Announcement

My blog readers know who I am-a 47 year old Filipino physician who, after studying, training and running a successful medical practice for almost twenty years in the U.S. has now returned to his country. I am, and proud to be, a Balikbayan.

Friends have asked: Why?

"You have a wonderful life in America," they say. "You were featured on US national television as an outstanding Asian. You're at the top of your profession. Why become a Dr. Balikbayan?"

In my mind I have asked myself the same question. The answer is difficult to explain, and for some, more difficult to understand.

No Filipino in or out of the country is unaware of the stark reality that confronts all of us. At this time the Philippines has a higher poverty level than most countries on earth. Our government is considered to be more corrupt than even the most chaotic African nations.

But as a physician what pains me most deeply is the terrible fact that more and more Filipinos are dying for no other reason than that they lack medical care. By the thousands, mothers die at childbirth. Children die of curable infectious diseases. People are ill and they have no one to turn to.

I cannot accept this. I must do something. I owe it to myself, to my vocation as physician, and to my fellow Filipinos. This is why I left America and am now Dr. Balikbayan.

Recently I joined the brave and honorable cause of Noynoy Aquino and Mar Roxas whose aim is not only to reform but to transform the Philippines. To this I have committed myself.

I am not a politician nor do I intend ever to be one. I am an experienced physician trained to help and save lives. But rather than treat individual patients by the handful, I believe I can be more useful, do more good by extending medical care to millions of Filipinos who have neither the knowledge nor the means to fight disease and prolong life.

I realize I cannot do this alone. Neither can Noynoy Aquino and Mar Roxas. All our leaders from Lapulapu with his band of Cebuano warriors to Cory Aquino with her heroes at Edsa needed the full hearted, unsparing involvement of men and women willing to seek, struggle, and if necessary, sacrifice to attain the fulfillment of a common aspiration.

I shall do my part, play a role, perhaps a small one, in the sweeping movement that calls all Filipinos at home and abroad together, growing in strength and number, gaining momentum to turn itself into the transformative power that will change our country and generations of our countrymen.

So I move on, move forward, move toward a horizon bright with the promise of the good years to come for all Filipinos across space and time.

Dr. Balikbayan is home.

Failed Initiative

Two weeks ago, the Guymon City Council deliberated on whether to approve a proposed ordinance that would have created all sorts of hurdles for anybody planning to start surgical or imaging centers. The move was widely perceived to target and prevent a local radiologist from putting up his own CT scan. The campaign to get the ordinance passed was stealthily conducted and the first time I learned about it was 2 days before the council meeting. Within 48 hours, the radiologist brought a trailer containing a CT scanner and parked it a block away from the hospital, forestalling whatever legal obstacles that were to take effect.

The City Council went ahead and discussed the merits of the ordinance. I later wrote this letter to the editor of the Guymon Daily Herald:

Recently, our hospital administration led an initiative to amend municipal rules regarding the establishment of ancillary medical services. The proposal went down in defeat because it was written in vague language that was a virtual invitation for judicial challenge. To illustrate, anyone contemplating in building a 5 square foot shed to house an ultrasound machine would be required to pay a minimum amount of $10,000 as filing fee and be subject to a “feasibility study” conducted by “a recognized health care industry consulting firm”.

A majority of the City Council members plainly saw the legal nightmare that would ensue without clear and objective parameters in measuring the “impact” that medical technology might bring. They were likewise not swayed by the scary speculation of mass layoffs that a single CT scan would potentially cause.

The administrator tried to portray the playing field as greatly disadvantageous to our hospital. This appeared incongruous however given the strong support of the 200 hospital employees behind him, the top notch legal counsel he was receiving from a prestigious law firm in Oklahoma City, and the singular advantage of not having to pay taxes because of the not for profit status of our hospital.

Among the assumptions in the proposed ordinance completely debunked was that competition would increase medical costs to the citizens of Guymon when it was shown that certain procedures cost 50% less when performed in an outpatient facility.

For close to 15 years, I have cared for patients at the Memorial Hospital of Texas County. I am proud of the people who make our hospital a center of excellence. From nursing to housekeeping, pharmacy, respiratory therapy, laboratory, medical records, home healthcare and other departments, we have deeply committed and exceptionally compassionate employees who faithfully render splendid service to the sick and dying in our community. Tammy Arnold, Christine Kirk, John Jones, Ginger Freeman, Brenda Hussey, Jackie Schupman, Kim Ware, Kim Zigler, Carla Hernandez, Jane Rivera, Audrey Vergara, Kacie Abbott, Rasonya Chadick, Mona Behne, Jill Shaw, Judy Webb, Dondie Rodgers, Marla Gordon, Jenny Carnagey, Brenda Jarrett, Andrea Upshaw, Kim Martinez, Donna Miller, Maria Puebla, Michele Reust, Maria Van Bebber, Sherry Denton, Isabel Calderon, Kim Fuentes, Bobbie Cooper, Deborah Arndt, Adrienne Geisbracht, Michelle Williamson, Megan Furnish, Rosa Reyes, Kristina Pal, Theresa Ross, Chet Oblander, Linda Barker, Kim Blevins, Tommy Romero, Jacob Tuttle, Liz Lim stand out.

To keep our hospital strong and competitive, I am confident that we simply need to continuously promote and tirelessly capitalize on the people and the wonderful work they provide. Dabbling in local politics only diminishes the luster of a polished gem.

