The Many Faces of the Women In White
Doctors first, they all are. But they have taken up a second profession, as well.
By Michelle Ciriacruz
A WOMAN OF MEANS
She wanted to be a lawyer. Her father wanted her to study medicine. He was ill, suffering from diabetes and heart problems, in a province where endocrinologists were an unknown commodity.
By being a doctor, she could help the people in her province, her father appealed to her.
Dr. Filomena Santiago-San Juan does not regret that turn in her life. "Maybe, if I became a lawyer right away, I would not have that human touch."
These days, she is up to her head in law and plenary sessions. In the last national elections, she was elected representative of the district in Zamboanga del Sur where her mother grew up.
It took a while before she was able to fulfill her pledge to personally serve her provincemates, however. She got married to a Caviteño ophthalmologist who requested that they settle in Luzon.
They did-on the basis of a premarital agreement. He assured her that once she is financially stable, he would not interfere if she wished to renew the plans of her younger years.
So Dr. San Juan went on to become a prominent name in obstetrics-gynecology, becoming full professor at the University of the Philippines-Philippine General Hospital's Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology in 1982. She also held consultancy positions in five tertiary hospitals in Metro Manila for many years.
Still, Dr. San Juan was anxious to do something for Zamboanga del Sur, even though not medical. So in 1993, she applied for an industrial forest management agreement, planting trees over logged over mountains, going home every month to supervise the planting of trees.
It was not until 1994 that she was able to reach out to the health needs of her home province. She organized medical missions and donation of medicines to more than 200
barangays. Eventually, her husband joined in to perform free eye surgeries to cataract and glaucoma patients.
Dr. San Juan realized how depressed the towns in the second district of Zamboanga del Sur were. The rural health units (RHU) did not have medicines to give, and their nurses and midwives had to rely on medical missions for their supply.
She started asking questions. Of course, the RHUs had a budget allocation, had a place in the priority development assistance fund for the district. But why aren't there any medicine for the people?
Shockingly, she found out the local officials, instead of working for the assignment of medical doctors to their areas would rather stay away. Out of the 15,000 towns in that municipality, only six towns had medical health officers.
Besides not finding the delivery of health services important, some of the mayors, Dr. San Juan relates, find it irksome. If there were doctors to prescribe medicine, the people inevitably would go to the mayors for financial assistance, and this they would rather avoid.
"It's easier to buy a coffin than to send a patient-who would eventually die anyway-to hospital," one mayor told her.
She realized that medical missions alone would not solve the problems plaguing these towns-poverty, illness, lack of education-because "the root cause of it all is politics," and thus required a "political solution."
And by entering the political arena, she would acquire the means to effect changes the people in that district had a right to expect. "Being a doctor, you can only do personal service, but when you're in government, you have a hand in policy making...and the influence on how the budget is being used"-which should be primarily for the delivery of basic services to the people.
When Congress is not in session, Dr. San Juan continues to render free medical services to her constituents in her home province. She hopes there will be more medical doctors in Congress. With the thousands of bills being proposed, there is a big chance an important health bill might become overlooked. "If there are health bills in Congress, and nobody would explain them-almost nil chance the bill would pass," she comments.
A WOMAN OF ACTION
When Dr. Cecile Pelayo was eight years old, she would wake up at 6 a.m. every weekend to peddle
pan de sal to her neighbors in Alabang, Muntinlupa. Thirty centavos for each
pan de sal run (it was a lot of money, then), were a hefty profit for someone who was only in grade school.
Besides helping her grandmother with the family bakery, she also helped her aunts, who were meat vendors at the local
palengke-working full-time at it during school vacations.
As far back as Dr. Pelayo could remember the men and women of her family had been involved in one business or another. The children were naturally exposed to the hard work crucial for the survival of anything involving risks. They absorbed the habits, which became part of them up to their adulthood.
Dr. Pelayo was no different. She grew up with a strong discipline in and an instinct for business. Her grandmother was the principal influencing factor in her life. When she, together with an aunt, who was the same age as she was, decided to go into medicine, her grandmother supported her and encouraged her.
