JESS DUREZA
I WAS seated in a clinic receiving room in Quezon City a few days ago, waiting for our turn to meet the doctor, a certain “Doc Leal” who was supposed to be an expert on noninvasive treatment for body pains.
Then I spotted on the wall of the reception area a front-page clipping of last year’s April issue of Sun.Star Davao. Featured in a banner story written by its editor, Stella Estremera, was Dr. ISAGANI S. LEAL from Magpet, North Cotabato, now a musculoskeletal expert with whom we had an appointment for consultations that afternoon. He is supposed to be the only one of his kind in the country today. His photos with sports stars, even one with businessman Manuel V. Pangilinan, and senators and other celebrities in Manila were collaged on the wall.
Seated in the reception area were mostly “senior citizens” with walking canes and one young lady in wheelchair, evidently injured. I was there with Beth for her recurring neck pains that had been troubling her for years whose medications evidently caused her kidney ailment. Truth to tell, it was Davao Mayor Rody Duterte who mentioned to Beth during the wake of our brother-in-law in Davao City to see a “Dr. Leal” in Manila after both of them exchanged notes about their common recurring neck pains and headaches. But I had no way of contacting him as I failed to get his mobile phone number.
By some coincidence last week, former governor Manny Pinol picked up the phone during coffee at Starbucks in SM mall in Davao City and linked me up with the Doc Leal who was actually a native of Manny Pinol’s province. My wife and I promptly went to Manila to meet this doctor in our continuous search for relief from her recurring neck pains to further nurture her improving kidneys.
NONCONVENTIONAL
When we entered his small clinic, he immediately told me in Cebuano, “Kaila man ko nimo, sir (I know you, sir),” although I barely recognized him. He used to work as a doctor at the regional health office in Cotabato City when I was handling Mindanao for Malacañang. I would visit his area during calamities like bombings, shooting incidents and outbreak of epidemics.
He recalled seeing me often during the “war” (with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front) in Pikit, North Cotabato, as he was involved in community-based medical services attending to the evacuees. Even as a medical doctor, he was more fascinated with the “unconventional and the unorthodox.” He dawdled with herbal medicines, therapy, hilot and other alternative procedures. He even authored a manual on alternative herbal medicines that, up to this day, is being used by the regional health office.
An opportunity came when he was sent on a three-month training in Israel on a new method called musculoskeletal medicine. After his three-month scholarship, he decided to stay and personally paid his way to more training and immersion in a pioneering medical field. He “moonlighted” as a part time doctor in Tel Aviv (usually pro bono to his kababayans) and even worked as contributor to a medical magazine. His meager earnings as a part-time writer and practitioner were used to finance his frugal life there just to learn some more. He gave free medical assistance to overseas Filipino workers in his spare time. It was while he was in Israel that he lost his wife who was left in Cotabato due to leukemia (His only daughter is now 18 years old). He trained in Tel Aviv for four years on what can be described by western medicine as an “unorthodox” or alternative way of treating body pains and ailments.
CLINIC
Upon returning home, he eventually opened in 2009 a clinic called Center for Musculoskeletal Science–Asia, now known for its innovative and alternative mode of treatment, located along West Avenue in Quezon City. It provides minimally invasive image-guided treatment for back pains, arthritis, shoulder pain, spinal problems and sports injuries using arthroscopic, fluoroscopic and ultrasound-guided interventions and regenerative medicine. (He treated my recurring knee problem — due to high uric acid — and, in a matter of minutes, it erased the numbing pain just like magic. I swear! But that’s going ahead of his boyhood story.)
POOR BARRIO BOY
Doc Gani, 48, grew up as a poor boy in Magpet, North Cotabato, where he had to walk about seven kilometers daily to school. His father was a passenger jeepney driver and his mother, a public school teacher. He was featured in that Sun.Star article because his father, a lowly driver, was a surprise graduation speaker in a local college to inspire the graduates about how hard work could give deliverance to poor families like theirs. Chatting with him briefly brought me back to my own memory lane. I immediately had an eerie feeling of familiarity with him, my own father being a passenger bus driver, too, and my mother also a public school teacher, and having spent boyhood days in our barrio.
He first wanted to become a priest and entered the seminary (I, too, almost entered the Brothers of the Sacred Heart juniorate in high school) but he shifted to the medical school by supporting himself, during pre-med days, as waiter and dishwasher at the Tropical Hut, a restaurant chain. Then to finance his medical course proper, he worked as a roomboy at a drive-in motel called Anito Hotel in Manila. (No, I didn’t work in trysting hideaways but in a newsroom.) He was lucky to get scholarships due to his exceptional grades to finish medicine. (I had scholarships for academics and as a band member during pre-law but had to pay for law school tuition even after becoming a lawyer due to outstanding promissory notes with the Ateneo finance office.)
He told of hard times when unable to have decent meals, he would just have rice with salt with some splice of Sarsi, a cheap cola, for taste. (I was lucky my aunt in the city took me in for free board and lodging, and settled in a small corner under the stairs, but I had to leisurely walk a kilometer away to Ateneo from the house.) After becoming a doctor, he worked at Region 12 Health facility in Cotabato. It was from there that he got the chance to get special training in musculoskeletal medicine in Israel. He stayed there for four years, training and, at the same time, attending to OFWs there, giving free medical services. (To be continued/PN)
