Kasama ko

On Friday afternoon, I was uploading a video to YouTube as the office closed. I don’t have a key, so I had to vacate. I didn’t want to close my laptop, because it was in the middle of an upload, but it was raining outside, so I couldn’t really walk to anywhere dry and within range of the wireless signal. I ended up sitting on the ground directly outside of the office, huddling under the thin awning. It is in this position that I uploaded multiple new videos, and then my leg fell asleep to the point where it could have been amputated without pain. But as I mentioned, due to my dedication to my upload, and the rain, I was rendered immobile. I’m sure everybody in my town thinks I’m crazy. Then, when I was done with my upload and really had to pee, I physically couldn’t move because my leg was as dead as Ron Paul’s presidential chances. It was in this ridiculous position that I received a call from the Peace Corps Medical Officer telling me that David, another volunteer based on Siquihor, was in the hospital, and asking me to be his kasama.

I’ve never spent much time in the hospital, period, and haven’t yet been sick enough to go here, so I’m not sure exactly how things work in the United States, even. In the Philippines, if you are admitted to the hospital, you are expected to have a kasama (“companion” in Tagalog) with you to get prescriptions, food, etc. I don’t think there’s a call button for the nurses’ station, so I suppose if something dramatic were to happen, you would be responsible for alerting the staff. Visiting hours at this particular hospital go until 8:00PM, and then you’re required to sign in as the “watcher”.

As Peace Corps volunteers, we’re lucky enough to get private rooms while we’re in the hospital. Other options are shared rooms with curtains or even being placed out in the hall. No matter what the room set up is, a watcher is standard. So while I had the luxury of an incredibly narrow bed, other have to post up on plastic chairs in the hall or even share the patient’s bed. My particular duties in this case were to get supplementary food to add to the small portions served by the hospital, to take prescriptions from the doctors down to the pharmacy and bring the medicines to the nurses’ station (why they need members of the public as middle men in this process, I’m not sure, it has something to do with the billing procedure), and mostly, to provide company. I think the kasama routine is partially necessary and partially a cultural phenomenon. It’s probably more necessary in a more no-frills hospital where you have to provide all your own food.

Not that our room was totally frilly beyond the presence of air-con and cable television. If it weren’t for the helpful tips of my neighbor, an emergency room nurse, I would not have brought along a pillow, sheet, or towel, and it would have been pretty miserable. As it was, it was kind of like staying in a well-worn hotel room where the door is never locked and people are constantly coming in and out around the clock to stick thermometers under your friend’s armpit, take his blood pressure, and ask him about his bowel movements, as you try not to fall off your two-foot wide bed. It was actually the first time I’ve spent the night in the hospital since I came home as a newborn.

Here’s a picture of the set-up, and David:



This also seems like a good place to mention that my (emergency room nurse) neighbor and host family said that if I’m ever down in Dumaguete late without a place to stay or a ride home, I could go to the ER and inquire about a cot, or wait for an ambulance going north and just catch a ride. So far I haven’t taken advantage of this offer, but I think I might, just to be able to say that I caught the 2AM ambulance going home.