Dr. Pelayo cannot tell what brought on that decision. Her family was primarily business-oriented. Nevertheless, the values she learned growing up fit very well with the rigorous training of medical school, and eventually, medical practice.
In her 25 years as occupational medicine specialist, the businesswoman side of her took a backseat for a while. Not forgotten, merely indulged once in a while, when the demands of raising a family and her career as an industrial physician slackened a little.
Finally, around five years, she decided to retire from her industrial position-but not retirement from being a medical doctor, Dr. Pelayo is quick to emphasize.
"If you are a doctor, you cannot retire completely," she observes. Friends and relatives would always be a perpetual source of patients. Once a doctor, always a doctor-so to speak. She also makes sure that she is not left behind in her field by regularly attending seminars and conventions, here and abroad, having to do with occupational medicine.
She rested for two months, and promptly got bored with idleness.
Used to having her mind and lifestyle always in hyper mode-even as a medical student, she did not quit her twin jobs as bakery shop assistant and meat vendor-her spirit cried out for a challenging activity.
"[Having] activities is my main concern," she asserts.
What was summoned renewed old ties with the past so it can invest in new ones for the next generation.
Dr. Pelayo set up a food supplements company, now called Axis Unlimited Corporation, followed soon after with a Konika Film and Photo Shop franchise. Manned by her sons and daughters and supervised by her, these business ventures are for their sake.
When she finally leaves all control of the companies to her children-which she surmises would be in a year or two, she would have successfully passed on the enterprising spirit her grandmother bequeathed her.
Very likely, she admits, like what happened before, she would soon chafe at having no work and all play.
She reveals that another of her chief reasons for wanting to retire from work is so she could devote more time to her passions for bowling and ballroom dancing.
This inverse expression of the old adage, however, might very well prove appropriate for this lady doctor, as this December, she resumes her professional medical career at the
Ospital ng Muntinglupa.
She would thus be working two jobs at the same time again, only this time on a much larger scale, as owner/manager of two successful business companies and consultant in a hospital.
This might very well be the case from now on, despite that supposed retirement from business. It's not impossible, Dr. Pelayo surmises. Her husband, also a successful businessman, is already coming up with ideas for the next business venture that she or both of them could take on.
When she is not so busy anymore-which cannot be tolerated.
A WOMAN OF SUBSTANCE
*Her work places her in the frontline of product inquiries, complaints, and quality assurance matters. She is also in charge of making sure that regulatory requirements are complied with.
As a medical information and drug safety manager of one of the country's leading pharmaceutical companies, Dr. Marie Eileen Sy is in an enviable but delicate position.
Her work places her in the frontline of product inquiries, complaints, and quality assurance matters. She reviews and makes sure that all product materials conceptualized by marketing executives are "within global standards, acceptable locally, and defensible."
She is also in charge of making sure that regulatory requirements pertaining to medical matters are complied with.
Working closely with product managers, regulatory personnel, and medical professionals, Dr. Sy finds the life of a medical doctor transported from clinical practice to a corporate setting not as disorienting as one would expect.
Before she was in the pharmaceutical industry, she held several positions in leading medical publishing corporations. After spending three years, first as an industrial physician in Makati, then an inhouse resident physician in San Pedro Laguna, the economic situation of her then-just-two family created a crossroad in her professional career that led to corporate work.
Given only two choices, either she or her husband would go into specialization, she chose to venture out of medicine to look for other options.
This was not a sacrifice on Dr. Sy's part, since, according to her, "I'm the type of person who adjusts very well to whatever situation I find myself in." She even looked forward to the new and perhaps more difficult challenges waiting for her in other lines of work.
She got what she wanted. Her intellectual resources were indeed tasked to the maximum, especially in her pioneering work documenting, reviewing, and keeping things neat and tight, ethically and technically, in the pharmaceutical industry.
"I'm contributing to the pharmaceutical industry to help insure that we market and present our products in an ethically sound and medically appropriate manner," she relates.
In her two years in the job, she faced tremendous challenges. She had to start from scratch and devise a system for the functions of her job only as she goes along-everything, almost all by herself.
But being a medical doctor to start with, and with a background in editing and writing medical text, as well, she was well equipped to handle all the overt descriptions of her position. She is even able to dip into her creative leanings with the attention-grabbing letters she writes that are so advantageous in the competitive world of drug marketing.
