps the reason why I like you is because I don't know you enough. Or I don't know you at all (though I would like to believe that that is not true, maybe I do know you a bit). Whether you are real or imagined, I do know that I really enjoy every moment I have with you. I think you are amazing. I think you are magical.

These feelings I indulge in now should have been extinct a decade ago. I don't recall feeling this way since college. And now these teenage feelings haunt me again, and they're more ferocious and intense than ever. Crushes are supposed to be for teens, not for middle-aged cardiologists. I'm 34 but I get these butterflies in my stomach whenever our eyes meet. My little heart leaps whenever you smile. There's a shiver in my spine when the back of your hand lightly touches my arm. My knees turn into jelly whenever you hold my hand. Haven't you noticed that whenever we're together, there's a silly smile plastered on my face? You make me sing - in the car, while walking, while drinking beer. Geeesh, you even made me dance once, and I never dance. Since i met you, this old woman is a little girl all over again, a silly, lovestruck, little girl crazy over her first crush. Thank you for that.

I'm not expecting anything. I don't expect that you'll like me back. Let's just stay how we are. Let's just talk and laugh, and sing and dance, and walk and travel. We need not talk about the serious stuff. We can just talk about the usual things - politics, the city, mountains, Nepal, and that neighbor you have. You need not be with me whenever I ask you for your company (which is practically all the time, at least in my head, I just don't tell you about it). Let's just take it slow, so slow, as slow as you would want it to be.

But I really like you. I really do. And if you get to read this, please, just give me a sign that you've read this and I'll finally tell you about it.

Fern

Another old crush got married a few days ago. Well, it wasn't really a big deal. But when you're 34 and single, and your options are getting narrower and narrower, supposedly trivial events like this create a small dent on your otherwise flawless veneer of confidence. It's like a death of someone your age, when you are suddenly reminded of the brevity of your existence and you get to question your own life and your achievements and the purpose of your daily grind. Yeah, I'm diverging from a crush getting married to existentialist angst. That's how twisted I am right now. Twisted and crazy and confused and feeling like a fifteen year old. I think I'm having a brief reactive psychosis triggered by the marriage of an old crush. All because I've always thought he was fern. Fern? Fern has no stamen or pistil. Fern has spores. In layman's terms, fern is asexual. My asexual former crush is now married. And I'm shocked. I'm aghast. I'm crying. Boohoo. He wasn't a fern after all.

So my fern wasn't a fern. He just was a fern when he was with me. Well, he wasn't really with me, technically, which disqualifies me from being a total fern-magnet. But yeah, you know what I mean. He was a good fern, by the way.

Breakfast Club With Me, Myself, and I

My 34th birthday came and went. I expected to become wiser overnight, with my hair all turning gray, wrinkles on my face, with a halo around my head. I didn't. Instead, I'm just an almost-old middle aged woman trying hard to keep sane.

Today is my third day trying to get back to my lifestyle a year ago - that of a regularly-jogging fat lady who found it hard to finish a day without sweating it out. My busy work, the recent rains and cold early morning weather, and yes, I'll stop making excuses, my horrible and protracted attack of idleness have stopped me from making my daily rounds along the city park. The result: 4 kgs of fat gained. Eeeewww!

Since Friday, I've been joining this city's fitness-crazy old ladies in their sessions of Zumba in malls. My friend Ronan found that ridiculous. He hates watching fat people dance while panting like dogs and sweating buckets of what he felt like oil. But his mockery notwithstanding, I decided to join Zumba in the mall and be gawked at by those skinny people in the crowd. And today, I tried to resume jogging. Two miles and I was already getting angina. My knees hurt. And I'm still fat.

And so I'm back in my favorite breakfast place. Until a few months ago, this has been my Sunday morning routine. After a jog and a some minutes of Zumba, I usually hole up in this cozy little diner and have a treat of fried egg and whatever meat there is.  The past few months, however, I've enjoyed the most unexpected of surprises: company.

