Ang Pagmamalupit ni Jimboy: Vol 1 Series 1

Community Immersion: Ilocus Sur and Mt Province

I had joined a few community immersions back in medical school, most of them with the Community Medical Foundation and the Pangkalusugang Samahan ng mga Mag-aaral of UP Medicine. Community medicine is always close to my heart and during summers I find a way of engaging myself to a community work.

In 2004 I joined a group of medical students who immersed in Mankayan, Ilocos Sur, a town in the Cordilleras. The travel time from Baguio was almost 5 hours on rough road. Together with a fellow student and an American doctor we were fostered by a farming family. Our home was typically a barong-barong made of roofing materials and bamboo slats. There was no electricity and bedtime was as early as 7pm.

In the community, everything was laidback. I was forced to learn Ilocano because the only one who spoke Tagalog was our 7 year old foster kid. Coffee in the community was bottomless. Rice or Bagas was not a problem and always served on the dining table. Our bathing place was a 15 minute hike from the hill top residence and as soon you were finished and refreshed, you would be going back to home drenched in sun sweat. Fish was a luxury and pork was extraterrestial. My past time was to write and sketch at the improvised veranda at the cliffside overlooking the cool valley.

Part of our immersion with CHESTCORE was to serve as medics for the Cordillera day which was held at Mt Province. We stayed there for 2 nights and encountered different NGOs. That day marked the celebration of the death anniversary of Macliing Dulag, a tribe leader in Kalinga who opposed the upbuilding of Chico Dam. He was shot dead by soldiers of the Marcos regime. Ama Dulag is considered a martyr of the Igorots.

(Photos taken using Kodak 100 max B&W film)

Young farmers

Waiting

The Ilocano family

Valley overview

At the improvised veranda, cliffside

with Cordillera day delagates

Trying the Pagpagan (way of separating the palay from the stalk)

Hanging bridge in Mt Province

Gapas

Ifugao Lola

Travel Photos: Cebu & Bohol

Brought my family to Cebu and Bohol during my leave from the hospital. Better complete visiting the provinces of the Philippines before going abroad

basilica

devotion

basilica sto. nino

makulay na hanap-buhay

magellan's cross

pamaypay

flower vendor

dangit bai

panglao shore

sunrise panglao

sunrise

Baclayon church

color shades

Chocolate hills

butterfly

Loboc cruise

Banca in Loboc

Loboc children

Tarsier

Katig panglao beach

Father and son 

skin board

Pulangbato diaries: The Adventure Continues

It was our second week in Pulangbato. Before we went there, I already planned our meal for the whole week. When we arrived in San Juan we went to the public market to buy the ingredients for our planned meals. The list included pinakbet, sinigang, adobo, etc. Our shopping bags also included native dried fish which we planned to served our table for breakfast.

Chat with the policemen at the market

Back to Pulangbato which we aliased Redrock (which accentuated the adventures we had in the barangay), we played basketball with the young men of the community. That was really tiring but fulfilling for my part for it was my first time to play real ball outside my home. Our team of three who donated the new ball to the community lost to the team of the young men from the community. Sweating out fat was a reward. Talking to them and to Kuya Pauli, our foster brother, sports was not really a priority in the community and not even a complete court was constructed by ‘husto sa salitang’ politicians. After playing basketball, our feet got really powdered with sand dust and one had to estimate the ring to nail the big shot. We went home to prepare dinner and ate heartily.

RJ & Don playing with the men of the community

The following day, our team joined Ate Shiela, our midwife, in the clinic in Brgy. Quipot. We assisted her in the immunization of the babies. We also attended to some of OPD cases, both pediatric and geriatric. One patient asked us why there were no interns assigned in the barangay and ate Shiela explained that the barangay captain’s thrust was not for a Community Based Health Program. Of the 42 barangays of San Juan, lucky were the 12 barangays assigned with medical interns. There were still a lot of barangays who probably need the guidance of medical professionals. Hopefully before the end of the 5 year projection of the CBHP almost all of the barangays would be having community doctors and not merely relying to clinics in nearby communities and bigger health facilities.

Administering vaccines

Third day was our barangay’s clinic day. We arrived at the health center with a lot of mothers and children waiting for the Expanded Program of Immunization and consultation. Ate Shiela and the 12 barangay health workers were there. We had 10 consults during our clinic hours. Inside a small room, each one of us interns grabbed a place to attend to our patients. Most of our consults were Upper Respiratory Tract Infection – similar to medical mission consults which I have had handled in my organization. I even prescribed one patient with a mucolytic to Viral URTI for the purpose of satisfying the parent and not living an impression that her doctor did not prescribe her medications and just advised increased oral fluid intake. We could see that still a lot of people were not knowledgeable of some diseases and someone need to explain to them that not all diseases need drugs for treatment. So our goal is to educate the people – starting from the Barangay Health Workers who will be our partners in health education.

During Thursday night, we were convincing Jev, our foster kid to undergo circumcision. As we woke up Friday morning, eating our sumptuous meal of tinapa and corned beef, Jev had already taken a bath and got ready for his big day. We brought him to the Rural Health Unit in town were RJ and I voluntarily performed the minor surgery. Kuya Pauli, nanay Pinay and Jev’s cousins were really happy and even teasing him. Kuya Pauli was glad that there were Kuya’s to accompany Jev whose father died when he was still very young.

Tuli mission

Late in the afternoon, after our siesta, we saw nanay repeatedly vomiting outside our home. We checked her BP – spiking to 200 systolic. Nanay was feeling weak already. We suspected food poisoning because she’s the only one who ate the ginataang tulingan which was not refrigerated for 2 days. We first gave nanay a trial of captopril and rehydrate her but she again vomited so we decided to bring her to the district hospital. It was my first time to enter that hospital. In the emergency room, a nurse attended to nanay, got her vital signs and called the doctor in his callroom. Nanay was lined with plain NSS (which in my opinion is inappropriate to a vomiting hypertensive patient – well I cannot contest the order of the attending physician for I was not working in that hospital). Nanay was admitted in the ward and as the nurse was instructing Ate Lagrimas, it seemed like that nanay was being treated only as a hypertensive patient and the suspected food poisoning was neglected. The nurse did not even instructed Ate Lagrimas that the nifedipine was supposed to be punctured and put sublingually. That moment was really depressing and nothing I could do to change what was happening.

Travel Photos: Occidental Mindoro

I spent summers in Mindoro as a kid but when I entered this zombie life of Medicine I rarely visit the place.   Practicing as a doctor and living here are always my options.

Bangkera

Bingwit

Bangkero

Hanap barya

Pier

Bonito Island

Bay View

bakaw

Tayamaan beach at sunset

Mamburao church

Island hopping with my sister

Mangyan with pipa

Abra de Ilog

Kids at the mouth of the river exiting the sea

Tayamaan bay

corn harvest