The greatest challenge of her office, so far, is balancing her perspective when it comes to conflicts that rise up occasionally between her medical and corporate colleagues.
Professionally, of course, if it is outside the purview of her office, she cannot interfere, nevertheless, she cannot help feel concerned as, being an insider to two communities-medical and pharmaceutical-she knows the ultimate sufferers would be the patients.
In Dr. Sy's case, her relationship with both groups is cordial and cooperative. Dr. Sy feels she is able to earn the respect of doctors she deals with in the scrupulous way she does her job. When they request for product materials, for example, she makes sure that what they get is more than substantial. Also, it is easier for doctors coming forward with complaints to respond to someone who understands medicine.
In this manner, Dr. Sy feels she helps bring the two groups to a better understanding of each other. From this, she derives a sense of fulfillment-not as apparent and immediate maybe as when you see a patient getting better because of your service, but just as much present.
So however different, in looks and in temperament, the world she is in right now to what she has been exposed to initially, Dr. Sy knows she is in the right place to make a difference.
A WOMAN OF LETTERS
Four lines, seven syllables, consonant or vowel rhymes, the distilled expression of a million thoughts-a tanaga makes a perfect embodiment for Dr. Elizabeth Arcellana-Nuqui in the printed world.
Lines as reticent as she is, but with deep, deep thoughts.
Dr. Nuqui has never been voluble in personal matters. When she speaks, it is on scientific matters for which she is very well respected. On matters of the heart, eloquence leaves her, not because words fail her, but because she chooses to reserve them. For occasions when the science of her profession and the artistry of her blood commingle for a few volatile minutes-when she must, with pen and old index cards, hastily scribble even as cancer cells flash angrily on the slides she views through her microscope.
The Philippine Literary Arts Council (PLAC) Poetry Journal Caracoa volume 17: Women of Letters holds a couple of these poetic, but soundless, outbursts-mementos of a time when personal problems weighed heavily on Dr. Nuqui's soul.
When the serenity of her surroundings in faraway Fiji inspired her to study and create poetry, she unknowingly also set a foot out to literary recognition independent of her parents-Francisco Arcellana, National Artist for Literature (Sadly, he passed away last August.) and Emerenciana Yuvienco-Arcellana, a well-known political science professor and academic writer (She has written two books on Claro M. Recto.).
She has always been writing-feature articles in her high school and college papers-and editing both literary and medical publications since her university days. However, that World Health Organization assignment in Fiji back in 1986, where the workload was lighter than what she had been used to in the government hospitals here, allowed her deeper intimacy with her creative side.
And when she came back home to the Philippines, Alfred Yuson, PLAC founding director and also a good friend of the family, sought her work for inclusion in Caracoa volume 14: Ex Patria.
This was a first for her poems to be included in a serious anthology like this poetry journal. Dr. Nuqui's private nature makes her reluctant to bare this side of her to strangers, giving in only after repeated entreaties from fellow poets.
Her parents, as immersed as they were in the literary scene, always let their kids find their own niche in life, never even pushing them to read extensively-although, they never really needed to be pushed; they were naturally attracted to books anyway.
At the same time, however, Dr. Nuqui volunteers, she is very grateful to other writers for having been able to share themselves with others, "for all of us to know... to feel, and to share," who they really are.
"I feel it is an important legacy to future generation. Writing documents your thoughts and feelings, and long after you're gone, if your writing is there-even if it's not published-for a loved one to read, that message will survive beyond your own lifetime," she expresses.
She feels that part of her success as a doctor is due to the fact that she writes. She edited and partly wrote The Philippine Handbook of Clinical Oncology 2nd edition. That when she was elected president of the Philippine Society of Oncologists (PSO), she credits to the impression made by the book on the society members.
Just recently, she attended a poetry workshop organized by PSO to help cancer patients, their relatives, and cancer specialists cope with the disease. They were taught about tanaga, a traditional form of Filipino poetry.
This Christmas, Dr. Nuqui says, starting the long overdue tanaga-a-day-project might be her holiday gift to herself.
Photos By Boaner Medina and Sharon Grajo
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