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| Tin's Grad Pic at UST Medicine |
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| during college, Psych days |
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| a designated composer and lyricist of friends |
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| Tin & her best buddy Anne Mondala (both YFC leaders) |
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| Tin with her one her of best guy buddies in college, Deneb Labial |
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| I with Tin along the U.P. PSYCH faculty's hallway |
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| Imagining ourselves locked in an Asylum |
By tradition, burial places, catacombs, and sacred urns are visited, scented, and adorned with flowers popularly during early November to commemorate the existence of loved ones and significant figures in the society who once walked the same roads we step on each day, and at one point in time, simply ceases to do so; not momentarily, but for all eternity.
At one time, he was looking, and at another, he was just staring; the bellowing of his thorax is nothing but a mechanism of expansion from a mechanical ventilator. 24 minutes post resuscitation, BP 0, pulse rate 0, a flatline on the cardiac monitor accompanied by the long beep that seem to go on and on, only to be drowned by the sobs and wailing of the mourning.
November 1, All Saints Day; November 2, All Souls Day.
I include in the remembrance of our dear departed brethren the ones whose bodies remain in our realm and yet, deep in the brain parenchyma, and the deepest recesses of the unconscious, they live and yet do not "exist." What may be worse than death are coma and catatonia. No flatlines, no CPRs but there is wailing, and sobbing, and, staring, the endless beeping in the ICU, and the stretching of hope waiting for its breaking point.
But there is hope. It is stretched, yes, but it remains there. Hope.
The therapeutics of Neurology and Psychiatry is a summoning of the seemingly-dead and the surely-alive. It is not a per patient basis but always a dynamics for families, friends, and other support groups wherein all involved are treated in one way or another. The so-called poor prognosis specializations...not quite.
One is buried in coma and catatonia only when a person ceases to exist in the hearts of those who remain with him, when hope is extinguished, tangled in the tubes and wires of the ICU, the hum of the ventilator, just waiting for the long monotonous beep; And for a psychiatric patient, left to wander the halls of an asylum only known to him, trapped in its maze and gone forever.
Let us tinker with your brain and caress your soul.
Prayers for the dead...and for the living as well.
*We remember our beloved departed today and pray for their eternal repose. May they rest in peace with our Creator.
At one time, he was looking, and at another, he was just staring; the bellowing of his thorax is nothing but a mechanism of expansion from a mechanical ventilator. 24 minutes post resuscitation, BP 0, pulse rate 0, a flatline on the cardiac monitor accompanied by the long beep that seem to go on and on, only to be drowned by the sobs and wailing of the mourning.
November 1, All Saints Day; November 2, All Souls Day.
I include in the remembrance of our dear departed brethren the ones whose bodies remain in our realm and yet, deep in the brain parenchyma, and the deepest recesses of the unconscious, they live and yet do not "exist." What may be worse than death are coma and catatonia. No flatlines, no CPRs but there is wailing, and sobbing, and, staring, the endless beeping in the ICU, and the stretching of hope waiting for its breaking point.
But there is hope. It is stretched, yes, but it remains there. Hope.
The therapeutics of Neurology and Psychiatry is a summoning of the seemingly-dead and the surely-alive. It is not a per patient basis but always a dynamics for families, friends, and other support groups wherein all involved are treated in one way or another. The so-called poor prognosis specializations...not quite.
One is buried in coma and catatonia only when a person ceases to exist in the hearts of those who remain with him, when hope is extinguished, tangled in the tubes and wires of the ICU, the hum of the ventilator, just waiting for the long monotonous beep; And for a psychiatric patient, left to wander the halls of an asylum only known to him, trapped in its maze and gone forever.
Let us tinker with your brain and caress your soul.
Prayers for the dead...and for the living as well.
*We remember our beloved departed today and pray for their eternal repose. May they rest in peace with our Creator.
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| Year 2003 - A picture taken almost 8 years ago. An unforgettable year for both of us ;). Thanks Tin for the friendship. Thanks for keeping me learn from you on Love, Light and Him. |
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