One of my most memorable clinical encounters as a third year medical student was the time I met a beautiful young girl who had Beta-Thalassemia one Saturday morning. Beta-Thalassemia is a life-long genetic disease that causes serious imbalances in the components of one's blood, making the patient very frail, weak and susceptible to infections, as well as presenting with high fever, jaundice and organ enlargement. Usually, patients need to be transfused with blood on a regular basis. Those with a severe form of the disease require that their spleen and/or their liver resected, or may even need bone marrow transplantation.
That sweet little girl whom I met, she was 12 years old. She came all the way from Cavite to be with us in Ortigas. When I asked her how she was, she said that she was nauseous from the long drive with a slight tummy ache, and that she had not been able to eat breakfast yet. We offered her some crackers but she courteously declined. She still smiled at me warmly and answered all our questions in a happy tone.
I accompanied her to the washroom to change into her hospital gown. We laughed together as she drowned into the piece of clothing, which was three times large for her. She asked me to tie the gown securely around her, and we walked slowly back into the examination room hand in hand. She told me about her friends who teased her a lot because of her big tummy (due to her enlarged spleen). I asked her, "anong ginagawa mo pag inaasar ka nila na buntis?" She replied, "wala, lumalayo na lang ako sa kanila. Kaya ko naman mag-isa. At may iba akong kaibigan," then pointing to the girls in the other examination rooms--her fellow Thalassemia patients. She also told me that her teacher reviews with her the many lessons she misses whenever she needs to be admitted for blood transfusion. She's been in the 2nd grade for the past five years now because of her poor health.
She was shy around my male groupmates and asked us girls to be the ones to examine her. She appeared to be a bit timid but still willing, maybe tired, too, after around an hour and a half of questioning and examining. We felt for her spleen which was around five times its normal size, already encroaching the frontal aspect of her abdomen when it is normally located at the left lateral aspect of one's body and is usually not felt during examination.
As we looked at her further, one of my groupmates talked to her mother. I heard the mother sobbing, and I wanted to hug her. I wanted to hug her daughter, too. I wanted to tell this young girl that it's going to be alright. I wanted to have the capacity to cure her. But I can't. At least not yet.
I went to school that Saturday morning a bit unwillingly because weekends for medical students are made for catching up on sleep (and some series and movies). But that one Saturday became a day for the books, a day that will constantly be an inspiration, at least for me.
Someday, I'll get to be with lovely children and heal them and their spirits, make them smile a little more wider, give them more chances to play with their true friends, and enable them to learn more in school the best way I can.
