The 3 Month Rule

This post has two parts. The first is where I get to explain about the Three Month Rule:

(I never imagined that it will be on the internet, but lo and behold, like a lot of things you-have-thought-of and have-not-thought-of, it was!)

The Three Month Rule , also known as the 90 day rule, is about the length of time a person can reasonably say that he/she is in love with someone (during dating), or has gotten over someone (after a break up).

G and I have been discussing about the 3 month rule (as it pertains to break ups) as we were contemplating our own mortality. My father died just last year. And it brought home to me the importance of having a Last Will or a Living Will or Advanced Directives. I told G that I wouldn’t want to leave this world without having my affairs in order. And part of that is my preferences as to whether he will be allowed to have another partner when I move on to another plane. Needless to say, my significant other just looked at me incredulously, and said “How can you have a preference about that when you are dead?”

Good point, darling, good point.

In any case, if there are such things as ghosts and consciousness after death (highly unlikely), my dead self would not object to G having a second (or even a third or fourth) lover after me. My only request is that he honor the Three Month Rule of Breakups (death being the Ultimate Breakup, as Carrie Bradshaw-Preston had said in And Just Like That).

The Three Month Rule states you are supposed to wait 3 months multiplied by the number of years you were together before you can move on to a new relatioship. So suppose, you were together for 15 years; then 15 multiplied by 3 is 45 months. So 45 months will be the length of time one needs to wait before entering into a new relationship without the stink of the word “rebound” spoiling the whole thing.

Pretty neat huh? (I just heard G roll his eyes)

Image from https://www.bonobology.com/signs-rebound-relationship/

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The second part of this post is, yey, I have another story about Alice and Jonas!

Working Title: Like a Virus

(Alice’s POV. About Jonas, the time before.)

I was never a sickly kid. My earliest memories include 1. Catching dragonflies on the grasslands between rice paddies, 2. Climbing aratiles trees and staying there like a monkey while eating the tiny round seedly fruits until Auntie Juliette had begun to worry that I was kidnapped or worse, 3. Falling down our old wooden stairs spraining my arm, then howling at Baket Ikka as she applied coconut oil over the sprain.

I never contracted most of the usual viral infections growing up. I rarely had cough or colds, never had the flu, and the only time I had fever was when I caught chicken pox from my friend Aileen. I was febrile for a full 24 hrs; the next day I was up the aratiles tree again, a monkey with vesicles on her face.

So Jonas was a sickly kid, he is telling me now. When he was five years old, he developed a bad case of pneumonia, and he had to stay in the hospital for over a month. His mom, frantic with worry about Jonas, collected all sorts of saints and Catholic angels so that she could pray for the health and survival of her dearest only boy. His dad finally found him a very competent and distinguished pulmonologist who did a lot more to help in Jonas’s illness than any saint ever could.

“How could you stand being in bed for a month connected to all sorts of tubes and gadgets, I have no idea,” I tell him now as he hovers over my bed.

“I did not actually have a choice about it,” he tells me in that mild deadpan voice he always uses when I am in an irritable mood. “I was mostly sedated that time.”

“I hate being bedridden,” I grumbled. Admittedly, being sick makes me regress back to being a five-year-old.

“You are not exactly chained to your bed Alice,” he points out. “You can sit up, or walk to the bathroom if you want to. If you can.”

If I can. That second sentence really triggers me. Because the truth is … I can’t.

Jonas reaches out for my left hand, the one with the intravenous cannula, the one that was pricked like an emery bag yesterday because the nurse could not find an adequate vein. I could feel my eyes filling. Oh shit, self pity is such an unbecoming emotion!

“You do know that this is only temporary,” he said. “You will not exactly be sick forever,” his voice was as gentle as his hand.

“I know that. But I still hate it!”

They are still running tests to come up with a diagnosis. But the working impression is that I have a community acquired pneumonia. As such, I was pumped with a cocktail of antibiotics and round-the-clock paracetamol to bring the fever down. This morning my temperature is fine, but my disposition must be harrowing to my companion.

“I don’t know why you put up with me,” I tell him. “You actually flew all the way from Michigan.”

“My girlfriend is sick, what was I supposed to do?”

