By Nora Soriño
ILIGAN City--This is a recent post in FB from some “Facebooker”: “Maam, if you won’t hear from me again you can guess already what happened.”
That was revealed by an online tutor in English here from a student from Wuhan, China, the “epicenter” of all that 2019 novel coronavirus 2019 scare.
Here’s my own personal “virus” story: Several decades ago, my younger brother, Romie, who had just returned from Saudi where he worked as a manager of one of the banks there, came home to our hometown, Libagon, Southern Leyte.
I happen to be there too, paying a visit to my aging pa and ma, together with Bert, my husband, and a kid.
Romie was sick, I saw, very very sick. He was with another sibling of ours, Mollie, and Gondoy, a friend who lived nearby, and Edgar, a “tambalan.” For despite his being a scholar then at UP Diliman, he believed in them “tambalans” more than doctors. “Tambalans” are herbalists who did not go through medical school but have “powers” which they claim are gifts from God.
Romie said he was going to be OK as there was Edgar whom he trusted. He then introduced Edgar to us.
Romie then decided to travel to Cebu City, his present residence.
What, I thought. Traveling at such a sick condition. He was not really himself. He could barely walk and his hands and limbs did not look alright as they seemed to curve in some direction. Also, he had a fever.
I then decided that I would accompany him in the journey together with my party, minus my son whom we left in my hometown in Libagon.
In Sogod, a neighbor town we boarded a ship that would take us to Cebu City via Maasin.
But when the ship docked at Maasin, I saw that Romie got even worse. So, against his protestations, we took him to a hospital in Maasin.
The doctor there, upon seeing the patient shook his head and gave us some tongue lashings. Like why did we bring a patient who was already “that serious.” And his talks were interspaced with “tsk tsk tsk” and shaking of the head. At that time I thought doctors should be taught in Med school not to “tsk tsk tsk” or shake the head. It was very devastating.
We implored him to “just do something.” And do something, he did. He ordered some oxygen for the patient, where there was none. Luckily we were able to plead with a neighboring patient who had an extra oxygen tank.
So, apart from some IV or intravenous fluids, Romie got his oxygen. His condition seemed to worsen by the minute. I then requested Gondoy to go back to Libagon, summon my ma and bring some more cash along with a priest to do well, “the last rites.”
This was after the doctor after his standard “tsk tsk tsk” and head shaking told us in no uncertain terms that it was better to take our patient in some other hospital, in Tacloban City or Cebu City. Maybe, they still could do something there.
After one night and several hours the day after, and with my ma materializing on the early afternoon together with a priest who had administered the “rites” we decided to take off for Cebu City.
At this point, I got hold of myself by alternately praying hard, and then drinking many bottles of beer. At least, I thought, my drunken state would somehow numb the pain of losing a brother who at 32 and single still, had many things going for him.
By early evening of the next day, we traveled through the mountains, to reach Bato, Leyte, where there was a ship there bound for Cebu City.
Romie was in oxygen still and it was really very hard for us. This was really against all odds. We also hired two lady doctors who had went with us to Bato and then to the ship that took us to Cebu City. At this point, we saw that Romie somehow managed to look less very serious if we talk to him. And he kept replying but all in English. Bert and me and the doctors with us nearly got some “nosebleed” with all that pa-Englis- englis. It somehow worked.
We got some thumbs-up sign when the ship docked at Cebu City with my brod still alive.
At the Cebu Doctors, the diagnosis was typhoid fever.
To make a long story short, Romie recovered.
But then Al, another sibling in Cebu City, a younger brod came up very sick again. And when Romie was preparing to be checking out of the hospital, we had to check him in there.
When I got home to Iligan, I came down with a fever too and suspected that I had typhoid myself. But after three days of rest, I got better. But when I got back to the government office where I worked, they said I looked like a “ghost.”
They were right, of course. With eyes that had sunk even deeper and cheekbones that threatened to go as high as my brows, I indeed looked like a ghost. But a happier ghost, I supposed. Who would not be with all that stress...
And then a few days after, my ma herself got sick herself. So I got back to Cebu City to attend to her who was also hospitalized.
A few days after, I heard that another sibling, a sister in Libagon came up with the same symptoms: much blood in the bowels, high fever, etc.
Aware now of the crisis of the immediate past, she had herself confined at a hospital in Sogod.
By the way, Edgar, the “tambalan” who also went with us to Cebu, suddenly seeing his irrelevance there, got our permission to just go home to Southern Leyte. So he did, all expenses paid.
When everything got to normal once again, I heard Romie say that it was “barang” or curse from someone he had crossed. Which “barang” morphed into “typhoid fever.”
Now, how can you beat that kind of thinking?
Looking at it now and with all this novel coronavirus scare, it occurred to me that my brother could have gotten that one from Saudi. And he had infected also many members of the family.
And I think, there in Saudi, because of the conditions, a part of his mind had “retrogressed” instead of progressing. Like that film of the “Planet of the Apes’ where the apes advanced in their thinking lording it over in this earth of ours because man has “retrogressed.”
I think we better stop here as I suspect I am not making sense anymore...
