Saturday inspiration

One of my most memorable experiences as a third year medical student was the time I met a beautiful little girl one Saturday morning. She had Beta-Thalassemia, a lifelong genetic disease that causes serious imbalances in the components of the blood, making the patient very frail, weak and susceptible to infections, and presenting with high fever, jaundice and organ enlargement. Usually, regular blood transfusions are needed. Those with a severe form of the disease require resection of the spleen and/or the liver, or may need bone marrow transplantation.

She was 12 years old and had come all the way from Cavite to see us in Pasig City. I asked her how she was, and she said she was nauseous from the long drive and had a slight tummy ache. She had not had breakfast yet. We offered crackers but she courteously declined. She smiled at me warmly and answered all our questions in a happy tone.

I took her to the washroom to change into a hospital gown. We laughed together as she drowned in the piece of clothing that was three times too big for her. She asked me to tie the gown securely around her, and we walked slowly back to 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 how she reacted to being told that she looked pregnant. She said that she just walked away, that she could deal with being alone—and that she had other friends, pointing to the girls in the other examination rooms, her fellow Beta-Thalassemia patients.

She also said her teacher reviewed with her the many lessons she missed whenever she needed a blood transfusion. She’s been a second-grader for the past five years because of her poor health.

She was shy around my male colleagues, and asked us girls to do the examination. She seemed a bit reserved but cooperative, and maybe tired, too, after all the questioning and probing. We felt for her spleen, which was around five times its normal size, already encroaching on the frontal aspect of her abdomen when it is normally located at the left lateral aspect of the body and is usually not felt during examination.

A colleague went to speak with her mother. I heard the mother sobbing, and I wanted to hug her. I wanted to hug her sweet child, too, and to tell this little girl that it will be all right. I wanted to be able to heal her. But I couldn’t. At least not yet.

I had gone to school that Saturday morning a bit unwillingly because weekends for medical students are for catching up on sleep. But that day will constantly be an inspiration for me.

Someday I’ll meet other lovely children. I’ll heal them and their spirits, make them smile a little more, give them more chances to play with their true friends, and to learn more in school.

Angela Bea P. Alfonso, 23, studies at the Ateneo School of Medicine and Public Health. She wants to be a pediatrician someday.