I stare at him, aghast. I did not know I was still his girlfriend. I thought that the break up that happened in Manila was still in effect.

“Don’t look at me like that,” he says irritably. “Didn’t you think I won’t come here to take care of you?”

“Well,” I say helplessly, breathlessly. “You are not obligated to do that.”

“For fucking Christ’s sake, Alice, you are not an obligation. You are not a duty. You are not a hobby or a past time that I go to when I am bored. You are not work, you are not a plaything. You do not exactly bring me peace most of the time. And now with you being sick… it is worrying me half to death!”

His eyes are blazing and he looks like he might strangle me. I wanted to smile … Oh god, thank you, he still loves me!

“So what am to you then?” I ask.

“You are a virus that I have never been never able to get rid of this past 6 years.” It was a grumble, a confession, an endearment. I squeeze his hand and I close my eyes, suddenly sleepy. “Thank you. That is the sweetest thing I have heard all day.”

Band Aid

In my mind, I have a love-hate relationship with the Philippine healthcare system.

I love it the way a daughter has no choice but to love its parent; but I hate it for the way it pushes me away with one hand while declaring how much it values and appreciates me with the other.

I am a doctor who graduated from a public university, and hence was practically a scholar of Filipino taxpayers. After graduation I worked for 12 years in the Philippines, most of that time spent in public healthcare institutions.

The Philippine healthcare system.
Image from https://media.istockphoto.com/id/1409224804/vector/boy-in-bandage-having-a-head-injury-vector-cartoon-illustration.jpg?s=612×612&w=0&k=20&c=ed9M1U89_kcPbq_wwJE1DPQON_wMMWrsmQqcqUqz33o=

Now that I can look back objectively at my country (with the lens of years and experiences of being an OFW), I realize that medical workers where I came from, are nothing more than shit. That statement comes with a caveat: they are nothing more than shit unless they are adjacent to people in power, or they are extremely lucky.

Those who are power-adjacent probably constitute 20% of healthcare workers, and the lucky ones are 20%. Of the unlucky ones 30% choose to stay (kudos to them, they are the real heroes), and 30% choose to leave for abroad. You can guess to which group I belong to.

Most of the solutions that our leaders come up with are mere band aids to an ailing health care system. Take the policy of capping the number of deployed nurses during the pandemic. That just resulted in nurses devising creative ways to go around the policy. A nurse may go to Singapore as a tourist, then from Singapore, she can hop on a plane to go to that middle east hospital which has employed her with a salary offer 5 times that which she can expect from the Philippines.

Or take me for example. Before I became an OFW, I have worked my ass off for 4 years as a contractual worker in a public health facility. A contractual worker is like a mistress — she is expected to do stuff that a wife can do but without the security and benefits of a marriage certificate. I should have felt insulted enough to leave in my 2nd or 3rd year (there certainly were offers from abroad), but heck, I had the notion that my greatest purpose was to “serve my country”. So I stayed. Until I got sufficiently hungry (like literally) and irritated at the bureaucratic ineptitude of the local government I was working for, so I decided to leave.

I left 7 years ago. That time, I planned to stay abroad for 2 years. To save enough money, then I would go back. But still, here I am, a slave to a relatively easy life in exchange for a stagnant career in a foreign land.

I don’t know where this rant is coming from. Maybe it is because I just saw the new Philippine Secretary of Health give this interview on TV. Sadly, I come face to face with the fact that all he can offer me, like all his predecessors, is band aid.

Poem 30 May 2023. Las Pinas.

It is you, it is you

How can it not be you

The imaginary “soulmate” I have written to

A score, or so, years ago.

I have falsely believed

That making love with our hands

Was not love

But it was, it was!

And I thought I was young

Untrained and naive and tentative

To know what love was

But I knew, I knew!

Through the lens of years

White-jockey shirted you unsuspecting

How busy your spouse at maneuvering

Words. For it it is all that I have.

Now. While you dream of sleep

and I dream of us.

(to G, as always)

Everyday Fictions

A graveyard for heroes

I have come to the conclusion that in my country anyone who wants to be brave and fair and act with integrity inevitably dies.

