"One fine day"

Date: 10 Sep, 2001


I joined this medical organization whose main reason for existence is to go to underprivileged places and render free medical services. Being a second year medical student, i barely know anything about those kind of stuff. I mean, this is as real as it was going to get. I was going to have real patients, with real needs and real sickness. No more pretending! This was friggin' real.

The place we went to was like a nursing home except that at this home, they were abandoned by their children. Forgotten and forsaken. To their relatives, they were as good as dead. No one visits them, no one greets them happy birthdays, no one greets them merry christmas. No one. How sad to end up in that place. We saw some old women (probably in their 80s) just wanting to talk to us. THere was this woman who was bedridden and only wished that we sing to her. Someone sang a beautiful tagalog christmas song that made the old woman's eye sparkle and made mine brim with tears. Another old woman there kept telling me that she will give me the money she won in a singing contest decades ago. She claimed to be the owner of the manila jockey and yacht club... Still, i had a chance to talk to an old man who asked me to write some dedication for him in his notebook. THe dedications in the notebook keep him company, he says...
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In between history taking, and vital sign taking, i observed the volunteers in that nursing home. They really cared for their patients! They are made of a different kind of stuff. They could have gotten another job, but they chose to be in that institution. I know they are not well-compensated money wise, but i believe that they hear a different music... dance to a different beat... heed to a different calling...

I don't know if i am brave enough to answer such a call, i hope to be that brave one day. But for now, i could only applaud them. They are the stuff heroes are made of.

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When we bade them goodbye, i saw "the look" that patch adams referred to in his movie. You know the look that says thank you, the look that speaks so much of gratitude, the kind of look that wipes away all the tiredness, the look that inspires you to go on, the look that tells you it has been one fine day.
Life is really worth living. :)