You see I'm not used to getting company. I've been so used to having my meals alone. And I've stopped feeling miserable about it. Being alone in a diner, reading a book, or just staring into space has always made me feel superior over the other Homo sapiens who cannot endure being alone. It's like my superpower, my mega asset, the ace in my cards. And so when company came, I realized how pathetic all my previous delusions about my superiority were. Quoting Murakami, "Nobody wants to be alone. I just hate to be disappointed." Yes, I just hated being disappointed. And oh boy, like all these other ordinary Homo sapiens, I don't want to be alone!!!

For many weekends, I had company I enjoyed. I started missing my morning jogs because I felt I hated being alone and I no longer felt that loneliness is equated with being superior and powerful. I wasn't having breakfast alone and I was happier!

But the trouble with company is that you can't keep them with you forever. People have lives to lead. I don't own anyone. And whether I like it or not, I'm the queen of solitary meals and tables-for-one.

So I'm back to square one. I'm the girl who reads, the girl who runs, the girl who travels, the girl who writes. The girl who does everything alone. And yes, whether you like it or not, that makes me a superior Homo sapien. Enough said.

(Written in Taps and Mix, GenSan City. In a fit of self-pity, hahaha. Solitude makes writers in fat middle-aged ladies, I therefore conclude.)

Coffee-Shop Blues

Last weekend I was here, forcing myself to read a paperback novel about hell. Today, in an attempt to distract myself from my perennial lack of company, I decided to escape from the rest of the world by staying in a mall. Yes, it’s true that we can sometimes be alone in a crowded place and think more clearly where there is noise. The steady drone of people’s voices and their occasional ripples of laughter make an effective music for meditation, though meditation isn’t exactly what I’m doing now. I’m escaping. I’m running away. I’m hiding from the rest of the world, from all the noise and trivialities of daily existence. In a mall. Yes, this is such the perfect place to hide – in a place with bright lights and happy people while I’m sitting alone in a corner sipping coffee, pretending to be aloof and without care for company. Well, what else is new? This isn’t really much of a surprise, isn’t it?

Tonight I’m in this swanky coffee shop in downtown GenSan, wasting money on a tad too expensive vanilla latte, trying to squeeze my desiccated brain for words and ideas that have persistently eluded me for so long and assemble them into a fairly decent and reasonably interesting article for my blog.  It’s been months since I wrote one. And the last one I wrote was about loneliness and singlehood and getting old – boring and clichéd material. However, considering that my 34^th birthday is just around the corner and whether I like it or not, loneliness is staring me right in the face and even giving me a dirty finger taunting me like a bully, it looks like I will be discussing the same nasty but boring topics yet again.

Well, maybe if I keep on staying here, every Saturday night and every Tuesday night, at right about the same time, in right about the same corner, maybe some nerdy solitude-seeking man will bother to sit with me and join me for a while.  Maybe. Who knows? Stuff from movies do happen in real life, albeit very rarely. Like that line from that coffee commercial. Let’s sit and talk awhile. All that crap. Maybe that could still happen if I stick around this place long enough.

I’ve stuck around long enough. Or maybe not yet. How long am I supposed to wait?  I’m not a very patient woman. Or maybe I’m a very patient woman, but I’ve been patient long enough.

Stop. There I go again. I'm again rambling about loneliness and singlehood and getting old. It's boring. I'm boring. I should stop and smell the coffee. 

Vagaries of a Middle-Aged Schmuck

Last night, I found myself in a coffee shop sipping hot vanilla latte and indulging in decadent blueberry cheesecake while musing about my solitary existence. It must be my age and the fact that I’m supposedly way past Erikson’s Intimacy vs Isolation Stage but am still very much stuck in it, struggling to keep my head afloat like a child who doesn’t know how to swim, that this issue is becoming a recurring thought, almost an obsession I couldn’t seem to shake off my head. The question whether I should battle against my imminent fate of being forever alone or just gently and graciously acquiesce to lifelong solitude nags me all the time that I decided to take some time off from work, pretend that I’m going somewhere far away, when in fact, I’m just wandering around this little city, spending my hard earned money on expensive coffee and pies, and books which will probably take me months to read. In the next few days, I will just hole myself up in a quiet beach-side resort a half-hour drive away from the city to meditate and contemplate on my fate. Hibernate, so they say. Like a snake molting off her skin and eventually emerging with a brand-new one, or a cat who will just sleep all day to recover her nine lives.

