I was ten years old when I stopped going to school. It all started with the recurring chest pains. At first, we all thought that it was just one of those usual asthma attacks. I was sent to a pediatrician, but the findings were negative. My parents even suspected that the pain was “psychological” or “imaginary”. Those words were often used to blame me for nursing my anxieties, which I hated. Why would I pretend to be sick? I could never feign those painful contractions. There were times when the sound of my heart beats kept me awake, when merely lying in bed was almost suffocating. Every night my mother would wake up to the sound of my cries as I gasped for breath saying, “Mama, di ako makahinga.” Sometimes I would sneak at my brother’s bookshelves and looked for the term “heart” at his encyclopedias. I would start self diagnosing about my systems and turned speculate. I could be right or I could be wrong. My parents told me I was a sickly kid ever since I was born. According to my mom, I was diagnosed with asthma at birth. It was …show more content…
I asked my mom to retell my medical history. She told me that the story I knew about was partly true. Yes, I did have a heart and digestive problem but it was more than that. It was my father’s decision to hide my illness from me. My mom went to a room and pulled out from a hidden cabinet the heaps of the medical tests I went through. She made me remember the time when my dad told me not to trust the doctor’s findings at the Heart Center. The truth was, I was diagnosed of having a congenital heart defect. She also showed the prescription papers containing the doctor’s findings at Philippine Children’s Medical Center. It was stated that following my treatment at Heart Center, I was diagnosed of peptic ulcer disease with chronic gastritis and not hyperacidity like what my father had told me. I never knew any of these things. I wasn’t just sick, I was not