Rainbows

After the rain, there is a rainbow. Marikina was hardly hit by typhoon “Ondoy”. I was not spared. Chest-deep flood entered our home, including my clinic and car. All my medical records, prescription pads, stethoscope, BP apparatus and other equipment were submerged in muddy flood water. Most of it I have to discard but I cleaned my stethoscope and BP apparatus. These are the basic tools I needed to re-start my practice.

I felt like a newly licensed doctor. I have to start from scratch. I bought stuffs to furnish my clinic. Make new records for every patient I treat day by day. The only difference is that I already have my patient base.

I did my first rounds 2 days after the flood. I have to take a jeep and walked a kilometer because traffic was not moving. The road was slippery because of mud, and dirty because of files of thrown-away things destroyed by the flood. I was commuting and walking for 3 days more until my sister lent her car.

After every disaster, sickness follows. Cases of diarrhea increased because of contaminated water supply. Leptospirosis, a rat urine-borne bacteria, lingered in the flood and mud. Many consulted at my clinc. Hospital admissions rose, making all hospitals in Marikina full. Never in my practice that I had 11 admissions in a day. Some were simply diarrhea, some confirmed case of Leptospirosis, and requiring dialysis. Until now, I have more than 5 confined patients in a day.

After the rain, there is a rainbow. They say that at the end of the rainbow there is a pot of gold. I need patients to earn a living.

After the flood that flushed away most of the things that make my life comfortable, I learned one thing. “We must live simply so that others may simply live.”