Well, being single at 33 isn’t entirely miserable. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I’m not sour-graping, mind you. I’m simply stating the obvious. I’m a woman who runs, reads, writes, takes pictures, travels, drives my own car, and has an incredibly fulfilling and relevant job, and millions of other women in the world would have dumped their husbands to take my place. And while other women are growing fat, grumbling about their boring lives and their mundane home routines and the impossibility of the perfect afritada or adobo, I am steadily and slowly getting fit, evolving while sucking the marrow out of life, learning and relearning new things, exploring possibilities, loving the world and everything in it. This week, I’ll get diving lessons for an open-water diving certificate. In the next few months, I’m getting swimming lessons, try my luck in biking, then train for 21K, travel to India or to China, perhaps get an MBA. There’s just too much to do, and I can’t imagine being able to do half of these wonderful things if I have a husband who’s unwilling to do all those with me, or much worse, several kids pulling at my pants or sucking at my tits.

But I am alone. There’s the rub. I am alone. Alone, alone, alone. Is this the price I have to pay for asking more out of life? Do I need to remain solitary so I can "suck the marrow" out of our short existence? Am I willing to exchange all my plans for the possibility of having a better half, to be loved, to be entwined with another soul for better or for worse, in sickness and in health, until life as we know it is extinguished? Don't get me wrong. I am one of those thirty-something single women who enjoy solitude. And yet, I also desire to share my solitude with someone. And no, I am not jaded, at least not yet. I am still one of those hopeless romantics who still believe that the one made for me since the beginning of time is still out there, searching for me. I am just a solitary soul waiting to be found, trying to live an extraordinary life while at it, but waiting, every single day, waiting, waiting, waiting... 

Am I stupid to wait? Should I just abandon this hopeless-romantic-ship and jump overboard into the ocean of eternal solitude? Should I? Or should I not?

I took a few days off from work to contemplate on these things, to give an answer to these nagging, seemingly unimportant but utterly pivotal questions about my existence. Also, I promised myself that I will write again, that during this short break, I’ll have at least some form of documentation of my thoughts that is much more substantial than a few annoying words in an egoistic self-elevating Facebook status. I have resolved that at the end of three days, I will be able to answer these perennially baffling and troublesome questions: Would I rather be alone? Am I prepared to be alone?

Today is day one of my vacation. And I am successful enough to squeeze out a blog entry from my tired and overworked brain.

So far, my answer to both questions is a resounding NO. 

You Should Date a Cardiologist

Date a cardiologist. Date a woman who spends most of her time studying and healing hearts, literally. Her passion for her profession will overwhelm you, at first. But once you get to know her, you will discover why. Her interest in the human heart extends beyond the literal. She is more interested in the deeper and figurative significance of the human cardiac tissue – that of love, giving love, and being loved back. Date a cardiologist because she will do everything to take care of your heart – she swore an oath to honor and protect it at all costs. She will never break it, unless you provoke her and break hers first.

Find your cardiologist. There aren’t too many women like her around, but when you do come across her, she’s not easy to forget. She is the woman who is comfortable among men and people of power and authority – she is confident, direct, smart, and assertive. She thrives in a man’s world because her field used to be a man’s world, and still pretty much is, and she spent years of hard struggle to earn her place in it, and very well-deservedly. She walks with a perpetual sense of urgency. Her schedule is meticulously planned, her phone is incessantly ringing. Referrals, emergencies, cardiac arrests, and all sorts of frantic calls for help from patients, nurses, colleagues, and family, come during the most unholy of hours, and she is always patient enough to receive them with gentleness and much grace. She lives and breathes those virtues – patience, gentleness, and grace – the same gifts that she can offer you. 

