A Christmas (card) story

Over a delicious Thai dinner in a restaurant about two years ago, I sat beside a pretty porcelain-skinned lady who was battling cancer but was very optimistic about beating it. She had two young daughters to raise, and that was enough reason for her to live. Besides, she said gratefully, she had just been operated on by a world-renowned surgeon, an icon in his field. “Do you know how I met him?” she asked me and then proceeded to tell me an amazing story of how a simple act of thoughtfulness from her part would later come full circle and save her life.

The following piece was first published on this space on Dec. 6, 2005. The response from readers was like an emotional avalanche. Pinky says it must have been because it showed people “how small things in life can have a big meaning, and that there are still many good people in this world.”

Pinky said that after I wrote her Christmas card story, she decided to “pay it forward” every day, starting with the abandoned old people of the Golden Acres Home for the Aged in Quezon City.

Pinky has won her battle with the Big C, but she knows that she always has to be on guard. Her daughter’s greatest fears, she said, is that when she checks into a hospital, “I might not come home.”

But Pinky knows God is good. That’s why I am retelling this story.

* * *

One day, a poor boy, who was selling goods from door to door to pay his way through school, found he had only one thin dime left and he was hungry. He decided he would ask for a meal at the next house. However, he lost his nerve when a lovely young woman opened the door.

Instead of a meal, he asked for a drink of water. She thought he looked hungry so she brought him a large glass of milk. He drank it so slowly, and then asked, “How much do I owe you?”

“You don’t owe me anything,” she replied. “Mother has taught us never to accept pay for a kindness.”

He said, “Then I thank you from my heart.”

As Howard Kelly left that house, he not only felt stronger physically, but his faith in God and man was strong also. He had been ready to give up and quit.

Many years later, that same young woman became critically ill. The local doctors were baffled. They finally sent her to the big city, where they called in specialists to study her rare disease.

Dr. Howard Kelly was called in for the consultation. When he heard the name of the town she came from, a strange light filled his eyes.

Immediately he rose and went down the hall of the hospital to her room.

Dressed in his doctor’s gown, he went in to see her. He recognized her at once.

He went back to the consultation room determined to do his best to save her life. From that day he gave special attention to her case.

After a long struggle, the battle was won.

Dr. Kelly requested the business office to pass the final bill to him for approval. He looked at it, then wrote something on the edge and the bill was sent to her room. She feared to open it, for she was sure it would take the rest of her life to pay for it all.

Finally she looked, and something caught her attention on the side of the bill. She read these words...

“Paid in full with one glass of milk”

(Signed) Dr. Howard Kelly.

* * *

This glass-of-milk for the soul was forwarded to me via e-mail. It may or may not have happened, it could be fiction. But it is a reflection of many untold true stories of how a kindness “paid forward” can come back to you a hundredfold.

The following story is as real as the headlines on this paper. I share it with you so that you will always believe in Christmas and in the goodness of man — for on Christmas Day, God became man and saved the world.

* * *

Pretty Pinky Tobiano, a chemist by profession, was attending a medical forum in Tokyo in May 1994 when she and a colleague decided to take a cruise on Tokyo Bay at the sidelines of the convention. During the cruise, then 21-year-old Pinky made friends with several people, including a specialist from the Sloan-Kettering Hospital in New York named Dr. Jatin Shah.

After the cruise, they all promised to keep in touch. Then they all bid each other goodbye and returned to the routine of daily life in their respective homelands. As we all know, some solid friendships are formed amongst people in a tour group. But it is just as true that there are many acquaintances that end after a tour or a convention, when faces dissolve into our memory bank just like the colors on a paintbrush dipped in water.

But Pinky did as she promised, and that Christmas and every Christmas thereafter, she would send greeting cards to Dr. Shah and the other friends she made on the Tokyo cruise. Dr. Shah never responded to her greeting cards, but she remembered him as such a nice person so she sent him a Christmas card every year, year after year.

Fast forward to 2003. By this time, Pinky had become a successful businesswoman and she was rushing to the airport for a business trip to China when she slipped on the stairs of her house and hit her head on the steps. She was rushed to the hospital for a head scan but somehow, the technicians went beyond the head zone and scanned her throat as well. There was nothing wrong with her head but two suspicious lumps were — accidentally — spotted in her throat. They were found to be cancerous.

* * *

Pinky was referred to surgeon Dr. Sammy Ang of the Cardinal Santos Memorial Hospital. During her consultation, she found out that Dr. Ang trained at Sloan-Kettering and she casually mentioned that she had met a doctor named Dr. Jatin Shah from Sloan-Kettering on a cruise nine years ago.

Dr. Ang’s eyes widened. “I trained under Dr. Shah!” he told Pinky, adding how respected and famous Dr. Shah was in the medical community. And he told Pinky something more. Dr. Shah’s area of specialization, for which he was internationally renowned, was throat and larynx cancer!

Dr. Ang then asked Pinky to take a chance and to e-mail Dr. Shah. Pinky checked Dr. Shah’s nine-year-old business card, but didn’t find an e-mail address, just a fax number. So she sent him a note reintroducing herself and told him that she had throat cancer (stage 2 papillary carcinoma). Just to make sure he remembered her, she faxed him, too, a photocopy of one of their pictures during the cruise and she encircled her face and wrote, “This is me. You once told me to call you in case I needed help one day.” She wrote down also her cell phone number. She hoped for a response, but did not expect it to be so swift.

At 2 a.m. Manila time, her cell phone rang. It was Dr. Shah. Dr. Shah, who was by then in his fifties, told her, “Of course I remember you. You were that child on the cruise. I am sorry, I’ve been so busy and have not been able to answer your Christmas cards.”

Dr. Shah then instructed her to tell Dr. Ang to ring him up during her next consultation. At 4 p.m. the next day, 4 a.m. in New York, Dr. Ang roused his former teacher and they conferred on Pinky’s case.

When they hung up, Dr. Ang turned to Pinky in amazement and told her, “He’s flying to Manila to operate on you.”

Dr. Ang told Pinky the Philippine College of Surgeons had long been inviting Dr. Shah to come to Manila for a lecture, but Dr. Shah had always declined due to his busy schedule. But he was making a special trip just for Pinky and while in Manila, he expressed willingness to address the Philippine College of Surgeons as well!

It was December 2003, nine years to the day of Pinky’s first Christmas card.

* * *

As she was being wheeled into the Operating Room of the St. Luke’s Medical Center, Pinky noticed that there were so many doctors around. Apparently, they had heard that Dr. Shah was going to do surgery in the hospital and they wanted his autograph!

When Pinky awoke after her delicate operation, the first thing Dr. Shah told her was, “The cancer’s gone.” He had taken it all out.

Dr. Shah watched over Pinky during her recuperation, and sent her flowers to cheer her up. The day before she was scheduled to leave the hospital, Pinky asked Dr. Shah for his bill. He looked at her in the eye and said, “You have long paid me in full for my services. The nine years in which you sent me Christmas cards without fail are more than enough.”

He flew back to New York the next day.

* * *

It has been two years since Dr. Shah has operated on Pinky and though she has to undergo therapy still, Pinky is doing well.

“Dr. Shah was a stranger who gave me back my life. I have learned never to take the people you meet for granted. They could save your life,” she says.

And by the way, she already mailed Dr. Shah’s Christmas card five days ago.

(You may e-mail me at [email protected])