It did come like a blight.  Unwelcome. Like getting wet  in the   middle of  a  rainless  storm.  Unexpected.   Like   being shipwrecked  in the middle of an ocean journey.  Unwanted.  Like catching cold in the middle of a hot summer day.

When something worse happens in one's life, the very  first thing  to do is to accept it.  The next thing is to do something to ease the burden. 

Friday, July 25, 1997.  That fateful day in my 48th year of terrestrial tenure, I began experiencing a slur in my speech with manifest difficulty in pronouncing some letters particularly the letter "p". Racing against time, I initially sought medical attention from a couple of friend-doctors at the Eastern Bicol Medical Center. 

My hypertension was timely arrested. I do subscribe to the universal dictum that "The first law of life is self- preservation".  In my desire to preserve myself further, I decided to take the PAL flight to Manila that afternoon.  At about 7:00 p.m., I was already at the ER of Makati Medical Center.  Room 606-E had become my "purgatory" for eight (8) long solid days of confinement.   Within that cubicle, I had  experienced relative passion, death, and resurrection. A marathon diagnosis. Hypodermic syringes punctuating my shoulders, arms and buttocks. Grams after grams of oral medicines and intravenous solutions. Electrocardiograph. Encephalograph. Myograph.  Sleepless days and  nights.  Denervated facial muscles (my right eye could not close or blink, the smile is lost in my cheek). The tingling numbness on both  feet.  The soul-breaking group prayer oozing from my adjacent room  piercing the hospital silence followed by an audibly suppressed  wailing from the wife of the patient. And most aggravating, my suffered sanity. 

When I asked my lady physician on whether my  speech   be restored  and my smile be brought back, she did not answer me in the superlative.  She smiled and gave me a laconic "hopefully".  I religiously kept chasing and nursing that hope via prayers for every passing day.  

All the while I was entertaining a myriad of thoughts on the possible cause or causes of this clinical case.  Is it the inhaled insecticide which I sprayed on the vegetable plants in my garden yard?  Is it the ultraviolet rays from the orange-colored monitor I have been using daily for the last five years?  It is the oldest CRT monitor we have at the office attached to the equally old CPU dinosaur. Is it the saucerful of roe or fish eggs which I gluttonly consumed as "pulutan" in one of the drinking sprees I had with friends?  Cyanide fishing is not  a remote possibility in my island province. 

My heart and blood pressure were monitored to be normal.  Not even heredity could be the culprit.  None on my elder families.

The verdict: my clinical case was one of food poisoning.

When a life-threatening accident like this happened, a  sort of  baptismal or spiritual renaissance did occur in me. Moral and  corporeal  transgressions  are recognized, sought forgiveness  and entered into a covenant with Him to commit them no more. Purgation! The paralyzed bond between this mortal being and the Immortal One is kindled back to life.   

 It is the will of the mind that resurrected me and the equivalent faith  that I am in His hands as I am in the clinical hands of my physicians. 

The  lost  paradise is now paradise regained!  The lost smile is now given back.  "Dios mabalos" to my lady physicians, my physical therapists and the entire staff  who  gave attendance to Rm.606-E Makati Medical Center.

 August, 1997  

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