Cebu’s medical horror

Vile!

If only to describe an act so beastly and inhuman, particularly coming from the very ranks of those who vowed through Hippocratic Oath and Nightingale’s pledge that they will protect the very well-being of every human being committed to their care.

Barely after the ashes of the national disgust wrought by a line in “desperate housewives” have settled, came a bigger storm in the Philippine’s medical landscape.

Perhaps, he was on sedation, but I can only wonder if the male patient was aware of the pandemonium (jeers and all) inside the OR when his sensitive area was stripped bare before a mocking group of “life-savers” and “care-givers” in whom he entrusted his very life, Worse, that his surgery was simultaneously shot by digital cameras or maybe cellular phones for his life-savers’ delight. “Traumatized” may not be adequate a word to describe how the patient feels after he saw the footage in youtube.

Upon watching the TV clips in the evening newscast, the noise and jeers alone sent shivers to my spine because to me, it was almost tantamount to a ruthless gang-rape where the hapless body of an innocent victim was splayed all for everyone to feast on, only, the sex act was absent. But it seems almost all of the elements were there.

Upon watching through youtube, my heart went out to the guy, because since I also speak the cebuano dialect myself, I could understand how my colleagues in the nursing profession as well as the other members of the medical team have “killed” the dignity of one man even through their words alone. Their crass words, jeers and stance spoke not of modern-day heroes but of “criminals” on rampage. Stealthily murdering human dignity behind the cloak of life-saving entities.

I tried to understand how come almost everyone around that area, except perhaps those who scrubbed got hold of phone cameras and took video footage of the surgery. Who among those who diagnosed the patient announced to the eager bunch that a patient with a foreign object stuck in his rectum was to be operated on? The nerve to even mentioning sterility for aseptic technique when what seemed to be a mob present at that time was more than enough to have caused a possible gargantuan infection to the client. Whatever happened to sensitivity and empathy? Whatever happened to Medical and Nursing Ethics? Whatever has happened to Patient’s Bill of Rights and to Human Rights, altogether?

It was so cruel of the surgeon, who at the time, was the “captain of the ship”, the “sinking” ship I must say, to have allowed everyone to violate the very basic right of the patient to Privacy and Confidentiality. It was so cruel of my fellow Nurses to have allowed and even enjoined everyone in performing such violence.

Being a woman, a nurse and a potential patient myself (God forbid) I tried to reflect on what could have caused them to take the matter so lightly and to have forgotten that, while it doesn’t happen often, the person whose rectum bore a foreign object was another human being himself. So worthy of his human and patient’s rights like the rest of humanity.

I realized such beastly act spoke of a lot of things, the most blatant was the disrespect to human dignity. For how can you laugh in front of someone who was suffering? What’s more, how can you take footage out of sheer delight over someone whom you know, must have been too ashamed and, at the same time, was too scared to undergo the procedure himself. Did they even reflect for a second that the patient must have a lot of concerns in his life, for instance, his own survival?

But the other side that I saw was the pervasive homophobic stance of those medical practitioners who went their merry ways mocking the client and the whole of his travails as soon as they got the x-ray outline of what was inside his rectum. A crippling disorder not acknowledged by some sectors in society, which is even beyond mental illness . For anyone who made conjectures and conclusions as to how a bottle could get in there, it was expected. But it should have stopped there. Instead, they went beyond what was called for.

I figured that it seemed easy for them to make fun of the entire circumstance because he happened to be gay, and to most homophobics, gays are members of the society who should be laughed at, taunted and cursed for “behaving as what their hypocrite church says” and not “loving the opposite sex” as expected. Hello!!! this is the new millenium, wisdom has moved on and more and more religious leaders have already committed sexual abuses because Gays and Lesbians are in reality, existent. And some homophobics are actually confused homosexuals, themselves, ever so afraid of coming out even to themselves. Pity you.

I wonder if it were one of those doctors or nurses or nursing aides, will they make fun of her/him for pushing a foreign object in his rectum? What if it were a dildo or a vibrator that got stuck in one of the assess of their colleagues or members of their families? Will they allow it?

It’s a pity that one’s sexual orientation can make others think they are licensed to humiliate another… and worse, invite others to join them in. Whoever taught this medical practictioners that one’s license to perform a medical procedure also licensed them to humiliate patients.

I’ve seen how imperfect some nurses and doctors can be, myself included. Sometimes I can empathized with some errors committed because I know that at times these were done beyond them.

A few days ago I told a group of friends that I like to keep coming back to cebu because it seemed to me that cebuano’s love for their city, and for their religion/faith make them cohesive and peace-loving. I noticed this every time I dropped by the Basilica. But the video footage, showed a fraction of their populace manifest what their love of religion could not make of them- to love and respect another human being.

After all of this how on earth can we prove that “Desperate Housewives” writers were actually wrong now, when this footage told them they were right?