Chronicles of a Medical Technologist

When it was my first time to draw blood, I was so cocky that I can do it in one shot. I volunteered to demonstrate, so I started the ritual: I tied the tourniquet around my classmate's upper arm and palpated the vein. With a pretense of confidence, I began to disinfect the vein with alcohol then aimed the needle on his arm. I bored the needle in his vein, waiting for the drop of blood to peek into the syringe, but nothing came. After several seconds, I pulled the needle a bit and tried to search the vein like finding a hole in a cross-stitch fabric. Still nothing came. He felt a prickle inside his arm, a sign that no vein was hit but his tendon or perhaps muscle, which is quite painful in a thrust of a needle. I stopped, pulled out the needle and untied the tourniquet. A wave of electric coldness flowed from my hands down to my toes. I was deeply embarrassed. So when I started as a medical technology intern back in 2002, I was too afraid of drawing blood from patients, and wished not to do it in my internship. But a prankish event happened : our senior trainer assigned me to my most hated job. During my first week in a hospital in Laguna, I was teamed-up with a long-time intern who always reprimanded me of my jittery and sweaty hands holding the needle and tube, faint-hearted of the idea of failing again.

My former profession requires to master this skill, also known as phlebotomy or venipuncture. It requires strict techniques to draw blood samples, while preventing infection and hematoma (a mass of blood inside the tissue due to imprecise puncture), and at the same time safeguarding oneself from needlestick injury which will cause one to contract some of the worse bloodborne diseases like HIV. There are many risks in doing this; nonetheless, these were not in my mind at the time. After two weeks of grueling mastery, I became a "sharpshooter". No more jitters and sweat. I gained the most inspiring learning; that needles, syringes and test tubes are instruments that led me to the earliest days of developing compassion.

Interns assigned in "warding" section are the ones who collect blood samples from patients. It was my first assignment, and I was always sent to the hospital ward, emergency room, and intensive care unit. Rambling from ward to ward, I met patients lying on their hospital gowns, with long tubes attached to their hands, where intravenous fluids drip every other second. Even with their relatives beside them, most patients' wore their faces with wrinkles of anxieties. Almost all patients and their loved ones shared the same concern: where to get the money to pay the ballooning hospital bill, and when to get healthy and live their lives again.

It was heartbreaking. Although no one was sick in my family, I had kept that agony of seeing patients staying inside wards, breathing all the sickening smell of the hospital and helpless of seeing them suffer with all uncertainties. I was at least a witness, powerless except of drawing the blood from their arms and fingers. That feeling lingered, but along with it was a new way of seeing things. Reminded of the Gesundheit principle of Patch Adams, a true-to-life happy doctor portrayed by Robin Williams, I have begun seeing patients not just a case of "a diabetic with gangrenous foot", but a human being who deserves a smile and caring from a healthcare professional like myself.

My fellow interns usually finish their rounds for 30 minutes or so, but I often loitered for 1 hour and a half. Everytime I entered a hospital room or ward, I greet patients with a smile. Either before or after drawing the blood, I chatted with them about anything under the sun. For most patients, letting their blood to be drawn is an annoying experience. For some, they crack a cliched joke like "ubos na yata ang dugo ko," (I have no more blood left), followed by a laugh, trying to mask their anxieties. Even so, they understate their despair of being sick and broke, two things they felt as curses, while being inside a place where they feel most people are indifferent. So it was my little secret that even I had seldom failures of drawing blood, no one was hostile toward me. It was just after seven years, without even knowing the word compassion, that I learned I had practiced it in a place where it is needed most.

Yet it was a challenging practice. I remember my fellow interns and even my seniors drawing blood from patients without even smiling at their patients. And their manner seemed normal to their profession. I came across with some nurses who raise their voices while answering their patients' questions about their conditions and treatments. I saw doctors laughing in one corner while a dying patient is in the other. I found these healthcare professionals arguing with their patients' relatives about the procedures and medications, which, in my humble opinion, are not really helping the patients, but only for the sake of strictly following standards. This world of "healing people" became a blinding truth for me as an eyewitness. I chose this path with the fervent dream of becoming a doctor. But the dream began to crumble. I was disenchanted, but nevertheless hopeful that there must be another way to help patients.

Along with this world, I discovered another: the interconnected galaxies of world wide web. It was a beginning of new journey. I cannot remember the exact manner when I stumbled in one website talking a lot about natural medicine. So I told myself this might be the solution. I relished those newfound knowledge, and began to dream again. I can be a doctor but not a doctor that people are used to know, who just stoically writes a prescription after a series of silent auscultation and pupil examination. I wanted to bring back the knowledge of the power of natural healing in each patients. After college, I ventured a multilevel marketing company selling natural health products. But more than selling anything, which I don't have the knack for, I became engaged in researching about natural alternatives for healing.

This adventure set the course for a greater understanding of healing. I was able to redefine the word health. Well, medical authorities have their own scholarly definitions, but for a layperson they are quite technical. So I began by sharing my classic definition: remove the last two letters and there you go; health is heal, the power of healing. These healing capacities can be intensified only if a patient will use nothing but natural. I thought before that sooner there will be no more use for any medical conventions. But I was dichotomizing this reality. So when I understand the role of understanding Love, I have flashed back every moment of my hospital experience, which are all rooted to the simplest and most rewarding: drawing blood.

Last December, by a friend's request, I spent 2 separate days in a hospital lab. There again I met people who still belong to this world I left behind for a long time. I held again test tubes, syringes, torniquet and microscope. I smelled again the sterile air, with a faint whiff of perhaps blood and urine, alcohol and dried sweat. I got across with people walking with stethoscopes slung on their necks, all clad in either white coats or scrub suits. And once again I smiled at patients and their loved ones, struggling to be happy amidst the nearing holidays. This tangible experience not only brought back the old days, but relived the virtue that I was once doing but unaware of. With this emanating awareness, I started sending them intentions of blessing and health.

More than any physical manifestation of disease, every patient is a human being seeking love, the love they thought they lack, unconscious of the Love within them. More than any complex medical knowledge, it is the heartfelt touch of a doctor, the caring aura of a nurse or the wonderful smile of a healthcare professional, that is most important in the process of healing. Treatments, drugs, diagnostics, and alternative modalities are all but accessories, and they are just "clanging cymbals" without being empowered with love. This is perhaps my transforming insight--my hospital "lab life" was a prelude for my growth in "Love life", a life that understands and experiences the depth of universal Love. Now I have become more thankful that through the stronghold of medical science, a new consciousness in my being was born. I am a healer, the healed and the healing, all wrap into one being.

I no longer practice my profession, and most parents, colleagues and other people who value diplomas made of blood and sweat tell me sayang (what a waste). People find it a waste to learn that I'm not putting my profession in good use, especially in this economic crisis when the great Filipino dream is to migrate to North American shores, to earn good money, and to secure future lives. I won't say I don't value these aspirations. I won't even say that I wasted four years of my life and perhaps a million of funds just to end up swimming against the tide. Everything has its reason and as what I recalled from my good friend when she quoted someone that "Life is in perfect order", I'm certain that I charted my own life course. Drawing blood is obviously something that I rarely do and possibly not to do anymore, but the very love and compassion I came up from it are much more treasurable skills that I continuously learn and perfect. Quoting Deepak Chopra from his book Ageless Body, Timeless Mind: "The education of love begins in a moment and ends in eternity." And with that proves every moment I shared with patients during my old days as a medical technologist has sparked the eternity of my healing journey in Love.