The World through the Eyes of my Patient An Entry in Response to Vitales Signa’s Essay Writing Challenge

Osmeña’s Eyes

I don’t know what the hell it is that is in my patient’s eye that makes me want to freak out. I don’t know what the hell it is in my own eye that makes me want to freak out even more. But then, it occurs to me, perhaps it really has nothing to do with both our eyes staring at each other with differing opinions but is connected by a fifty-peso bill grasped by her hand as she insisted on pushing it for me to accept. At a glimpse to the piece of paper I was pushing back to her, I am suddenly dragged to the thought of what the hell it is that is in Osmeña’s eyes that makes me want to freak out even more than more.

Suddenly there is an uprising in my head: a constant battle of good and evil, a continuation of the endless quest in search for the truth. Should I let my service or practice be purchased by my patient for a fifty-peso bill? I mean, is my dignity equal only to this red paper with Sergio Osmeña’s face on it that can be traded for less than a dollar?

Early that morning, even before the sun tripped its way out of the east coast, right after I rose to face one of the most challenging days of my life as I finally get the chance to work in an MS ward. I made an oath that that day will be a day I will never forget in the whole of my RLE life. We started the day off with the endorsement until I finally meet my patient for that shift. Just when I was about to breathe the first word to introduce myself, she smiled at me and said something I cannot recognize. When she opened her mouth again to say another word that is when I realize that she is actually speaking in Chinese. I started to freak out just slightly because the only words I know, or I think I know, in Chinese are siopao and siomai and I’m not really very sure about that.

Of course, I never let my patients know just how unsure I can be in front of them. It’s a look patient get in their eyes that makes me want to freak out even at the beginning. I rendered the morning care, changed her linens and was definitely in endless thought of how in the world will I ask her just how many times she peed and pooped by the end of my shift.

After I decided that I will just get on with it by demonstrating the questions to her, she asked me a favor to gently massage her neck. So, I did as I was told. I let my hand communicate with her pained neck and after a while, just when I was beginning to be proud of myself, she dismissed me and handed me a fifty peso-bill. I don’t know at that time whether to run off away from it or run off with it.

The hardest part is that, after the battle has been fought and the truth has been told, I ran off with it. I took the bill and up until now I cannot remember what I did with it or how I spent it. I don’t know what went on in that lonely room that she convinced me to have it. It was like, for once, I lived with the fact that the reason I chose this profession is to really gain all the monetary advances I can get. That event became the manifestation of what life I really have in my mind or at least I think I have in my mind. That event constantly reminded me of the first insult I get. Not from my patient but from myself.

At that time, there is something that is in my patient’s eye that freaked me out. Maybe it is the look that she knows that not all of us, nursing students, are really there to care but to be spared of all the poverty we wanted so much to get away from. The look I have in my own eye that is adding up to the freaking is another thing. I am as guilty as I can be. I looked at Sergio Osmeña’s eyes and it really is tempting and insulting and testing.

I failed the first test. I took the temptation. I swallowed the insult.

I learned something from the experience. That is, the caring and the people are far more valuable than that stare I got from the money.

I am, and my profession should be, worth more than that.

Vitales Signa: December 2006 issue. MLMRAYMUNDO