I was somewhat comforted after a long tearful prayer while I was driving home last night. I told God I was laying all my fears at His feet. I may be alone in this fight for my daughter but I am not really alone. God has always been with me. If it weren’t for Him I would have crumbled a long time ago because I’m weak.

Trial after trial, I am being broken into many pieces but I am going to be built over and over by my Maker. He is making me stronger so I can give my strength to other people. I must be strong as well for my daughters.

I started the day appreciating the sunshine and flowers. I haven’t stopped praying.

Prayer of thanks that I have a roof over my head and resources to support my daughter’s medical needs. I’m so thankful that I have my family to support me. My mom will be staying in my house for a while to cook Twin I breakfast and see her off to school while Twin A and I will be in PGH. My sisters will look after my household and take care of Twin I’s meals.

I can’t emphasize enough how good it is that we have already transferred here when this medical crisis had sprung up. I can’t imagine managing my life if we still had been living in QC with Twin I left only with the househelp.

I can get past this. I have to.

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Tomorrow is the first day of classes for my 8th Graders. I’m back to waking up at 5 am 😴🥱

But I’d rather have this than being awakened every hour by nurses and fellows/residents as they poke and pry my patient. Plus Twin A had to go to the bathroom with assistance if she’s hooked up to the IV.

Just like a year ago, I’m here waiting for a vacant room at the pedia ward. It’s a long queue.

The earliest we can be admitted is Aug 20. IDS said it’s fine, it’s not an emergency procedure anyway.

My stomach is full of acids because I had been so tense the past 24 hrs. The admission still says “GI TB rule out lymphoma.” We were never in the clear. 🥺

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This morning when I left home, the traffic was horrible inside the university campus. I thought it was college admission test day. My guess was confirmed because there were a lot of people milling around outside UP Manila. I heard the staff at the PGH admissions office talking about the test.

I remember my exam 29 years ago… I didn’t do any cram studying. I just relied on the review sessions we had at our high school during the summer break until the first quarter of the school year. Then on the exam day itself, I brought with me bars of Snickers and a jug of water. Easy-to-eat sugary stuff was best for brain-numbing exams, I learned. I thought I breezed through English/Filipino reading comprehension and abstract reasoning. Science was ok but I was squirming in my seat during Math. I would have been confident about my high chance to pass but Math made me doubt my whole existence.

The results were out by mid-January. I passed my first choice course. After I saw my name on the board (in those days, you can only see your name on physical boards), I immediately computed my grades. I figured if I flunk all of my subjects in 4Q, I would still graduate from high school. From that day on, I stopped caring about my academics and just concentrated on enjoying the remaining days of high school. I carried a point-and-shoot film camera and took photos of random stuff, people, and the rehearsals for the school play (I was part of the principal cast). I was documenting memories. Most of these photos ended up in our yearbook and the playbill.

It was as if the university admission test was the end-all and be-all of my young existence. Getting in my university was my parents’ goal because 1) they don’t have to pay for tuition again as part of the faculty privilege; and 2) they thought our prospects for employment would be brighter.

I would worry about this when my kids start 10th grade. Review/cram school starts in 11th grade but I have to prep them at 10th.

Our infectious diseases specialist dropped the bomb a few minutes ago: We need to be admitted again at PGH for biopsy.

She was concerned about the lymph nodes and still thick intestine walls seen in Twin A’s last MRI.

I’m scared. Super scared.

I will secure the admission orders from our hema-oncologist and will soon start the admission process, which is long and tedious.

Please Lord, don’t let it be something else…

😭

Good thing I had the brakes adjusted this afternoon because I had an impromptu drive to SM Sto. Tomas this evening. I had to go back to Acer there to have my mom’s laptop checked because one of the latest Microsoft updates has a fatal bug that rendered the OS unusable. Windows Explorer keeps on hanging. I don’t know if it was a late Crowdstrike update or an equally devastating one. I had been tinkering with it and was trying to get to Task Manager but the whole thing freezes. I could have reset MS at BIOS but my mom insisted that we go back to Acer, so I couldn’t argue. Besides I couldn’t extract the files before resetting the laptop.

So off we went but it was late, the service center guys already went home and only the sales team were there. 😩

I have to go tomorrow morning to the nearest Acer Service Center, which is luckily in our town. My mom is nagging me to have it done earliest tomorrow morning because she has a meeting at 1 pm. As if files extraction and Windows reset are quick. 😣

After weeks of constant rains, we’re given a fair weather today. Perfect for cardio exercises.

It was refreshing, after being locked up for days because of the southwestern monsoon rains. I was motivated to be more serious with my weight loss program after ranting on this blog the other day.

And of course, I want to catch the sunset outside.