Talk to her.  Start a conversation even if she appears to be too busy for small talk. Look her in the eye. Remain calm and undaunted even if she stares you down, as if finding fault in your grammar or the syntax of your words, if you can find enough courage to muster them intelligibly. Ask her about her patient load, her newest intensive care case, the latest drugs for dyslipidemia and hypertension. Pretend you’re a patient with chest pain. Feign a heart attack. She will find you out. But if she considers you interesting enough, she will immediately stop her rounds, forget her piles of ECGs to read, and agree to have a long conversation with you. Or even coffee, or beer, or dinner, if you’re lucky.

Once you find your cardiologist, keep her. Her heart is as fragile as the cardiomyopathies she has seen, so handle it with utmost care. Her moods may be as unpredictable as ventricular tachycardia, but all she really needs from you is that you will consistently stay. She deals with patients with stormy clinical courses every day, so she can never be satisfied with sporadic bursts of passion and intermittent displays of affection from you, no matter how intense, no matter how sweet. 

Pick her up from her hospital. Offer to drive for her even if she insists that she could still drive for herself. And when she falls asleep in the car from sheer exhaustion, plant a kiss on her forehead, or on her cheek, or on her lips, if you’re bold enough. Surprise her at her clinic. Give her flowers in front of her patients and watch her blush. Secretly drop silly love notes into the pocket of her white coat or in her handbag where she keeps her precious stethoscope. Insert your handwritten poetry in the pages of her Braunwald. Or a ring. If you think she’s The One. A cardiologist may be obsessive-compulsive in the monitoring of her patients, but when it comes to romance, she is very to please.

Let her take care of you. Allow her to fret over your blood pressure or the ischemia on your ECG. Let her take your pulse. Let her listen to your heart for murmurs or whatever she might find there. Allow her to take you into her world where life is sacred and loving it is a necessity. Her desire to serve mankind and make the world a better place will infect you, and you can’t help but make those your dreams as well. But despite her passion for her work, you are her first love, her top priority. Yours is the heart that she would give up her life for, the heart that she keeps within her heart.

Grow old with her.  Get used to the way she beams with delight whenever she pulls a patient out of shock. Even when you’re both older, give her a warm hug for every life saved, a kiss for every patient sent home walking. Keep her close whenever she weeps for each life lost. Never grow tired of holding her, for she will still weep even if she has lost hundreds.  Hold her hand whenever she whines about how toxic her life has become. Stifle your grin when she does that, because you know that she will always complain, busy or not busy, but more so when she stops being busy.  She would always want to retire from her job and go somewhere else with you. So take her somewhere else with you. To a beach, to a mountain, to a secluded restaurant, to a far-flung town with no cellphone signal. Anywhere with you. And she will come back recharged. Because you are the oil that keeps her lamp burning.

Disappoint her. A cardiologist knows that even infarcted hearts get a chance at healing and life can be made normal again with adequate rehabilitation. She’s not a stranger to failure, so she won’t hold a grudge against you when you fail in some of your promises. She knows that a patient’s course can sometimes go downhill despite all effort. That parting is an inevitable fact of life and what matters most is that you did your best. She knows that her attempts at healing may fail sometimes, but her efforts to give comfort will always succeed no matter how the patient will end up. 

Date a cardiologist if you’re brave enough. Not everybody deserves her. But those who do will have the greatest adventure of their lives.

Better yet, date a cardiologist who reads. And writes. And travels. And runs.

Silly Attempts at Poetry

I unearthed an old piece of crappy writing today. These were scribbles I made on scratch paper some 10 or 12 years ago. Funny how some memories revisit you, like a deja vu, only becoming stronger. It's like coming full circle and you find yourself in exactly the same quagmire again. Perhaps it's true that History repeats itself. Or maybe Life is just giving us second chances, so we can be bolder and hence redeem, finally, after countless attempts, really redeem ourselves. Maybe this time, I will. 

Or perhaps there are certain feelings or thoughts that we nurture in our hearts that never really disappear or even diminish. They just hide, pretending to be forgotten, only to come back stronger when we're older. And when they do, it's time to just surrender and get carried away.

Paghihintay

Ang tagal mo naman!

kung hihintayin kita, anong oras?

Saan? Kailan?

Wala naman tayong usapan.

Walang appointment na pwede kong asahan.

