Holy Angel University

School of Nursing and Allied Medical Sciences

Nursing Department
Community Health Nursing 1

GREGORIO, FORGIVE US ALL

(Story adopted from ADPCN Resource Manual for Primary Health Care)

It was a weltering hot that afternoon – not unusual in the Philippines, but not a time for hurrying
either. That’s why I knew something was wrong when a man came hurrying up the stairs of the convent.

The man was Gregorio and he told me his wife, Lina, who is
currently pregnant (G2P1) on her second child, was sick with
cholera. He and a friend had carried her for four hours from their
mountain home using a hammock as a stretcher. When they arrived
in the town of Togoc, they found the doctor had gone.

Togoc is one of the several parishes situated in the

mountains of the island of Negros with a population of some 20,000
people. The pastor there now, Fr. Hilario, told me before that they
have no doctor, though they still have a dilapidated clinic.

When I was there a year ago, a doctor sometimes visited us.

Gregorio wanted to borrow our vehicle to take his wife to the hospital in the lowlands – a two-hour
ride over a rocky road. I explained to him that Fr. Hilario had taken the jeepney, but I would go with him to the
clinic anyhow to see what could be done. We found Lina lying at the clinic crying out in pain.

Obviously, she desperately needed help, so we hurried out to search for the young doctor assigned in
Togoc for six months of rural training. But he was away in an outlying and so we waited for what seemed like
ages before he came back. The doctor immediately wrote out a prescription for Lina. Gregorio immediately
ran barefooted along the road on his way to a little shop stocked with pitifully small supplies of medicine. He
was back in few minutes only to say that the shop didn’t have the medicine. The doctor wrote another
prescription. Gregorio sped away again, only to return once more – breathless and empty handed.

“We need dextrose” (Intravenous fluid), said the doctor, but there is none in
town. All of us fanned out through, the neighborhood asking people if they have
any. Finally, a woman produced a half – filled bottle left over from what her
husband used before he died. I brought it to the doctor.

He looked up exasperated and said, “the clinic has no dextrose (IV) needle. We’ll
have to take her down to Kabangkalan.”

“Doc, you know she’ll die on the way” I said, “Isn’t there anything you can do?”

He then tried to give the dextrose (IVF) with a large needle, but the vein in the
arms and legs of Lina collapsed. He tried the vein on the neck. That was no good
either.

We all stood helpless as Lina screamed in pain. Gregorio was silent with confusion; their little child was
wandering around the bed. Finally, the doctor gave her some Coca Cola – the only alternative fluid with
glucose available. Once more, the doctor insisted that Lina would journey down to Kabangkalan. Since the
priest wouldn’t be back, there was nothing else to do but start the haggling for a rented jeepney. It would be
expensive, and Gregorio had nothing, but we were in no position to haggle with a life at stake.

1
 Holy Angel University
School of Nursing and Allied Medical Sciences
Nursing Department
Community Health Nursing 1

Gregorio laid Lina on the same hammock that he

used to carry her down the mountain and strung it up
inside the jeepney. All the time she cried out in pain. We
had no sedatives to calm her with. “Hang on” I said.

The jeepney moved slowly, bouncing along the

terrible road, until it disappeared from my sight. I
whispered a hopeless prayer as if God who forgives would
also, at a stroke, undo the accumulated effect of our
unjust system.

When Fr. Hilario got back to the convent late in the afternoon, I poured out the story to him. As we
were talking, Gregorio appeared at the door. He looked as if he had walked the whole way back that was over
30 kilometers.

His face told the story – Lina had died halfway down the journey. She begged to stop the jeepney as
the pain is becoming too much. They stopped, and as they did, she died and so also taking the life of the
unborn child.

And now followed a strange development, the doctor and driver insisted that maybe she was still alive!
They would not heed to Gregorio’s plea to return to Togoc. So, the jeepney continued and deposited Gregorio
and his dead wife at a doctor’s house clinic in a large barrio.

The doctor was not there, and the housewife naturally got mad at Gregorio for bringing a dead patient.
But the jeepney driver would not carry Gregorio and Lina any further. “It is against the law, and it would also
bring bad luck to me too” the jeepney driver said.

The young doctor must have had a very little understanding of just how destitute Gregorio was – how
desperately poor most of our people are – because what he did next still amazes me. He went on to
Kabangkalan with the jeepney driver and asked an expensive Western – style funeral home to take the corpse.
For Gregorio, who had to pay for the expenses anything was better than to leave his wife in an unfriendly
house.

Now Gregorio stood numb and exhausted. What else could he do? The
funeral home would not return the body until he paid the bills for embalming
and for bringing the body back to Togoc. It was 15,000 pesos. This was more
than any amount Gregorio had ever held in his whole life. Just think that 250
pesos worth of medicine would have save the life of both Lina and her baby! It
was the end as far I was concerned. But not for Gregorio, he would borrow
money from us and sell his land to pay us.

I suggested we send down our vehicle for the body, but there was a
question about that being illegal. And then, would Perfecto our faithful driver,
overcome the same superstitious fear of carrying dead body in his vehicle.

“Apart from that,” said Fr. Hilario, “our beat – up vehicle might never make it
down and up again.”

Gregorio watched as we argue. He was beyond feeling.

2
 Holy Angel University
School of Nursing and Allied Medical Sciences
Nursing Department
Community Health Nursing 1

Finally, we decided to consult Perfecto. Perfecto was brief to the point – “the vehicle will make it down
and we’ll have it welded there. Then I’ll drive it back… but I’m afraid to carry a dead body.”

I, Perfecto and Fr. Hilario decided to leave and proceed to Kabangkalan and before we left, Gregorio pleaded
and said “Father, please don’t leave Lina in Kabangkalan” – and he wept.

On our way, we planned on how to deal with the funeral home – there would be some brutal bargaining to do.

I have not told this story well. The details have been smothered over so many similar incidents. Did
Gregorio carry Lina for eight hours, not four? Did we get the body back for 15,000 pesos? The case of Gregorio
may have a lot of similarity among other incidences in the country.

Sometimes, I’m tempted that if we had enough money to supply the poor with medicines, or not to
argue over hiring of a jeepney, or not have to worry about the wreck that our vehicle is, the problem would
end. That might help relieve our worry and tension, but it would solve the problems, for they are recurrent
and deep – rooted.

When we brought Lina back to Togoc, Gregorio asked for the lid to be taken off the coffin so that he could be
photographed with his child and wife for the last time. I’m afraid the picture is not clear to be printed.

But when I looked at it, I sometimes wonder… Gregorio, where are you
now? Have you returned to your mountain plot? Who looks after your little
2 – year old child (Rosalinda)? Do you blame yourself for being poor? Do
you blame yourself for Lina’s death? Will you ever escape from the shadow
of failure that may not be your fault but could be rooted in the poor health
care system that most victims of unjust environment and reality would
constantly blame of?

-END-

Note:

Please work on the assignment provided in your CANVAS course shell for NCM104.