In the circle of life and death

It is the last place you want to be – but the best place to be if you’re deathly ill and fighting for your life. For most doctors, patients and family members, the Intensive Care Unit of any hospital is where patients get all the medical attention they need in a crisis. Ironically it is also the very place where the patient’s relatives get the worst dose of reality and tragedy. Because most ICU facilities are designed as a circular unit, it has become the Circle of Life and Death for me.

For the last seven days, my mother Marita has been in the ICU of the National Kidney Transplant Institute due to series of complications. The further irony of today is that it is also the 23rd death anniversary of my father Louie Beltran. Yes, the uncanny timing of events is almost like a bad dream or a very dark “joke” of life. For the most part I try to make the best of any situation, but anyone who has hovered around the circular halls of any ICU knows only too well that tragedy and challenge is almost an hourly event in the corridor.

While you try to boost the morale of the family by cracking jokes and kidding around, strangers or a patient’s relatives suddenly walk by bowed and beaten with tears streaming down their cheeks. Silence falls upon everyone as you are reminded of your own challenges and your own fears. There is also that tinge of guilt, that you still have hope while theirs came to an end an hour ago. Call it morbid curiosity, but everyone makes it their business to know if the tears were just an outlet for the stress or the signal that someone has lost a loved one because you are all in the same boat. Every departure is either a victory or defeat. Those who manage to get rolled back into a “regular room” raise both arms in victory and gives the rest of us something to hold on or look forward to, yes we are partly envious, but nonetheless glad that “someone got away alive.”

But when the “carriage” comes, the unmistakable gurney from the morgue, there is no mistaking the fact that someone has checked out and we are once again reminded to consider the unthinkable. For several days, I thought nothing of my Mom being in the ICU. The doctors were so good at masking it all by saying she would do best in a place with a full time doctor on the spot just in case she has problems with her heart. I guess I have always been an optimist and it took a few days for the cold reality to hit me that my Mom is in the ICU and that’s not a good thing.

In the ICU, the motto is “Hope for the best – Expect the worst”. Anyone who lingers around in the circular corridor or in parked cars waiting for visiting hours quickly goes from acquaintance to being members of “The Team”. You quickly learn that pain, disease and the ICU are the great Equalizers of life. No amount of money is going to give you a better room, a better bed, a better deal. Here everyone lives with great uncertainty and no guarantees. Here there is no rest for the weary and in a matter of days you quickly discover that the stress from worrying over a parent, child or spouse is so debilitating that you feel like you have a hangover without having had a drop of alcohol.

It’s bad enough worrying about someone’s condition but once the bills and collection notices come in every 24 hours, once you realize that a prolonged stay can eat you out of house or home, that’s when you realize that no amount of financial planning prepares you for the costs of a medical disaster. No one talks about this reality but it occurs with horrific regularity all over the Philippines. I don’t know if it’s a Jedi Mind Trick but no one really talks about costs in the ICU maybe because you don’t want people thinking that your more worried about the cost than the struggle for life of a patient. Sadly, here you quickly become a member of the tragic version of the “Millionaires Club” due to mounting medical bills.

The hard part about hearing other people’s challenges and burdens is that all you can do is be angry. Angry that it has to happen to people who can’t afford it or don’t have the means. Be angry at the cards they were dealt with. Be angry that they have to be in a Third World country where hospitals and public health care is the last priority of the rich politicians who get the best customer service in private hospitals.

There should be a law that all publicly elected officials as well as high-ranking government officials must check into public hospitals ONLY. Only by doing so will they gain an appreciation of what their colleagues in government have done with the very little support that Congressmen and Senators provide for public hospitals. In fact the so-called support given by politicians to many public hospitals is one big fat lie. They give grants and funds so that they can send THEIR CONSTITUENTS there. So it’s all self-serving! Maybe by forcing them to check into government hospitals they will realize the lack and the need for more public hospitals.

Maybe they’ll even pass a law that provides free hospitalization for government retirees like my mother whose pension won’t cover the cost for staying at the ICU in a government hospital. DU30 has been talking and prioritizing facilities for soldiers but what about those who serve daily in government? They too deserve attention and recognition!

Last Sunday, Pastor James of Victory Pioneer said something I often hear: You are exactly where God needs you to be according to his will. The ICU is not a fun place, you can’t even stay more than 10 minutes in the room, but being here once again teaches me: To Let Go and Let God.