‘The falls that the PBBM administration has suffered from so early in its term therefore make me equate that with the early falls of a baby taking its first tentative steps.’
HAVE I had any stumbles recently, the wellness doctor at St. Luke’s BGC asked me yesterday as part of her evaluation of my case. I was checking in for my annual executive check-up, a benefit from Nickel Asia that I have learned to value over the last five years, and the good doctora was evaluating me to see whether the Golden Health package should be supplemented with one or two more tests given the fact that, well, I was already a senior citizen.
Actually, the doctora had to be convinced I was 60 when she asked me my full name (Piolo Pascual, I said) and birthday and age. My response to the first question didn’t raise an eyebrow but when I said I was 60 she looked up from the papers to look at me from head to foot and I could read her mind: “How to be you po?”
“Well, sir, for whatever it’s worth you don’t look 60,” she said, a comment I am so used to hearing. But because I was 60, she has to ask me if I had any issues with, say, urinating, or blood in my stool, or difficulty hearing or have I had any falls recently.
No falls, I said. Except for falls in the value of my peso, no falls at all, not even falling in love. (She chuckled politely).
It’s funny how we start life being so prone to falls and end life being so prone to falls. That’s the cycle I guess: from helplessness to feeling invincible, back to helplessness. Maybe it’s meant to remind us that we have to rely on others in some of the things we do, in the process learning the value of helping others and the value of gratitude and humility.
But falls or not, I’ve always felt gratitude and humility every time I’ve checked into the hospital for an executive check-up, much more so with St. Luke’s because a little over 18 months ago I had checked in here in an attempt to beat back death disguised as COVID.
Nothing makes you feel more human, more mortal, than having folks poke you and probe you and attach wires to you to check if you’re still breathing and all that.
And there’s the sign outside my hospital room which says “Risk of falling.” No wonder the nurse raised the barrier on the right side of my bed, as a precautionary measure. And I understood, as I had seen my father reach that point of falling more and more often as his own life cycle was reaching its end.
The falls that the PBBM administration has suffered from so early in its term therefore make me equate that with the early falls of a baby taking its first tentative steps. Many of these baby falls are unfortunate; some have the potential of hurting forever, but most of them are avoidable if extra care is taken, and there is all reason and logic to be especially extra careful with these falls.
Because the truth is, if the adults in the room become so complacent and no one watches out then one fall could even be fatal. And that would be a tragedy.