President Obama's Speech to Students

Last week, President Obama delivered a speech in some high school in Virginia that was distributed all over the country so that students would be able to listen to him speak about what most everybody thought of as uncontroversial values. Students in Guymon, OK were not able to listen to the President due to the vociferous protest of a few parents who insisted on reviewing the contents of the President’s speech. Truly a shame because the Guymon school district has become significantly infiltrated by minority students over the past 10 years, underprivileged kids who stood to benefit most from President Obama’s inspiring words. I sent this opinion to the Guymon Daily Herald.

Too bad our kids weren’t made to watch President Obama’s address to students last week. In 13 minutes, he described his origins, a black kid from a broken home who was able to become the President of the United States despite many mistakes, amid many temptations.

He reminded all of us that all the gains being made in upgrading our educational system will be wasted if a sense of personal responsibility was not ingrained upon each of our students. The raw material is out there, the pathway to developing our various talents and gifts is ready to accommodate us, we only need to appreciate the abundant advantages we have here in our very own Guymon, OK.

Our educational facilities are world-class and our teachers are dedicated professionals who view teaching as a vocation and not simply a job. We just need to be there.

Woody Allen famously said, “80% of success is showing up”. Despite much higher tuition fees, and enormous living expenses, students from all over the world descend upon our schools because they and their families are convinced that all the sacrifices necessary to acquire a superior product is completely worthwhile. Education equips us with the requisite skills necessary to compete in a world that is becoming more competitive daily.

Our children deserve all the inspiration they can get. If we don’t have to vet beforehand the contents of a Disney or a Nickelodeon television program, why deprive our children from listening to positive role models who were able to rise above circumstances that characteristically hold down the vast majority of less fortunate children. While we may personally differ with the politics of President Obama, there shouldn’t be any dispute toward the value of staying in school and working hard to exploit the academic advantages we enjoy but sometimes fail to appreciate: “At the end of the day, we can have the most dedicated teachers, the most supportive parents and the best schools in the world--and none of it will matter unless all of you fulfill your responsibilities. Unless you show up to those schools; pay attention to those teachers; listen to your parents, grandparents and other adults; and put in the hard work it takes to succeed.”

Cory

If Marcos and his thugs had not murdered Ninoy Aquino, in all likelihood, Cory would still be alive today. She would have certainly had a screening colonoscopy in Boston that would have discovered and removed those polyps before they turned malignant.

Instead, she became President of a nation with a woefully inadequate healthcare system that fails to protect even its “national treasure” from an entirely preventable disease.

So it goes back to Marcos once again, 20 years dead. Nothing personal here any longer, never really was. I never saw him in person, never had anything to do with him. He was always the person to me who chose the other side, who tried to get as many people to his side using whatever force necessary.

Seems very few remember how bad those Martial Law days were, a tightly-controlled press with Doroy Valencia, Tatad, Tuvera, Adrian Cristobal, Ronnie Nathanielsz zealously proclaiming the party line; nobody outside the New Society cordon was allowed to leave the country. There was a curfew at midnight; all firearms had to be surrendered, the penalty for noncompliance was death. There was a very effective “population control” program in place. “Secret Marshals” were deployed in public transportation: they were licensed to kill anyone they considered menacing to public safety. Students were made to sing hymns extolling “Ang Bagong Lipunan”, resort hotels were built in record time to host foreign lenders, acres upon acres of grass spray painted green to impress Pope John Paul II.

Hindsight is devastatingly 20/20. All those dreams and ambitions of a cunning man only succeeded in transforming the country into a Potemkin Village that exalted the efficiency of centralized corruption.

Before Ninoy was killed, there seemed very little hope. Reagan was closely protecting the Marcoses, friends from his days as Governor of California. Then Vice President George HW Bush had just toasted the dictatorship’s “adherence to democratic principles and democratic processes”, at a time when even mildly critical comments regarding the New Society was harshly punished. Marcos wielded absolute power. We will never fully account for the fate of thousands who simply vanished during those dark years.

A stem cell is pluripotent. It has the potential to develop into countless cell lines. Each one of us is endowed with this feature. We have the capacity to become saints and heroes, murderers and molesters. Through some immutable grace, we are drawn to one particular side or the other. Many gifted thinkers, artists, religious leaders, scientists, lawyers, teachers completely collaborated with Marcos; the kindest we can view this behavior from a distance is to confer some degree of Goebellian fanaticism to these people who must have somehow believed that liberty, freedom and respect for life could be dispensed with to achieve some shred of totalitarian heaven.

When Cory took over, the educational system was in tatters. Capital flight was unprecedented. The armed forces that had once been a professional force of fighters had become highly politicized. Easily a tenth of the population would leave for other countries in order to survive. I was among those who had to leave. There were very few opportunities then and like many others, I felt ill-prepared to contribute significantly towards rebuilding our country. Besides, a new legion of politicians, old and new seemed to crawl out from nowhere to take over the task of recovering a fictitious era of prosperity and democracy.

We mourn the death of Cory, we feel deeply the loss and the pain because she alone remained true. What has become of her old guard? Unfortunately, they and their relatives have transmogrified into another society of scions, part of a sociopolitical scheme that perpetuates poverty, suffering and ignorance.

23 years after Marcos was deposed, too many have forgotten, so many more were not even born during those tumultuous times. There are unmistakable signs of the impending restoration of the New Society. There are cocky descendants everywhere, waiting for what they consider their rightful turn to rule a materially and spiritually impoverished nation, repeatedly pillaged and perennially rocked off its moral mooring. The odds are overwhelmingly against us once more. These guys do this for a living. We have no power and we have no money. But we have the example of Cory Aquino to follow.