I HAVE always considered myself to be relatively quite healthy. This, not withstanding my known propensity to imbibe too many last rounds every now and then.

I may not be as svelte as my editor Mike Limpag or as lean and mean as my athletic fellow columnist John Pages, but I’m far from being portly or blocky.

After all, when my schedule permits, I play basketball, badminton, box and lift weights. I’m 35 years old, a practicing attorney and the world is mine to conquer. I felt a veneer of invincibility covered me.

Unfortunately, I was unaware that this malapropos assessment of my physical well-being was due for a rude and bloody awakening.

LAST WEEKEND. I had been nursing a bad cold some days prior. When I went to the bathroom to cough, I suddenly realized that a dollop of blood was pouring down from my nostrils.

Instinctively I covered my nose and tilted my head backwards. Almost immediately I felt the blood rushing down my throat and I went into a coughing spasm.

I told the wifey I was bleeding and she rushed to get me a towel. In no time, the towel’s color turned dark due to the amount of blood gushing out. It felt like a geyser on steroids had commandeered my respiratory system.

Luckily, I live just five minutes away from a hospital. At the emergency room, it took more than an hour before the bleeding was controlled but not after I was injected with a blood-clotting medicine. I lost so much blood, Arturo Gatti would have been proud.

My blood pressure was determined to be 170/110. I spent the night at the hospital and thought that was the end of it.

Boy, was I wrong. The next day,a Sunday, I was in bed leisurely watching TV when the dam broke again with the same intensity as before. This, despite that fact that I had already taken some pills to lower my blood pressure for two days.

I was alone in the house at that time and so I tried my damn best to control the bleeding by putting ice on my forehead and applying pressure on my nostrils. No dice.

I had to call the judge to come and bring me to the hospital. At the emergency room it took another hour before the bleeding stopped. My blood pressure was 170/100.

Damn. Where was a good cutman when you needed one?

PRAYERS. Was that the end of it? Far from it. Just 20 minutes after I left the ER, I was bleeding again in my room. Too tired and too dejected about going back to the hospital, I just sat there and exerted pressure on my nostrils.

My misplaced masculine stoicism rationalized that if they couldn’t stop the damn thing from pouring , then I might as well take it and bleed till I fainted.

But I prayed. Hard. I recalled the voice of the doctor at the emergency room who opined that I was lucky my hypertension manifested itself in a busted vein or vessel in my nostrils.

And not inside my brain. Or else…

And so I prayed even harder and thanked Him for at least deigning me lucky enough to deserve a warning. After a few minutes, it stopped and I drifted into slumber.

That night I dreamt that I was fighting Ricky Hatton who was weirdly dressed in scrubs. He gave me a bloody nose with a wicked right cross.

But when I went back to my corner, legendary cutman Chuck Bodack was nowhere to be found. Then I vaguely remember forgetting to give him cab fare…

The next day my physician, the prolific Dr. Walter Acuzar, confirmed that I indeed am a lucky bloke and immediately rattled off a list of things that I must not do. Foods to avoid..etc.. (to be concluded.)

LAST ROUND. It’s on Marie Blanche Regual-Braun who recently celebrated her birthday. Cheers!

(jingo_quijano@yahoo.com)

For Bisaya stories from Cebu. Click here.

(January 11, 2009 issue)
Write letter to the editor.Click here.