Liver transplant

It was a mini-People Power movement that saved a rural health physician from certain death last month.

Newspapers have already carried the news of the successful adult liver transplant operation done in the Philippines last March 10 by a team of 36 doctors at St. Luke’s Medical Center-Global City on Julito Sabornido Jr., a rural doctor working among the poor in Misamis Oriental.

I call it a mini-People Power movement, because numerous individuals had to help to make the operation possible. All the doctors offered their services for free, the hospital waived all hospital bills in excess of whatever donations could be received, PCSO sent P1 million, doctors such as Glenda Pua donated money, and – most heart warming of all – many of the patients of Juliet Gopez-Cervantes (head of St. Luke’s Center for Liver Diseases and director of the Institute of Digestive and Liver Diseases) even chipped in. Sabornido, who did not and does not have any money to speak of, depended for his life, as the playwright Tennessee Williams would have put it, on the kindness of strangers.

Since I was a patient at the same hospital at the time Sabornido was recovering, allow me to give my own views on the operation.

There are two phases in any liver transplantation.

There is the operation itself (described on the Web as one of the most expensive and most dangerous medical treatments in the world). Sabornido’s operation took 12 hours. The main surgeons were Allan Concejero (the main surgeon in over 100 successful liver transplants in Taiwan), Willie Polido, Monet Jordan, and Tony Yap. The transplant hepatologists were Gopez-Cervantes and Ian Cua. Gopez-Cervantes was the attending physician. (Incidentally, she was also my attending physician, so I could not have been in better hands.)

“Equally as important as the actual surgery,” says St. Luke’s VP for Customer Affairs Marilen Tronqued-Lagniton, “is the medical and nursing care after transplantation.” About the liver or hepatic transplant operation I know nothing, but I can talk about the second phase.

I can say without any reservations that the medical and nursing care at St. Luke’s Medical Center-Global City is first-rate (or five stars, if hospitals were rated like hotels).

Everyone at St. Luke’s is highly professional. The doctors carefully and clearly explain what exactly they are doing to your body, the nurses and medical technologists go about their duties with minimal fuss, the dieticians try their best to make hospital food delicious (if you have ever been on a no-salt, no-sugar, no-fat, no-cholesterol, no-nothing diet, you know what I mean), even the maintenance people do their work so fast you hardly even notice that they have cleaned your room or changed the sheets. When you are wheeled into the ICU or one of the laboratories for some procedure or other, everyone is pleasant and you have no sense that you are in serious trouble (even if you really are).

My doctors were awesome. Gopez-Cervantes (probably because she is a teacher aside from being a doctor) can explain in words even I can understand the most complicated medical mysteries. Similarly very patient with me and easy to talk to were my other doctors, such as Salvador Abad Santos, Myrna Bañares, Jose Nicholas Cruz, Rolando Kilala, Edmund Ong, and Edwin Villasanta. (I am not an easy patient, since I am a gullible consumer of medical sites on the Web and I like to challenge doctors who studied for 10 or more years with the “knowledge” I get from an hour’s surfing!)

My nurses were cheerful, polite, considerate, thorough, observant, and painless (that last adjective refers to the many times they inserted needles into my sensitive skin). Here is a list of those I remember (my apologies in case I missed or misspelled the name of anyone): Marie Ayongao, Herald Balaue, Marriane Dasig, Psalm Dato, Sharon Dioneda, Zipry Geraldez, Angelisa Gracia, Floyd Ilagan, Ma. Roseden Jacob, Jaycee Lanuza, Maricor Montejo, Dave Ordeniza, Prelyza Picwala, Carolyn Sazon, Rona Soniega, Robert Sy, and Katrina Mae Yu. To them all, my gratitude.

While I’m making lists, here is a list of the doctors that treated Sabornido, aside from the surgeons already mentioned: Gigi Abesamis, Robert Acuña, Eric Arcilla, Alejandro Arevalo, Noel Beley, Brian Cabral, Nancy Chio, Nathan Concepcion, Ernesto Datu, Erlyn Demerre, Teresa Estrellas, Dahlia Estrera, Narciso Fernandez, Glenn Genuino, Grace Herbosa, Cursill Ibay, Bernie Laya, Jonnel Lim, Rolando Lopez, Rey Rey-Matias, Rene Mendoza, Dennis Natino, Glenda Pua, Mercy Go-Santi, Wilfredo Tayag, Michael Villa, Roy Vizcarra, Ryan Zantua, and my own doctors Gopez-Cervantes, Abad Santos, Bañares, and Cruz. (Again, apologies if I missed anyone.)

Supporting the doctors throughout the Sabornido case were CFO Edith Simeon, Medical Directors Joven Cuanang and Gary Cortez, Vice-Presidents Annabelle Borromeo, Nora Collantes, Lagniton, Raffy Solis, and dozens of nurses, pharmacists, medical technologists, and nutritionists, as well as the Board of Trustees and top management of St. Luke’s.

As I write this, I am still under medical care, but Sabornido has returned to his charitable work in Misamis Oriental, living proof that there is no need to go abroad for liver transplantation, nor in fact for any other serious or not so serious disease.