By Virginia Jasmin Pasalo

 

DOCTORS are not always right. I have witnessed people go through life’s end and recover. Yesterday was one of those days.

I was supposed to meet my sister to buy a charger for her laptop at SM Cyberzone and to have the data from the HP desktop transferred to the MacBook Air laptop. What I didn’t expect was that she was with my brother-in-law, who was diagnosed with stage V Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD). When I saw him last, he was very weak, emaciated and frankly, even I was not very optimistic about the recovery process it would take to cure him. He was walking normally, put on some flesh, and cheerful.

There is no indication of the arteriovenous fistula (AV fistula) in his arm which was required to undergo dialysis to create an access point for the machine. A dialysis treatment is done by inserting two needles into the AV fistula. “One needle removes the blood and sends it to the machine, where it is filtered.  The second needle allows the blood to be safely returned to the body. Each dialysis treatment takes three to four hours, and generally patients need three treatments a week.”  This is his weekly routine.

According to him, dialysis is not painful but could be uncomfortable. Some experience dizziness, muscle cramp or a feeling of getting sick, caused by the rapid changes in blood fluid levels that happen during the treatment. His body tolerated the process, given the full support we give him. Also, he is in his 50s, young enough to withstand the procedure I consider invasive.

The body has a self-healing mechanism. Decades ago, a well-known doctor at Makati Medical Center told me to undergo an operation to remove two lumps under my left breast and one under the other breast. My friends, some of them doctors, advised the same. “My God,” I told myself, “it would be a disaster to mutilate such beautiful creation!” I told the doctor, “Give me time to mull over the “excavation” as you explained, I will come back in three months”, and speedily left his clinic, knocking off one of his furniture, along the way.

For three months, I read on alternative processes to heal myself and drastically changed my food intake and lifestyle. The resistance towards an operation probably stems from the fact that my mother’s father, Laki Ilot, was an herbalist and a natural-healing advocate, and his influence had taken root in my veins. I woke up early to listen to the silence, as well as the sounds of the dark before dawn. I waited to catch the first rays of the sun, aligning my right hand in its direction, visualizing its rays melting the three lumps, daily for three months. I talked to the birds. I talked to my deceased grandfather.

Three months after, I was back for the tests. I particularly disliked the mammography process where they pressed my breasts until they were almost flat. The results were mounted before my eyes. I was ready for the “conviction” of my breasts to death row.

“Unbelievable, the doctor said, “the lumps are missing.” 

In disbelief, I almost kissed his gaping mouth. Instead, I bowed my head in prayer and thanked God, the sun, my grandfather, the birds, the silence, the dark, my interior self, in no particular order. After all, they are one and the same immanence, a presence too magnificent to be defined by our limited minds.

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