Unidentified foreign object

I’ve never been to a tour around Cebu City since I was in kindergarten back in 1991. Back then, my entire class was taken to the Cebu City Zoo for a field trip. I felt very special because I got to see a “big monkey” and I was able to tell the story to my friends.

At the Taoist Temple, I first learned about China and that the people there speak a different language. Someday, I thought, I will visit that country. 

I was five years old, almost six, and I thought that the Philippines is the only country located on Earth. America is in Uranus and Japan is in Jupiter.

How simple life was then; when the only pressure I had to face was making sure that I had the complete paper dolls set of Sailor Moon and the other sailor girls namely Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto. This Japanese animated series started in 1991, a year before Pluto’s status as a planet was questioned. Fifteen years later, in August 2006, the  International Astronomical Union (IAU) downgraded Pluto’s status to “dwarf planet” or to my four-year-old son’s world, “an exoplanet because it’s not big enough to be a planet.” 

Pluto’s sad story of being demoted into a dwarf planet was the narrative that Jeffrey Jr. kept telling me as he cried nonstop complaining of a “yellow thing” stuck inside his left nostril that is making it hard for him to breath. 

I panicked for five seconds and then reached for the first aid kit inside my bag. I have a pair of forceps inside the kit so I thought about taking that “yellow thing” out of his nostril myself. 

But the little boy was uncooperative. He was crying and fidgeting. No amount of bribery, may it be strawberry ice cream or unlimited viewing of Lilo and Stitch and Ratatouille, was enough to convince him to calm down. 

At 11:30 p.m., my husband and I were having a “tour” of Cebu’s hospitals looking for an emergency room (ER) with an ENT doctor who can take out that “yellow thing” out. 

We went to four private hospitals; first in Consolacion town, one in Mandaue City and two in Cebu City. Each of this hospital told us the same thing: “We don’t have an ENT specialist right now. We don’t have the machine or the materials here needed to take out whatever is in your son’s nostril.”

The first hospital told us to go to the next hospital in Mandaue City. Same thing happened. The narrative was repeated in the next two hospitals. It doesn’t help that I have asthma, which is often triggered by stress and no sleep. Last night, October 25, I also could not breathe. I was ready to pass out. But I couldn’t because my son was clearly uncomfortable. 

We ended up at the Vicente Sotto Memorial Medical Center (VSMMC) upon the advice of a resident doctor of a private hospital located near Fuente Osmeña Circle, who said that only VSMMC has an ER with ENT specialists who are available 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Before I could even voice out what I think about the public hospital, the lady doctor said, “It’s not crowded Ma’am because ENT cases are placed in a different room so you are not stuck with other patients.” 

I have never been to VSMMC as a patient or as the mother of a patient. I was in the hospital last month to interview beneficiaries of a Rotary Club’s program but it never crossed my mind that I will be there with my son. 

I told my husband to brace himself for long lines.” We’ll be out by sunrise,” I told him. 

While the entrance to the emergency room was indeed busy and crowded, the registration was swift with the assistance ofa nurse who was more efficient than the other ones I met in the emergency rooms of private hospitals. 

It only took 10 minutes from the time we entered the door of the ER to the moment the door was opened for the ENT doctor to check Jeffrey Jr.’s nose. 

“What did you put inside your nose?” asked Dr. Derrick Villamor. 

“A yellow thing, a toy,” Jeffrey Jr. responded. 

“Why?” 

“I wanna try if it fits.”

By then, we were surrounded by interns and other patients who adored our boy’s gift of gab.

However, it took another hour for another specialist, Dr. JP Descallar, to take out the foreign object inside Jeffrey Jr.’s nose. 

The reason? The boy panicked; he cried and kicked and repeatedy said that he is scared. I had to calmly tell him that a firefighter, which is what he wants to be when he grows up, is brave and courageous.  It did not work. 

His Dad’s encouragement about Captain America being brave did.

He was both adorable and pitiful when he told me, “The doctor is destroying my nose. I don’t want to die like that.”

Jeffrey Jr. slept a few minutes after the big meltdown  and the medical team and I breathe a triumphant sigh when the yellow plastic was finally pulled out of his left nostril. 

The boy repeatedly said his “thank yous” in between sobs as an intern led us to three “stops” within the emegency room. 

At the registration area, the man in-charge printed a piece of paper that has the figure P8oo on it. 

I thought that was our bill. 

But he smiled when I asked him where is the cashier so I can pay the bill. 

“No, Ma’am, you don’t need to pay because emergency services here are free,” said the man. 

I was surprised. This is the first time that I got into a hospital in the Philippines and came out with a zero bill. 

Fighting sleep while we were on our  way back to the house, I searched about the emergency services of VSMMC. CDN ran a story about it in September 2016 about the hospital issuing an order that makes services from its emergency department free. 

READ: VSMMC offers free emergency care 

It was real. No scam whatsoever. 

As we left the VSMMC emergency room, a month-old baby was rushed in with several tubes connected to her body; a woman was crying behind a cream-colored curtain; and the nurse was telling me this is not a busy night for them at all.

A smiling Jeffrey Jr. went back to the room where we were with the doctors and the rest of the team. 

“Thank you doctors. Thank you everyone. I come back tomorrow with thank you food, okay?” 

I generally do not like hospitals but VSMMC’s emergency room services have been a positive experience. 

To parents and guardians who might encounter issues like we did, save yourselves the hassle from going to one ER after another. Go straight to VSMMC to have those foreign objects removed from your children’s noses or ears even during the wee hours of the morning.