PEOPLE POWWOW

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HERBERT VEGO
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AT 5 A.M. yesterday, my neck was aching and I was feeling unusually dizzy. Notwithstanding, I tried to get up — only to slump on bed like a knocked-down boxer. It took a few minutes before I managed to sit up with head propped up against the wall.

I reached for my blood-pressure monitor. The reading was a high 156/106. I therefore gulped down my medicine, hoping to recover immediately so I could beat the deadline for this column. I had intended to delve into a political issue: the announcement of Rep. Jerry Treñas to quit. But I had to change my mind.

What bothered me as I was writing this yesterday was whether to have myself confined in a hospital. Not so fast, I thought while texting Dr. Florentino Alerta for a checkup appointment. I had to write this column first. Nothing could be timelier than one on hospitalization. The hospital is one place I would not like to return to anymore as much as possible. I had been there a number of times and found it inhospitable, always draining the money that had taken my bank account many months to accumulate.

I realize I have turned 66 years old, a mere four years short of 70, which is the average lifespan of Filipinos. I ask myself, “Where have all the good old days gone?” It seemed only yesterday when I was a young one, aspiring for a successful future in journalism; now I am young once.

I consoled myself with the determination to stay alive in accordance with King David’s view that men who stay alive after age 70 enjoy “bonus” years: “The days of our years are threescore years and ten, and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labor and sorrow, for it is soon cut off and we fly away.” (Psalm 90:10)

I can’t afford to stay sick. A journalist has a “’til death do us part” covenant with his profession. After 46 years on the only job I know, I still don’t own a house; I rent one. But that could work in my favor. Barring unforeseen circumstances, I still hope to fly to New York City, where my son Norbert works.

The vitamin advertisement “Bawal magkasakit” strikes at the core of the bitter reality that the average senior citizen eventually dies poor in this country — no thanks to expensive medicine and hospitalization. My late parents, both educators, had exhausted their retirement money while confined in hospital. My father died of cancer; my mom, of accident.

If I were working in the West — say, the United States or Canada — I would not worry of dying poor. The government would foot medical and hospital bills.

On second thought, am still luckier than some my classmates who have gone to Kingdom Come. An added feather to my cap, sa totoo lang, is that I still can “perform” on non-sick days.

Even among athletes, only those who have become too weak to compete retire.

Right now I am checking my memory for confirmation that my brain is still in place. I remember that time when I could not remember the email password that I had been using for five years.

To prove myself wrong, I mentally recalled the names of my classroom teachers. I succeeded in naming all my teachers in the elementary grades but not all in high school and college. I wondered whether early memories die last. I researched.

I recalled those days with my late great grandfather Catalino. I was a preschool kid in the 1950s when I accompanied him to the grave of his wife Felipa. That done, he said to me, “Better to have lived and died than not to have lived at all.”

Those words still ring in my ears as I try hard to pin faith in the afterlife. It’s a healthy food for thought for this God believer who prays for recovery from sickness without having to be hospitalized.

Oh, time is up, I have to be in Dr. Alerta’s clinic now./PN
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