It’s so easy to fall back into bed after a day of exhausting my brain doing admin and editorial stuff. Attended an online press briefing and filed a story right after. I only got to have my lunch at 2 pm because I couldn’t let go of the story until I submitted it to the editors. I also edited a rush story, which was a quick job but I had rewritten some paragraphs since the reporter wrote the story on her phone since she didn’t bring her laptop, thinking there wouldn’t be a time-sensitive story from the event she has been to.

During my 4km+ walk, I passed by the former site of my elementary school, which is now taken over by the university. My elementary school was private, which was owned by the PTA, but was leasing land from the university. It was founded by the same people who helped establish this university, ergo the Americans. The school has relocated to the next town, where large tracts of land could still be purchased.

Anyway, many school events were held on this mini-stage and the adjacent grounds. Several of these events were singing contests. Of course, I joined them and it didn’t enter my mind that I wasn’t good enough. Hahahaha! The audacity of the younger version of me!

We had a bigger stage on the other side of this complex where we had our recognition rites and several stage presentations. I clearly remember I had been voted to play Gloria Estefan and lipsync that Seal Our Fate song with backup dancers in 6th Grade. It was 1991 or 1992. I had a photo of that event held on the bigger stage. I felt so humiliated by that performance and I thought my classmates hated me that’s why they made me do it.

Hahaha! Memories that are almost 40 years old.

Sigh.

I’m cooling down in my balcony now. My world has gotten smaller again.

I’m not angry at the caller; I always expect men to be shallow. I’m angry at the comments in this video. They’re getting under my skin.

Men do not understand that women’s bodies morph and get destroyed during pregnancy. Carrying humans inside us once or multiple times can really stretch us out of shape. Carrying multiple babies at the same time can literally kill us. Breastfeeding babies for several months to a year will make our  boobs sag. Breastfeeding mutiple babies at the same time will make our boobs into sad sacs of fats. They will never be perky again. Ever. Unless  husbands give us money for a boob job.

Our  bodies will never be the same again. Men will have to accept that.

Hormones and the ravages of pregnancy will make sure we will never be our old selves again.

On top of these, add the stress of 1) raising mini parasitic humans, constantly clinging to us literally and figuratively; and 2) mental burden of keeping the house in order while 3) earning a living. Mothers are already spent by 8 pm. We really are dead in heart, mind, and body by that time. We don’t have the bandwidth to even have a walk around the neighborhood for 30 mins. Those who are lucky to maintain a slim figure post-pregnancy until kids are 15 years old are those 1) with husbands who help them raise kids and keep the house in order i.e. husbands who equally share the burden of raising a family and keep the household intact; 2) rich with a lot of maids and do not have to work for a living and have all the time to spend in the gym; 3) rich enough to be able to go to plastic surgeons and enroll in Marie France and some weight loss and toning spa; 4)  won the genetic lottery.

How dare the husbands demand that we keep our 20-year-old bodies after baking kids in our ovens for 9 months—the kids the husbands demanded without having to go through all the horror of being pregnant and giving birth and being sleepless for 2 years because infants wake up every 2-3 hrs! How dare they demand that we should keep our hips at 36″ when we had to eat for three people to keep two humans inside us alive for months! If we could only shrink back our hips to 36, we would! How dare they demand that we go to the gym to do an hour of cardio and resistance training after waking up at 5 am, cooking breakfast for everybody, making sure the kids get to school fed and clean, making sure the husband is well turned up going to work. And we still have to go fix ourselves, barely fed, to get to our workplace on time. Yet these husbands do not even help clear the table and wash dishes!!!

We are already exhausted by mid-day, man! Gym or running around the neighborhood is least of our priorities. If we are no longer  worrying about what to cook for dinner, taking care of laundry, or cleaning up after our kids, then we’ll talk about gym. We’ll talk about special low-calorie diet. We’ll talk about yoga and pilates.

How dare they demand that we shrink our bodies when we are suffering from hormonal imbalance because we have polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS)!

I am still fat despite my OB-gyn applauding my blood work because I managed to keep myself healthy, except for the insulin resistance due to PCOS and/or genetics. She was amazed by my discipline when it comes to cholesterol/diet.

But I’m still fat.

We mothers struggle so much with negative body image and low self-esteem because of shallow husbands. If you want a hot wife, then don’t demand to have kids, or work yourself to death to afford maids and drivers, or help with the fucking child-rearing and household chores!

Fucking morons.

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Yes, I am angry and the trauma of being told that I’m losyang and my boobs are droopy and ugly never left me. Told by a man who passive-aggressively demanded to have kids but didn’t lift a finger in helping raise them.

I was so brainwashed that I believed I was ugly and I was already checking Belo for contact details so I can ask for a bust lift and liposuction. I went for brisk walks, doing two Academic Ovals in UP Diliman for under an hour despite exhaustion from work because I felt I was repulsive to look at.

It took me 6 years before I felt I am beautiful.

To the men in the comments section of that YouTube video, FUCK YOU!

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