Truly, the cliché is
absolute: “Health is Wealth”.
I haven’t been
hospitalized in three decades. Injuries from previous years didn’t need to put
me inside the hospital for more than a day. It wasn’t really that
life-threatening, but it was very upsetting and it felt so strange. I always
had a weak immune system but I never thought it would come to this. It finally
hit me. I’m not getting any younger. In less than two years’ time, I’ll be forty
years old. They don’t say “Life begins at
40” for nothing. This is the landmark age when ailments start to become severe,
average couples start to have problems with their pre-teen/teen children and people
begin to trouble themselves in other matters that make them restless for the
future; hence the term “mid-life crisis”, assuming that life expectancy is 80.
It started with
hyperacidity, although it had no direct correlation to my confinement, after I
ingested an overdose of apple cider vinegar. My primary (high profile)
supplements ran out at that time and I grew fond of sipping ‘dalandan’-honey
concentrate dissolved in the apple cider vinegar, regularly drinking the
mixture in between meals at the start of the month. I felt sick to my stomach
for at least three days because of the newly-formed habit. After a week, stress
from work and heartache from a domestic problem took a toll on my
cardiovascular health and overall well-being. And then I suddenly found myself suffering
recurrent fevers and an intense cough. Four panicky sleepless nights later, I
finally decided to check in at the nearest major medical facility. I was sick and
tired, literally.
Visits were rare. I
remember one nurse asking me, “Don’t you
have anyone with you?” Peers and colleagues who visited also asked, “Where’s your family?” I simply smiled
at all of them and gave petty reasons. Only the closest of kin, the closest of
co-workers and the closest of friends dropped by. I posted photos of my
condition on social media. Some expressed concern right away, while some sent
messages of “I’m sorry I can’t visit…” early on. There are a few whom I
expected to at least ask what happened, but they never bothered to say anything
at all, despite my public posts. I felt like shit. Are these the only persons
who care for me? In my private life, in my professional life and in my social
life, I feel so alone, even now. But don’t take it against any of the people
connected to me. I haven’t had a chance at love for a very long time. It only
shows I could just be that terrible a person, generally. Besides, who wants a
fat, old slob like me anyway? I’ve started to hate myself. All over again.
I haven’t been this continuously
depressed in a long while. It’s a relief that I don’t entertain thoughts of
desperate measures anymore. But still the loneliness is slowly killing me. I will someday die alone.
My attending physician
isolated me in a private suite initially for fear that my pulmonary illness was
contagious and that my respiratory system was too sensitive at the time. For
seven nights except one, my only interaction was with a flat screen TV. It was
very sad; it felt like everyone deserted me. The ceiling was the constant view.
Only periodic visits of doctors and nurses checking my vital signs, performing
tests, extracting my blood and replacing my IV fluids & oxygen tanks broke
the monotony. For hours on end, the deafening silence filled the room.
Like most instances of
solitude in my life, it made me think. Of shortcomings. Of mistakes. Of
priorities in life. I’m almost 40 and I haven’t achieved even half of my life
goals yet. I really hate myself now.
Coincidentally, I was
exposed to Star Movies’ reruns of THE MARTIAN starring Matt Damon as Mark
Watney. It’s my new favorite film. Spoiler alert: it’s basically a rescue
mission of an astronaut who was accidentally left behind on Mars. Although the
setting is mostly on the red planet, it isn’t all that gloomy. Mark Watney
lived alone on Mars for more than a year, conserving whatever supplies and
sanity he had left. As a botanist, he became self-sufficient for a period until
an incident ended his experimental farming on the alien soil. He eventually
made contact with Earth and his former crew, who were still on another mission.
At some point he said in a message to his co-astronauts,
“Every
day I go outside to look at the vast horizons. Just because I can.”
I suddenly felt I can
somehow relate to his situation, because of some far-fetched similarities. We
were both unintentionally abandoned, in a sense.
Every morning I opened
the blinds of my private suite to see what was going on outside. In one
instance I said to myself while blankly staring out the window, “Nobody gives a shit about me! Nobody!!”
BUT I WAS WRONG. I realized that my father brought me food and water every day. (Hospital food isn't really all that great.) One of my closest friends dropped by after his work shift, another asked over
the phone on how I was doing; while another brought me snacks and stayed
overnight to swap stories of “personal misfortunes”, of how he himself was
quite unhappy at that moment. I grew a little sympathetic. Still another close peer
offered to either put the speaker phone on or talk via Skype throughout the
night to keep me company, but I declined because I needed to rest. At the
second visit of my workmates, my immediate superior inquired about how to
handle intertwining spreadsheets I managed to multi-task alone for more than a
decade. It felt good. Even though the personal visit became “official
business”, it seemed like they needed me badly; that our operations got
crippled at a week of my absence. My hospital bills didn’t need to take a
significant chunk of what very little I had and will have over the next several
months. Thank Heavens for HMOs! My final diagnosis was acute Bronchitis as a
result of a complication from Dengue fever. It wasn’t enough to be described as
a “hellish ordeal”, but it certainly felt very uncomfortable and precarious.
This was another serious
impairment for me in two and a half years; I had plenty of time to reflect. I
learned to enjoy the little things in life yet again, appreciate the small gestures
and savor the “forced vacation”. Just because I can.
I may be a nobody, a
non-achiever, a terrible person. A fat, old slob. But I always try my best to
be “content though not complacent” in my existence. I may fail sometimes but I
get back on my feet again, with Divine intervention.
In closing I just want
to quote Mark Watney once more, in a message to his commander about the anxiety
of an impending death:
“I’m
not giving up. We just need to prepare for every outcome.”
At least for now….
I’m glad July 2016 ended
in a positive perspective, because that’s what we always want to look for.