They die in their youth under a Martial Law dictator. They die in Luneta in front of a firing squad arranged by colonial Spain. They die from the betrayal of their own comrades (and yes, I am talking of Andres Bonifacio and Antonio Luna here). Sometimes they die of natural causes like Noynoy Aquino.

My people have an infatuation with autocrats and dictators. They believe that the policies of monsters like Rodrigo Duterte can save our country (quite the opposite); and that the promises of a liar like Bongbong Marcos can be trusted.

My people have become cynical; and have been comfortable in demonizing leaders like Leila de Lima on the flimsiest of reasons. We have labelled community health workers like Naty Castro communist; and hence need to be incarcerated (both untrue). We kill idealistic youth like Chad Booc because he dared to do what we cannot even dream of doing: work and fight with those who are weak and oppressed among us.

Filipinos are more prone to believing in lies than truth. That is a fact.

The images that come to my screen from a certain eastern European country are certainly heartbreaking. The last few months, they have been fighting a war that no one wants to label as such. Refugees of mostly women and children have spilled out though their western borders, while the men of fighting age all had to stay back. The world looks on and does little; this is a movie that hardly affects us in the short-term after all. We watch with admiration (even a little bit of puppy crush ) at their young idealistic president who chose to stay on to fight and die with his people. His statement that he needed “ammunitions and not a ride” when he was offered escape and asylum in another country will probably be quoted by action movies in years to come. The fact that he started as an improbable leader, but then showed character and courage when it mattered most, is just another reason why the world is now rallying and rooting for his countrymen and women.

I am envious. I wonder if I will ever have half the bravery that he and his people have shown. I was not even brave enough to stay on in my home. What I admire about Dr. Naty Castro was that she was able to do what I could not. And now look what they did to her for it. Look what they did to Chad Booc — so young, so optimistic of his nation, so dead.

If there ever was a country that eats up the best of its children then mine it is. I wonder which is worse: is it when the best of us gets corrupted or when the best of us dies?

Bearing Witness, Playing God

Just after I finished residency training, I considered applying to Doctors Without Borders. I was a newly minted specialist; a rabid women’s advocate (in my heart at least, even if it was not publicly expressed), who believed that my calling in life should be about serving others, specifically the downtrodden and oppressed.

The Che Guevarra-ness of it all!

I downloaded the MSF application form, which was around 5 pages long (and included an essay); filled it up; made a rough draft of why I wanted to work with their organization — and did not mail it. (It was quite un-practical and fussy to pursue that route then as the recruitment center was in Hongkong and I had no money. Besides I didn’t think I could work in a job that would entail not seeing G for like 6 months at a time — yeah, as far as careers go, love can be a bitch).

I am looking back on all that now as I contemplate my work in this country so far from home; caring for people that I will never understand even if I spend my lifetime providing medical services for them; talking to them in a language that I will never really comprehend.

There is a word in French (another language as baffling as Arabic), témoignage, or “bearing witness” that is like a guiding principle in Doctors Without Borders. I think about it — and I have come to the conclusion that témoignage is as much an essential part of the intimacies in our lives as it is in Médecins Sans Frontières.

To love is to bear witness to another’s universe. And it can be a terrible thing; and a magical thing at the same. Considering that a big chunk of our lives is lived inside our heads, occupying another’s POV is an overwhelming experience. But that’s what interpersonal relationships are all about — to enable us to step outside this insular thing called “self” and to be able to see another; and in the process, to also be seen for who we really are.

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So that post was written over a year ago — pre-pandemic, as most of  our lives seem to bear that demarcation.

Today, I am preoccupied by the phrase “playing god”. Being a doctor  definitely falls under this category. Writers also like to imagine themselves as God (or god with a small g,  when they are feeling more secure about their place in the world). Same goes for world leaders, local government executives  and computer geeks who dream up codes in their sleep.

There is a book of short stories written by a Filipino doctor Arturo Rotor which has the title “The Men Who Play God”.  Very apt, albeit not politically correct, but  fact of the matter is during Rotor’s time most doctors are males who tend to regard  their medical practice as their own planet earth and they are Yahweh.

It is very exhausting to play god. A lot of gods have been burnt out of their celestial existence and chose to change careers into medical administrators, or academicians,  or medical informatic specialists, or have gone into non medically related businesses entirely.