Wala kang iniwang landline o cellphone

na pwede kong tawagan.

Hindi kaya ako nagmumukhang tanga?

Nagbibilang ng oras, umaasa sa wala?

O baka naman, may katagpo ka nang iba?

Diyos ko naman, sana wala pa!

At sana di tayo nagkasalisihan!

Papunta ako dun, naghahanap sa 'yo,

habang ikaw nama'y papunta pala rito.

O, ano? Libre ka kaya?

Kung hindi mamaya, bukas?

Sa isang linggo? Sa isang taon?

Ah, ewan. Bahala ka.

Kahit kelan, bahala na.

Basta, hihintayin kita.

Mamuti man ang mata,

lulunukin ang inip, ang pagod.

Ang pagtiktak ng relo,

sa kabilang tenga palalabasin ko.

Ipipikit ang mga mata, at baka sa pagdilat,

Naririyan ka na.

Darating ka kaya?

Bahala na.

At kung sa kahihintay, ako'y tumanda,

hindi ko iyon alintana.

Basta't darating ka,

sulit naman, 'di ba?

Ngunit ang hirap naman nito.

Mabuti sana, kung di ko alam

Ang pangalan mo.

Walking on Water: The Resurrection

After nearly eight months of dormancy, I’m back. I’d like to believe that the fact that I am writing on this blog again means that I’ve finally settled into the new life that I’ve chosen for myself. The rolling stone that I had once been now decides to stay still in a corner for awhile and gather moss, just a little bit of it, maybe to have a semblance of stability in my life, to say that I too have a home somehow. People who know me well enough are probably chuckling by now. Jean is never the type to stay still. Oh well, let’s see. Maybe gravity or some force stronger than it will hold me into a quiet corner finally, maybe for good. We’ll see.

The last eight months have been a blur. It was blurry because of the storms, the many hurdles and rites of passage that I had to endure to be able to arrive at where I am now. And where I am now is just a small white-tiled office, with a steel examining table on my right, and a cheap glass-topped table under my old laptop as my desk. I have all the luxury of time to ponder on everything I’ve been through. Being the frustrated writer that I am, I have always imagined great novels out of the events of my life, with matching musical score, no matter how mundane these events might be. Writing has always afforded me a semblance of order in my otherwise disordered existence. And excitement! When the practical side of me gets reminded of the monotone of my uninspired life, I seek to write in order to create a different world, a world where there is color and music and tears. Everything I go through becomes a material for a great story that I dream to write one day. Hence everything – the sleeping in call rooms on chairs, on empty hospital beds, on couches, on treadmills, the 100-mile per day bus rides, the riding on tricycles, the 30-peso meals – these are just part of the ebb and flow of a glorious plot where I’m the main protagonist.

Fantasies aside, let me get to the meat of things – the things that my readers would want to read about. Maybe you’d like to hear about the turmoils of starting a private practice, tips on how to survive in a dog-eat-dog-world without having to be a carnivore yourself, how to transform from an absolute couch-potato to a 10K runner in 6 months, how to be the Queen of the dreaded Friend Zone and end up unscathed, well, hopefully). Yes, yes. I promise I’ll write about them. Soon, but not today. Not yet. Let’s just presume that I’m still gathering enough materials before this blog can go full throttle again.

This blog post is somewhat forced. Several hundreds of words spewed from a brain that’s squeezed to absolute desiccation. Nothing of substance to write about. Just a writer expressing her angst over an 8-month blogging hiatus, waiting for that inspiration that never came. But here I am. I am writing again. I am not inspired, only compelled. I need to prove that I still exist. Yes, I’m right here. And I’m still loving it.

