INDEXING TITLE: RCHAN’S MAR [5-04]

TITLE:  “Hero”

PERIOD OF MEDICAL OBSERVATION: April 23, 2005

 NARRATION:

            There we were manning the emergency room as my co-residents frolicked and waded in the cool waters of Anilao, Batangas.  We can only imagine how they might have been truly and fully enjoying themselves safe from all the toxicities and worries of hospital duty.  Well, that’s life. As Rod Stewart’s song echoed into my mind…”Some guys have all the luck…some guys have all the break…and some guys do nothing but complain…” through the trauma doors came a 27-year-old male patient, in  blood drenched clothes being rushed in by good samaritans.

            He had multiple stabwounds to the chest, the back and the abdomen.  He has stable vital signs at the time. We did the ABCs of trauma and did our secondary survey. We assessed the severity of his injuries. He had one stab wound to the chest at the level of the 4^th ICS midclavicular line on the right. There was decreased breath sounds on the right lung field. His stab wounds in the abdomen and back although multiple were all non-penetrating. The abdomen was soft and non-tender. We then requested for an upright chest xray of the patient while we simultaneously prepared the materials for a closed tube thoracostomy.

            True enough there was a pneumohemothorax on the right. As we were getting ready for the contemplated procedure, we obtained the patient’s history…

            Apparently, he was a watch repairman who was on his way home from work in Recto. He boarded a jeepney which was relatively loaded with passengers. As they were traversing Kalaw, one of the male passengers took out a fan knife and declared a hold-up and was asking everybody to give up their valuables.  Some of the  of the passengers complied, giving up their cell phones, wallets, jewelries etc. However, our patient refused to give in to the demand of the hold-upper. He firmly stood his ground and clutched his watch repair kit tightly to his chest. Hell broke loose inside the jeepney which caused most of the passengers to alight from the vehicle. The perpetuator felt he was drawing too much attention from the people along the street so he got off from the jeep as well.  As he was doing so, our patient grabbed him by the collar and  challenged him to a fist fight. As they were exchanging blows, little to his knowledge that the crook had 4 other companions in the jeep, all of whom were carrying fan knives. They ganged up on the poor watch repairman and took turns stabbing him. They almost left him for dead sprawled on the ground until a few bystanders were kind enough to bring him to the hospital.

            As we were managing the patient, I asked him , “E bakit kasi nanlaban ka pa? Dapat ibinigay mo na lang pera at gamit mo? Ayan tignan mo nagyari sa ‘yo. Swerte mo di ka napuruhan.”  (“Why did u have to fight them off? You should’ve given your money and your things. Look at what happened to you. You’re lucky you didn’t die”) With a firm voice he answered, “Ok lang po doktora, nakatulong naman po ako.” (It’s ok Doctor, at least I was able to help.”) I was taken aback with what I heard, paused for a moment of silence and continued on treating him, earning my respect and admiration.

 INSIGHTS: (DISCOVERY, stimulus, reinforcement, physical, PSYCHOSOCIAL, ethical)

            In this day and age where opportunists abound and corruption even in its littlest forms are very rampant, we can still encounter real-life heroes who are willing to risk life and limb to help other people out.

            Here was a very simple man, a husband, a father to three small children earning a decent living. If you encounter him on the street, you would not even look twice in his direction. He was just a victim of circumstance like most trauma victims are, being at the wrong place at the wrong time. And yet despite the dangers that can be inflicted upon him by holding on to what for him was the means of putting food on the table of his family, he took the chance of protecting himself and the other passengers as well.

            I  would have dismissed him as just one of the usual patients in the ER, the so-called “napagtripan”, or “napaginitan” people that would come and go there. But his story was a different one altogether. I was glad to have taken time to listen to it after all.  Maybe initially I thought of him as somewhat of an annoyance, an addition to the already chaotic Trauma-ER tour of duty or as a potential source of “buena mano”, wherein one toxic patient comes in and the rest follow suit (to which my duty group is known for most of the time…). I was wrong. I salute this brave man. I cannot offer him anything else but my service and I am honored to have saved a HERO.