I have been playing with the idea of leaving clinical medicine recently. I am tired of advising people on what to do with their bodies. And weary of women worrying about their pregnancies and their capacity of having a genetic progeny. I find it unjust that the burden of reproduction is borne by one gender while power over human lives is entirely monopolized by another.

The infuriating,  sad, unfair truth is: God is a man —  the fact that only females have uteruses and ovaries while males have physical and material power over them is an evidence of this.

Why should I be in a medical field that is party to my own subjugation?

I think I would rather cook. Feeding people, I think, is more morally justifiable.

1st Draft

Most women — like my country, like this painting of Maria Munk –– are unfinished.

Somehow we’ve weathered and witnessed a nation that isn’t broken, but simply unfinished. — Amanda Gorman.

Someday, I wish (or hope) to say the same about my country.

The alternative statement; which is that my people, my home are essentially, irreparably, and permanently broken, is just too devastating for me to reckon with.

Survival

Yes, I am still alive.

Though, I have no idea why.

Why am I alive when G’s batchmate K (who was a wonderful pediatrician) is dead? Why am I still breathing when more than a million people on Earth has stopped doing so in just over a year?

Why did I survive when so many more before me, more worthy, more brave, just …. more … are … gone?

The question I really like to ask is why someone like Rodrigo Duterte still alive when Edgar Jopson is dead? They would be almost the same age now (Digong was born 3 years before Edjop). They lived through the same upheavals my country has gone through — my semi post-colonial, semi-feudal, tribal, fatalistic homeland. They were both men with good intentions. They were both inclined to be leaders.

Why did one die and the other evolve to be a monster?

Is that what surviving means? Would Edjop have turned into the dark side (the way Harry Roque did) if he survived Martial Law and Marcos’s oppression?

I try to tell myself that Edjop died because he wanted to give his life to a higher cause. As such, he was good. Or was he good because he died? What if he lived through the new millennium? What if he were still alive now — would he have evolved into something else? Something like Jejomar Binay (human rights lawyer turned corrupt politician); or would he end up like Conrado De Quiros (activist-progressive writer now retired because of health reasons)?

What does surviving mean? To evolve? Into what? Into the kind of monster that this effing world require us to be?

These are dark times for my country. A lot of my people do not realize it. Some even consider these times as the good times (I can’t blame them, particularly my workmate & co-OFWs, A and L; who seem to believe that the Philippines would thrive more as an absolute monarchy than a republic).

Militarization is rife in the countryside; and now they are creeping into the schools.

Yesterday, my alma mater was in an uproar because a deal disallowing military personnel from infiltrating the University without permission from the school has been unilaterally revoked.

People are accused of being communist; just because they express dissent (like hello! communism has been a debunked ideology since 1989 when the Berlin Wall fell). Accusation means interrogation, or arrest or imprisonment. Or worse. We call this red-tagging; a big hypocrisy, for this is done by the same government which is enthusiastically licking China’s ass (the biggest self avowed Communist of them all).

I really don’t believe that China is a Communist country — it is behaving more like a fascist, authoritarian, wannabe-imperialist state (although this is a topic for another blog post)

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The Saint Helena olive (Nesiota elliptica), unlike me, is dead. Extinct, actually.

(from Wikipedia) St Helena olive was a plant from the monotypic genus of flowering plants Nesiota within the family Rhamnaceae.
It was an island endemic native to Saint Helena in the South Atlantic Ocean. Despite its name, it is unrelated to the true olive (Olea europaea). The last remaining tree in the wild died in 1994, and the last remaining individual in cultivation died in December 2003, despite conservation efforts.

So yes, I am still alive.

Whether that is a good thing or not, time will tell.

Trying Times

Those two words are a definite understatement. Especially for healthcare workers.

