The Mysterious Medical Case of Marie Valencia
Pathography by: Marie Rosalina D. Valencia (Grade 12 HUMSS Quartz)
[Trigger warning: The content that can be read can be considered as sensitive to any person, serving as a backstory studying previous events of my life that happened and what most likely led to my condition.]
The year 2015, although it was a great year and it paved so many good things I know now and love in the present, it was extremely terrible, horrible and dark with the events that had happened as the year had begun. I had to face studying in a school-a year after a traumatizing incident had happened to me-as my parents thought about transferring me to another school in high school, so I had to stay and survive an entire one more year in the place where I felt most unwelcomed and better to have been forgotten about-mainly because, people had twisted the story, making the victim look like the bad person, and the bullies were the ones who were misunderstood more. I considered myself as a misfit, an outcast from my peers, I was not lonely as I had two of my best friends at the time accompany me and gave me good advice that helped me to survive. It was really difficult-outweighing the fact of standing out, and the idea of wanting to fit in and be accepted, not seen as someone different from the rest of the group-while struggling to maintain good grades for the sake of my family. Every day in that school felt like a battle of insecurities, shame, and sadness, with the feeling of being a flightless bird stuck in a cage with no hope to escape until a year later.
One weekend back in January 2016, I started to feel some sort of pain in my chest. The pain felt like I ate something I could not digest quickly so it got stuck in my chest, but I had not eaten anything during that time, it was more of like something deep inside of me was sinking, and moments later it became hard to breathe. I kept panting, hyperventilating, constantly drank water, and when I saw my reflection in the mirror, my entire face was bright red, as if it were flushed, and even though I drank something, this feeling of sinking, did not stop right away. I remember that I fell asleep in my bed and when I woke up, the feeling had disappeared-it vanished and I felt better as soon as I got out of bed. When my mother got home from doing her errands, I told her about this feeling I had, and she suggested that we schedule an appointment with a doctor at the nearby hospital close to our home.
By February, the hospital had to transfer our appointment to a different hospital since no doctor was available at the time to assist us with my check up. I remember riding a jeepney and walking far to a hospital that was across the municipal hall of the city. The doctor, who was a woman, asked me to explain what the problem was, and after I did, she checked my heartbeat, and then told my mother that she needed to have a look at my chest, because she believed what my problem was, was related or has something to do with my heart. Then next thing I knew, I was asked to change into hospital clothes, lie down on a bed, the doctor had applied some sort of jelly or oil to my chest and used something to scan and see the inside of my chest. After a while, she told my mother that when she looked at her monitor and saw what my heart had looked like, it had developed a small hole somewhere that could possibly grow big, mainly related to strong effects of my emotions.
This was when she explained how the hole is tied to my emotions, and advised me what to do, to go easy on myself, and learn to calm myself down whenever I would tear up and cry, as it would contribute to the hole in my heart tearing apart even more. My memory of this checkup is very vague, but I can assure anyone that the photos on the monitor showed the existence of this hole, and that my hearing is a hundred percent right as I listened carefully to the conversation the doctor had with my parent. I was supposed to be scheduled for a yearly checkup, but for some reason, my parents were never able to push through with it, and I had not seen the doctor for so many years since that one checkup, I cannot provide a picture of my medical record either, because my mother has no idea where she has kept the physical copy of it since then. If I can explain it better, according to Google, this problem of mine related to my heart could most likely be what is known as the Atrial Septal Defect (ASD), where there is a hole in between the two upper chambers of my heart, with the possibility of it existing since birth, as this can be passed down from family member to another family member. I could be wrong with the information about what my condition could possibly be, I can only give an update and confirm what it is the next time I will go to the hospital-which has not happened and cannot happen for a while because of COVID19.
