T.L.C.

Every time I enter the STAR office with a bit of a sniffle, my colleague Bea Ledesma looks at me as if I’m the monkey in the movie Outbreak. Well, maybe I am, but hell, if you don’t have your Echinacea and garlic bulbs with you (good for both flu and vampires), well, then bless you.

My immune system is as weak as a Lohan’s resolve in a nightclub. Years of having Celini SARS, has forced me to learn to pay attention to the little things. Scratchy throat that feels like cheap fabric means a 90-second gargle of Orofar-L. Lymph nodes starting to feel like Pam Anderson’s boobs call for vitamin C, Dr. Schulze Cold and Flu shot (totally a miracle tonic found online), garlic oil dropped in my ear (I smell like adobo for a couple of days but it keeps people — more importantly, people who are sick — away) and colloidal silver under my tongue. Sounds complicated, I know, but I truly dread the long days of a sick, neurotic woman alone with her thoughts.

This year I was actually worried. I had a hacking cough for three weeks, too long for my usual hardy tolerance for epic sniffles. I went to St Luke’s in The Fort. First of all, it looked empty which was perfect for me. The paint was not the antiseptic and institutional mental hospital green. It had the feel of a business hotel. Let me tell you, at this point this is not an effin PR piece. It’s a true story.

I went to the reception with my shades askew looking perfectly like one of Almodovar’s Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown. 

“Hi, how are you, may I help you?” said the perky receptionist. Her makeup and hair were done perfectly.

“I have a cough — a bad one. I really want to be in this hospital.” I paused and took in my luxe surroundings and remembered all the bad hospitals that I have been to that had bacteria as wallpaper. “I really want to be here.”

She smiled, she knew what I meant. It was the Debussy playing in the background, the great concessionaires’ area (like a small Glorietta 4 in its heyday, if you ask me) and the smell of real lemons, not crappy SARS-masking lemons. I was meant to convalesce here.

“Well, you need a pulmo ASAP!” she said almost playfully. Then I realized they all had the same hair and same makeup (who gave them this hot Maria Callas peg, by the way?). They were like 48 Days Later zombies that went to finishing school. At least I tried to convince myself that. Could it be that I actually found a hospital I liked? No, loved?

Munchausens, here I come!

“I should take you there myself!” she said, almost giddily. Will they still be this nice when there are more patients? Why was I thinking of Desperate Housewives instead of Grey’s Anatomy while I was following her?

Here it is: sick, neurotic woman alone with her thoughts.

We entered the lift and the operator was sitting on a stool like a ballerina at rest. Again, the Maria Callas (Onassis era) hair and makeup was present. I really must get the name of their stylist.

I landed on the sixth floor and I saw the cutest clinics. “Cute” should never describe a clinic. Like “tender” should never describe a rapist. But here, cute clinics seemed to be as natural as the over-efficient hotel, er, hospital staff. There seemed to be a cute clinic contest. It didn’t help that I “accidentally” went to each clinic looking for my doctor. One room was kitted out with Verner Panton chairs (internist), another looked like my old apartment Shiloh with handblocked wallpaper and a chandelier (of course it belonged to a dermatologist!) and my pulmonary doctor had a Zen-looking clinic. 

After being told that I just had allergies and was not going to convalesce at St. Luke’s, I dared to imagine how the hospital suites would look. Would my bed nurse look like Maria Callas, too? What would the amenities be? Kiehl’s? Remede? Shu Uemura? It would not surprise me.

I went down and ate at the concessionaire area, choosing Market, which sold different Filipino and Asian specialties like they would in a fully air-conditioned Salcedo Market. Oddly, they were playing house music in this area. Hardly apropos. I saw this as a mistake made when the Wizard of St. Luke’s took a wizz and left his other friends in charge. Again, everyone was too friendly: it’s the kind of too friendly that you get in nightmares. But while I’m awake, I can get used to this backlash against bitchiness.

It just tells us three things:

1.We are all capable of being over-efficient and still smile and look good while doing it.

2.Things can always be better.

3.Debussy makes everything better.

Now, take that vitamin C.