The whole world is presently reeling from a crisis that is straight out of a Suzanne Collins novel. How did it happen that a once-in-a-lifetime event happened in my lifetime? I have no idea. When I started this blog, I was settled to the fact that I will lead a humdrum existence devoid of any real-proximate-death-inducing risk — but  here I am.

image from https://www.wqpmag.com

On the bright side (and there are some), I am thankful for several things:

1. I celebrated the end of my 4th decade in this world yesterday; here’s to hoping for better days, weeks, months, years, decades to come …

2. The love-of-my-life is with me and we are still as crazy about each other as we were 17 years ago ….

4. My father, my sister, my brother, my aunts and I are in different countries (continents even), so at least if one of us contracts an infection (most likely me), social distancing will not be a problem (ha ha) ….

3. I am a healthcare worker, hence, I can do something active aside from fiddling my thumbs.

However, I  still feel like Frodo …

“I wish it need not have happened in my time,” said Frodo. “So do I,” said Gandalf, “and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”

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This article,  written by a doctor in the Atlantic magazine, is sobering and reflective; and I just feel like posting some of these words right now.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/03/were-failing-doctors/608662/?fbclid=IwAR3_J6u8FmXefRym4cyIfbMSclbwpNwMyvnS862c2iX6SaPB4LHZJmBdbuA

We don’t take these risks because of an abstract “ethical duty”; we take them because it is what we do every time we walk into the chaos and danger of the emergency department. We do it because it is our job.

Our duty is not boundless, and in bad situations, sacrificing providers is not what is best for society. If health-care providers are going to risk their life, then there is a reciprocal obligation—the fairness principle—that society, employers, and hospitals keep them safe and ensure that they are fairly treated, whether they live, get sick, or die.

Having colleagues sharing the burden is a crucial predictor for clinicians’ willingness to work despite the risk. But when the cascade starts, when you are forced to reuse your disposable face mask for the third day in a row, and another nurse doesn’t come in, because of her concern for her daughter, and you know that two of your colleagues are being treated in the ICU and another 10 are home infected, and then another physician calls out sick, and there are no clerks again today? Sooner or later, you look around and see so few standing with you. At some point, the system could break, and we will all be gone.

To My Dearest Friend L

Asalam allaikum Sister. I greet you this morning with peace and love.

I miss our weekend walks and our ranting about the hassles in our workplace. I miss drinking tea with you in that small cafe beside the gasoline station. I miss knocking on your flat, then you would tell me to come inside and ply me with cookies from that Iraqi bakery. I miss that you would call our Bangladeshi driver to take us to the souq where I would be making unplanned purchases just because it was so much fun.

“The Friends” by Gustav Klimt. Image from https://www.gustav-klimt.com/The-Friends.jsp

Sister, you voted for that pretender in the Palace. Yeah, I understand why you and your kin were so enamored of him. Remember we used to talk about Imperial Manila? And didn’t I agree with you that the Christians have taken lands you consider your own? I understand where your resentments come from — they come from the same place where mine used to reside. There was this place in my heart where I considered “others” to be the source of my pains. And you were one of the “others” until you became my friend.

I visited our country recently — and hey, we even bumped into each other at a conference! It was wonderful seeing you again; and I am happy that you are well and safe and thriving. Those three words, though, do not apply to most of our people, don’t you think? That is a sad fact. I used to believe, cynically, that being unwell, unsafe and un-thriving was just what most of our people deserved — because they are ignorant; superficial; they choose thugs or fools as leaders; and just because we are so clannish and clique-ish.

But I am here now, a land not my own, and I come to realize that nobody deserves to be “unwell, unsafe, un-thriving.”

I realize that one’s tendency to be superficial, to be ignorant, to make poor choices — can be rooted in one’s heritage, in one’s history. We are what our parents (our forebears) have made us. That is not an excuse for defects in our character and for the choices we make; but hey, it is a valid enough reason to explain why we are what we are.

I do not know if there is hope yet for our country, my sister. Though I know that I so very much want to come home.

I want to work for and build up things that are Mine (or will be). I want to see your lake, the one near your house — the house that was bombed and destroyed by ISIS; still to be rebuilt from the ashes. I want to feel Christmas — the fancy lights in our shanties, the carols of grimy kids, the parties where we sing and drink our sorrows away, the simple gifts we give just because. I want to speak our tongue — there are many of them and we make fun  of each other’s accents but we are all the same despite our differences.

Someday, inshallah, I will return home. I just need to learn to become the person that deserve it.