Some Things I’ll Miss About PGH

Now that I am about to conclude seven years of my stay in the country’s biggest charity hospital (15, including my college, medical school and internship years), I couldn’t help but count the things I have come to love most about it - things I will definitely miss once I depart its hallowed walls. Perhaps it is only normal among humans to occasionally feel excessively sentimental about things they’re about to leave. Of course I am excited. In fact, ecstatic is more like it. My years of financially underpaid hardwork are about to come to a close. I qualify that as “financially”, take note. Some of life’s greatest satisfactions have nothing to do with money. However, the prospect of going out into the real world where I will finally be exposed to the challenges I have prepared for for so long is truly sensational. My real mettle will finally be tested. There’s this intense trepidation that comes from questions such as: “Will I be able to make it?”, “Will I measure up to the standards with which I was molded?”, “Will I bring honor and glory to the institution that spawned me and the people who taught me well?” , “Will I be just another PGH graduate who will eventually be forgotten and/or will eventually forget where I came from?” , “Will I be just another shark in the ocean?”. Whatever the answers to those questions are, only time will tell. I know one thing though. I need all the help I can get.

So before I even get swallowed by the outside world, I will write down some things, so I will not forget. Here are some things I will miss the most about the PGH that I have learned to love-hate-love in the last fifteen years. These are in no particular order, still subject to changes/ additions/ deletions as I continue to ponder about them in the next few days (ahaha, my last remaining days as a PGH fellow):

1. PGH food. I blamed Carmina’s siopao for my weight gain during my med school days, then mess hall brown sauce during internship. During residency, there was Breakfastival at the foodcourt, where I was a frequent customer. Recently, I realized the breakfast buffet no longer exists. I had other favorites too. Arrozcaldo at the foodcourt is my comfort food. Sopas from the 2^nd floor coop store is worth all the long lines especially on rainy days. I also loved the sisig (crispy chicharon with all the onions), spareribs caldereta, munggo with galunggong from the coop. For snacks, my favorites have always been camote cue and turon.

2. PGH elevators and their unlimited capacity. Lining up at the main lobby’s elevators is one of my most hated PGH moments. Especially during weekends when there is only one elevator for visitors and employees. And most especially during days when all the other elevators are undergoing maintenance and there is only one elevator for everybody, including patients! Sometimes I get tempted to ride on the patient’s bed to even fit in the cramped space! However, there is something strangely profound about it. The old PGH elevators kind of remind me of PGH itself – you can fill it beyond capacity and it will continue to function. You pound it with your fists or with your coins and it will continue to go up and down. You think it’s impossible to take more people, and the elevator lady just tells you “Usog usog lang po, kasya pa yan."

3. The Ma’am-Sir culture. You know a PGH graduate if he calls everybody Ma’am or Sir. Not a Doctor or Doctora. Not a Kuya or Ate or a Manong or Manang. A janitor is called sir, so as the most hotshot professor emeritus. You meet a nurse on the hallways and greet her with “Good morning Ma’am.” Ma’am or Sir because you forgot their names. Ma’am or Sir because you don’t remember which ward she or he works in. Ma’am or Sir because you respect them anyway. I know I’ll be going out to that world where I’ll be “Doctora Alcover”. But somehow, if I’m in a far flung hospital and somebody screams, “Mam Jean!”, it will be PGH all over again.

4. Recycling as a way of life. My fellowship batch mate Dave once said that. Somehow, conserving our resources is our way of life here. Always, we try to make use of materials most people discard. Order sheets in charts are back pages of old documents. Papers used to wrap cotton balls and sponges are from old documents whose back pages can’t be used for chart order sheets. I remember some of my co-fellows actually asking Cardiology fellows in other hospitals if they have patients with pacemakers who recently died so they can harvest these pacemakers, sterilize them and use them on patients who need them. Alumni from the United States send us medicines, cath lab materials, other equipment from their hospitals there that we could still use. One of my consultants made it his life’s advocacy to ask for pacemakers (both new and harvested) from everywhere and this noble action has already saved hundreds of people.

5. Creativity to make up for the things we lack. Cardboards as facemasks, cardboards as cervical collars, plastic jugs as containers for sharps, cut-up IV bottles as urinals, cut up IV tubings as nasal prongs, wooden planks as cardiac boards. The list can go on and on.

