ONGPIN.
Since it’s Chinese New Year, some old thoughts strike me. Way back 2007, summer before college, my mom and aunt (mom’s cousin) would always go to Ongpin. No, not for some bargain or what. For some Chinese Medicinal Procedure because Ate Ne had a cervical cancer.
I didn’t what stage it was, but she had stopped responding to chemotherapies.
She had been going there for multiple of times when they told me I should had my thyroid checked-up.
My thyroid was a bit large. My lola has this non-toxic goiter, and the doctor said I also had one. My hormones were alright but results of ltrasound showed that my thyroid was a bit larger and it had nodes then.
And mom brought me there. China town was so crowded. Every side was like a public market to me. I wasn’t exposed to Manila (MCR) then.
One of the reasons why I’ve always been saying “Ayoko sa Maynila. Di ako mabubuhay dun.” (but I did survive here in Pasig nga lang.)
Chinese medicine is very traditional. The ‘doctor’ would only grab your wrist, feel and count your pulse then he would tell you what’s wrong with you, which part and the severity. The ‘pulsing’ time was only about 30 seconds, then he would give you a prescription written in Chinese of course for your medicine. But before that, you should choose between capsules and tablets and the herbal medicines.
Then off, 400 pesos was the consultation fee (Not bad). The consultation time won’t last for ten minutes, five minutes was the maximum with my experience.
Upon stepping outside the small room, I would utter to myself, “yun na yun?”
There were too many patients, around 100 already before lunchtime. Many of them were oldies, on wheelchairs, almost nearly dying. Good thing they still had hope but man and I was sure they were just leaving things to the matter of faith.
Imagine how my face would look like, falling in line for something you’re not sure of.
Then we would go to the ‘pharmacy’ were different roots, leaves, dehydrated and not were piled up. We would show the prescription then the ‘pharmacist’ would already know what to give. They had those weighing scales. They would weigh different roots, mushroom and leaves in one plastic clear bag then poof, 700 pesos for that.
We would boil those ‘dahon-dahon’ and drink the extract and I would always end up almost throwing into disgust. The taste was ugh, very different. Can’t describe. That was for a week then the next weekend we would come back there to see changes.
I even tried the tablets and pills and found myself drinking almost 20 tablets per day! I stopped because I was always palpitating.
Can’t imagine I was believing those stuff. Idk. Death is inevitable with cancer. My aunt died months after.
