THERE is every reason why I can no longer be prodded to rant any further after spending days in my own company and thinking back to what came right before all this happened. I have seen the light, so to speak.
The “right before” was mom in dire need of a heart operation and having to wait because there is just one heart institute in Mindanao and every Mindanaoan with a weak heart goes there. She was scheduled to have a 2D echo on February 26, but she was getting worse, her legs were thick and swollen with edema and she’s just in a bad way. That needed a bit of string-pulling to push her up the list, and I pulled ropes instead. Her 2D echo through these two ropes I pulled was moved to the earliest vacant slot – February 11 at 1 p.m. I was told of the availability at 10 a.m. of the same day. It’s either that or wait for another slot to become available at some unknown date. We grabbed it.
Results and readings for 2D Echo take 2 weeks. So, had mom stuck to her original schedule, then her result would have been on hand after March 11 and the operation and confinement would have happened sometime after that. We got the 2D echo result on February 28, three days after the original schedule of release because of some hitches that needed a little string-pulling again. One other string-pulling had to be done because there are around 30 on the waiting list for confinement. I got a call to check Mom in by 5 p.m. on March 6. Again, I was informed just hours before. Like the 2D echo schedule, we either get that slot or wait again for the next available because we were just relying on people canceling their schedules.
All throughout, it was a lesson that persistence pays, and I thank God I can be persistent if not a pest to Doctor Bong Vega of the Southern Philippines Medical Center who in turn helped me pester Doctor Mark Maruya of the Heart Institute. My lifelong gratitude to both of you, dokies.
Suffice it to say that Mom got her needed operation minus the heart valve replacement because her condition is no longer ideal for such and was discharged on March 14, 2020. My doctor-cousin Enat Evangelista, who volunteered to fly over and help us navigate the unfamiliar medical world, was able to fly back home to Quezon City on the same day as a chance passenger. Mom was settled back at home, looking and feeling better except that now she has a cache of medicines.
Two days later, the world shuts down.
Imagine if we weren’t able to move things up by just 15 days, then mom would’ve still been in the hospital when the Covid patients were starting to move in, and a hospital dealing with a pandemic is not the best place for a sick old mommy to be in.
There’s a soul who is forever grateful here for the angels both physicalized and invisible and the Supreme Being, the power that guides and protects us all. That soul is me.
Now, I will just have to navigate the plan He has for us wherever this may lead me.