Memory lane

Cong Corrales

A FEW days before my death, I was born. I died in mid-March of 1974 in Annex II of the then Northern Mindanao Regional Training Hospital. Doctors were only able to revive me after they “cut down” a major artery in my lower leg.

I have so many fond memories in the now Northern Mindanao Medical Center. As I said, I was introduced to the hospital when it was just a training hospital. I practically grew up in that hospital.

Last week, when my brother called to invite me to the launch of their year-long centennial celebration, I was so excited. It is not every day that you get to celebrate 100 years of something because it takes literally a hundred years to do so.

“Housed in a building of mixed materials with a nipa roof, the Misamis Public Hospital opened on Oct. 1, 1917, in the district of Carmen, Cagayan, Misamis Province,” the centennial committee on its history written in its short summary of its 100-year journey to where and what it is now.

It was established at a time when the country was under American colonial rule. However, it was maintained mainly with funds from the Capitol under the then Governor Isidro Rillas, who served as Misamis governor from 1917 to 1919.

In 1932, the then MPH was constructed in its present location at the Capitol grounds. However, the hospital was destroyed during World War II. In 1945, it was rebuilt and renamed as Misamis Oriental Provincial Hospital.

As I told fellow columnist Rhona Canoy, that name seemed to have stuck. Until now, many Kagay-anons, when they flag a motorela, still inexplicably tell the driver: “Sa provincial, nong.”

In 1966, by virtue of Republic Act 4662, it was renamed and declared as the Northern Mindanao Regional Training Hospital. This was the first step in its journey to becoming a tertiary medical facility in the region.

My mother, Thomasita Bajao Corrales, was already a senior nurse then. I would eat my lunch with her at its cooperative canteen or at the room for minor surgeries at the dispensary.

The best part of growing in a training hospital was mingling with student doctors and nurses — lots of fond memories there.

While my contemporaries at Xavier University Grade School were busy with their kote and jolen, I was making cotton balls and vaginal gauze swabs with student nurses at NMRTH.

I was also privy to hospital grapevine. Let’s just say that I was aware of stories about the doctors and nurses. And man, are those stories saucy!

I remember Dr. Dy, with his goatee, ambling his way to the dispensary and never failing to remind me that he circumcised me, much to my chagrin as I try to strike up idle conversations with the student nurses.

There have also been dour memories with the hospital.

No one was with me during my graduation at Xavier University High School. Earlier that afternoon, my father, Emilio, had suffered his fifth cardiac arrest and was rushed to the intensive care of the then newly established heart center of the NMMC.

After typhoon Sendong ravaged our barangay in 2011, all my kids took their prophylactic shots against leptospirosis at the hospital.

Almost two years ago, my mother died at the hospital’s dialysis room.

Let me just say that the hospital has been an important part of my personal history. Maybe that’s the reason why I was also excited with its centennial year. Like a long-time friend, we share a lot of history together.

My brother who is working at the hospital now told me they are planning to hold various activities to highlight their centennial year. It began with the unveiling of the centennial wall in front of the hospital last week. He said they will hold a major activity every month until October 2018.

I can’t wait to cover each and every one of these activities.