No longer a medical issue

The medical case of former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo has been complicated by the legal debates and political noises over her request to travel abroad for further medical examinations. Unfortunately for her, President Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III sustained the Department of Justice (DOJ) recommendation to reject the travel request due to “inconsistencies” in her travel itineraries abroad and questioned members of her trip’s delegation.

What is supposed to be a purely medical case became a full-blown national interest issue as invoked no less by President Aquino to justify government’s rejection of Mrs. Arroyo’s latest travel request to seek medical consultation and possible further treatment abroad.

President Aquino refused to lift the travel ban on Mrs. Arroyo, citing he had to put national interest above that of a congresswoman of Pampanga, who faces a non-bailable offense of electoral sabotage. Mrs. Arroyo is also facing plunder charges before the Ombudsman and the DOJ.

DOJ Secretary Leila de Lima, however, noted the ex-president submitted to the DOJ different sets of itineraries and delegation to these trips that included the former first gentleman Jose Miguel Arroyo who himself is facing a number of graft and poll fraud cases before the DOJ and the Ombudsman.

Mrs. Arroyo’s official spokesperson, Elena Bautista-Horn explained Mrs. Arroyo already missed two appointments with specialists abroad and so they have to redo the travel arrangements. Horn said Mrs. Arroyo needs to see bone mineral/metabolism disorder specialists outside the Philippines. She said doing the bone biopsy here in the Philippines remains an option and also a possible stem cell treatment in Germany.

While indeed Mrs. Arroyo is recuperating well from her surgery, Horn said, the ex-president has been taking 25 different kinds of medicines everyday and daily dose of injection and is still wearing a neck brace. Horn expressed fear that the intake of such large number of medicines might eventually affect Mrs. Arroyo’s kidney and liver and lead to other possible complications.

Despite these protestations from the Arroyo camp, P-Noy concurred with the suspicions of De Lima over the changes in her itinerary that include countries with which the Philippines has no extradition treaty. That is, in case Mrs. Arroyo opts to become a fugitive from the law. Yesterday, De Lima bared alleged information provided to her that the Arroyo couple was purportedly out to seek political asylum in Dominican Republic.

The former President elevated the matter before the Supreme Court (SC). She and her husband asked the High Court to declare unconstitutional DOJ Circular 41, by virtue of which they were placed under watch list order. Arroyo’s battery of lawyers argued such watch list order by the DOJ is usurpation of court’s power to issue hold-departure order.

Now all these legal and constitutional issues of Mrs. Arroyo’s questioned medical travel request are thrown before the 15-man High Court to resolve. The battleground now shifts to the SC, headed by Chief Justice Renato Corona, when they convene their en banc session on Tuesday to take up this urgent petition filed by Mrs. Arroyo’s camp.

However, these legal and constitutional issues will have to weigh in with the medical opinions of experts. In this case, the doctors of Mrs. Arroyo as against the government’s own medical team, and perhaps, independent parties like the Philippine Medical Association (PMA) and other groups of specialists.

This brings me to the point earlier raised by Malacañang Palace for the Arroyo camp to let the doctors, not her lawyers and political allies, to do the talking about her true medical condition. But it would be imprudent for doctors to talk about their patient’s condition. If legal professionals must observe lawyer-client confidentiality, doctors are bound by patient-doctor privileged information.

Thus, the Palace challenge was less than candid since medical abstracts of Mrs. Arroyo have already been forwarded to Health Secretary Enrique Ona for his own assessment. In fact, Dr. Ona himself personally examined and checked Mrs. Arroyo’s condition. Citing Mrs. Arroyo is not faced with life-threatening medical condition based from Ona’s findings, the DOJ Secretary stalled acting on the travel request before finally rejecting it anyway last Tuesday.

But by sheer luck, I got the chance yesterday to meet one of the attending doctors of Mrs. Arroyo, Dr. Mario Ver who joined the launching of the book about our late publisher Max Soliven held at the Manila Peninsula in Makati City. Dr. Ver is actually the surgeon who did the neck surgery on Mrs. Arroyo and he also happened to be the bone surgeon of Soliven. Ver used to be the director of the Institute of Orthopedics of St. Luke’s in Quezon City. He is an orthopedic surgeon practicing at both St. Luke’s Global City and in QC.

With obvious hesitation, Dr. Ver initially would not want to discuss his patient’s condition, except he confirmed that Mrs. Arroyo has this “very rare” bone disease that he and St. Luke’s have never encountered before.

Dr. Ver said his patient turned out later to be suffering from asymptomatic case of “hypoparathyroidism.” After he did the first surgery, Ver said his fellow team of doctors, Brian Cabral (nephrologist) and Bobby Mirasol (endocrinologist) diagnosed Mrs. Arroyo as suffering from hypoparathyroidism which prevents the full healing of her neck bones that were placed with titanium implants.

This was discovered after Mrs. Arroyo had her first neck surgery in July this year at the St. Luke’s Medical Center in Global City, Taguig. Her doctors only found out the root of Mrs. Arroyo’s medical problem after her implants got dislodged that necessitated a second neck surgery to take it out last August. In the same month, she underwent a third spine surgery to put the implants back on her neck.

“Even if she (Arroyo) was operated abroad, that (hypoparathyroidism) would be missed. But we’re fortunate, even with that condition, her surgery went well,” he pointed out.

Dr. Ver disclosed he checked on his patient just two days ago. He is happy to see that indeed his patient is recuperating well. But he admits his patient’s condition may still be up and down with such complications, if not managed by proper medical attention. As far as Dr. Ver sees it now, his patient’s case “is not a medical issue” anymore.