IF SYMPTOMS PERSISTS Dr. Jose Pujalte, Jr. “The serial number of a human specimen is the face, that accidental and unrepeatable combination of features” Milan Kundera (b. 1929), Czech author, critic. Immortality , pt. 1, ch. 3 (1991). No one wants her face to sag. The idea scares vain women...
IF SYMPTOMS PERSIST Dr. Jose Pujalte, Jr. “All of this and the curious knee-cap fitted above the wrought greaves...” Hilda Doolittle (1886-1961) U.S. poet “Loss” in “Sea Garden” (1916) Life is harsh. We say a woman’s legs are ugly if they are bony and her kneecaps, knobby. We say a...
IF SYMPTOMS PERSIST Dr. Jose Pujalte, Jr. “What peaceful hours I once enjoy’d!” William Cowper (1731-1800), English poet and hymnodist Walking with God (c.1779) Here’s a conundrum: Here you are WFH (working from home) and yet – you’re stressed (!). It comes as an irony that William...
IF SYMPTOMS PERSIST Dr. Jose Pujalte, Jr. “All the best days of life slip away from us poor mortals first; illnesses and dreary old age and pain sneak up and the fierceness of harsh death snatches away.” Virgil (7-19 BC) Roman poet Georgics No. 3, 1. 66 (36-29 B.C.) You’ve taken your early...
IF SYMPTOMS PERSIST Dr. Jose Pujalte, Jr. “Come lovely and soothing death” Walt Whitman (1819-1892), American poet “Leaves of Grass” (1900) I missed my mother’s death that Friday by an hour or so. I was at the Philippine Orthopedic Center seeing OPD patients when my sister from the US...
IF SYMPTOMS PERSIST Dr. Jose Pujalte, Jr. “Go, said Jesus, your faith has healed you.” ( Mark 10:52) The verse is not exactly complete. The rest of it is “Immediately, he received his sight and followed Jesus along the road.” Is there an overlap between miracles and placebos? “Placebo”...
IF SYMPTOMS PERSIST Dr. Jose Pujalte, Jr. “The least pain in our little finger gives us more concern and uneasiness than the destruction of millions of our fellow beings.” – William Hazlitt (1778 - 1830) English writer, Edinburgh Review, Oct 1829 The trouble with hand injuries – fractures...
IF SYMPTOMS PERSIST “Here I and sorrows sit...” – William Shakespeare (1564-1616), English poet and playwright King John , Act. iii, Scene 1 (1623) Does “work from home” mean sitting for long periods in front of the laptop too? Why is a zoom meeting done sitting down? Dr. Jose Pujalte,...
IF SYMPTOMS PERSIST Dr. Jose Pujalte, Jr. “O Jesus, send me a wound to-day” — Siegfried Sassoon (1886-1967), English poet and novelist, The Old Huntsman and Other Poems (1918), Stand-to Good Friday Morning Swearing “Ma-tetano ka sana!” (“I pray you get tetanus!”) quickly...
IF SYMPTOMS PERSIST Dr. Jose Pujalte, Jr. “What is vertigo? . . . It is the voice of the emptiness below us which tempts and lures us, it is the desire to fall, against which, terrified, we defend ourselves.” – Milan Kundera (1929-), French - Czech writer, The Unbearable Lightness of Being...
IF SYMPTOMS PERSIST Dr. Jose Pujalte, Jr. “People brought to him a man who was paralyzed, lying on a cot.” – Matthew 9:2, Common English Bible. To injure the spine and what it protects, the spinal cord, upends a life in an instant. If you break your neck with the cord crushed, everything...
IF SYMPTOMS PERSIST Dr. Jose Pujalte, Jr. “People brought to him a man who was paralyzed, lying on a cot.” – Matthew 9:2 , Common English Bible. To injure the spine and what it protects, the spinal cord, upends a life in an instant. If you break your neck with the cord crushed, everything...