6. Teaching rounds with my consultants. Yeah, they grill you. They check your chart entries meticulously, criticize your grammar, make sure you have adequate documentation. They know when you’re bluffing about your history, they can tell if you’re inventing your lab result values. They pound history and physical exam into your weary head until you learn how to literally smell your patient's diagnosis. Because of them, you know Dr. House is wrong. It's history and PE, kid. History and PE, not labs. History and PE, not MRI or PET scans. History and PE... They get disappointed because you didn’t see your patient die when in fact you’ve been at that patient’s bedside until midnight and you only went home to bathe and get a little shut-eye because you’ve been awake since the previous day. They know stuff you never get from textbooks. They are the country’s biggest names in the field. Most of them are not even paid at all. But they see your charity patients. They trust you with their own private patients. And they teach you. And somehow, you just know that to them you are not their future competition, you are their trophy.

7. Everyday conversations with my consultants. Ahhh, these are even better than the teaching rounds. Haha. This is when they reminisce about their PGH experiences, they tell you about their patients and their families, when they tell you about how they started their medical practice. These are times when they asked if you have a copy of this song or that movie, when they ask you to edit their slides or their speeches. These are times when you dance with them to Lady Gaga’s latest song, when you share shots of tequila or bottles of beer, when you vomit on their tables. These are times when they show you their human side, when you to them are not just a minion or a student but a colleague and a friend.

8. Teaching my students. Undoubtedly, this is among the most fulfilling moments of my PGH career. You “grill” them during endorsement rounds and then few years later they become that really smart and competent IM resident. You check and criticize their clinical histories and few years later you ask their help for a surgical case you’re comanaging. They look at you wide-eyed, nodding their heads to the bits of information you picked up from Medicine Blue Book. They think you’re some smart, hotshot Cardiology fellow, when in fact, you haven’t even taken your morning bath from your duty the night before. Then they give you these nice little thank you notes, or happily text you that they passed or topped the board exams, or post some flattering comments on your Facebook wall. You get so depressed about your life but then you teach them for an hour and you feel like you’ve done something really important for the world. And you did.

9. Professional fees in the form of anything. When you take care of patients who barely have enough to eat, you expect nothing in return, only that they’d get well and go home back to their families. But then they give you all sorts of stuff from their homes – buko pie, pastillas, salted eggs, bags, wallets, rosaries, bracelets, bagnet, chicharon, chichacorn, shirts that are too small or too big for you, lipstick, make-up, etc. etc. When they follow up at your OPD, you know they barely scraped enough funds for the fare, but there they were, greeting you with a huge smile on their faces with Goldilocks mamon or a Jollibee Yumburger for you. Some doctors get thousands as professional fee from patients who can afford it, but you get siopao and a bottle of coke from a patient who skipped his lunch so you can have yours. The feeling is just priceless.

10. The best possible care for people who have nothing. I’ve seen several Mr. X or Ms. Y come to the ER with nothing in their pockets and somehow, PGH people find ways to give them antibiotics or complete their required surgeries. Penniless patients with myocardial infarction who get thrombolysed, and residents will find ways to give their required drugs, and even scrape enough drug samples for a 2 week supply of home medications. I’ve seen street sweepers, jeepney drivers, and ordinary farmers given implantable cardioverter-defibrillators (ICDs) and pacemakers worth hundreds of thousands of pesos. I’ve seen patients with heart tumors removed, valves repaired, coronaries bypassed, etc. even if they could not afford them. I’ve seen one of my consultants go to PCSO to ask for donations for somebody he didn't even know. A number of my own consultants ask their own private patients for donations for PGH patients. I have seen residents and co-fellows give their own money for their patients, seen them ask for funds from their own relatives just to give one more dose of antibiotics, or just to get a surgery done. I’m not saying that this is absolutely right, something is wrong with this set-up of course, something that is more deep-seated in the Philippine social order. However, I am still amazed at how here, “Walang mamamatay sa masipag na bantay.” I believe this is a place where sincerity and real generosity can still happen. Hope still exists.

I know I’ve probably spent half of my years in PGH complaining and whining about everything we lack. Now that my days here are numbered, I begin to see the beauty of this institution that I’m about to leave. I know I will always look back and remember it with fondness. And wherever my path leads me, I hope I will never forget where I came from. I’ve been given much. Soon, it’s payback time.