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Resurrection, in more ways than one
AS I WRECK THIS CHAIR By William M. Esposo
The Philippine Star 2008-09-07
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Your Chair Wrecker is resurrected this day in a manner of speaking. I’ve just returned from a 10-day confinement at the Makati Medical Center for a threatened kidney rejection.
As with any threatened kidney rejection, it became a matter of life and death. It was to be the first serious case of a threatened kidney rejection I suffered ever since I received a kidney transplant on January 9, 2002.
The recent medical problem did not focus on the borrowed kidney itself. My transplanted kidney became the victim of an infection that emanated from an injury in the left leg, below the left knee.
Sometime late July, a friend of mine accidentally injured my left leg in trying to help me with my wheelchair. It was a seemingly “harmless” bump that one wouldn’t think could result in something life threatening. But because I am taking a blood thinner, that made me prone to internal bleeding. The seemingly “harmless” bump resulted in a massive lump.
Eventually, infection (pus) set in and that triggered my immune system to become hyperactive. Now, for those with a kidney transplant, the immune system is purposely lowered in order to be able to keep and maintain the borrowed organ. The immune system is our natural protector against foreign bodies entering our system. A transplanted organ, no matter if sourced from a close relative, is a foreign object that the immune system will attack.
Those with kidney transplants are able to keep the borrowed organ because medicine has found a way to lower the immune system to a level where it does not attack the borrowed kidney. But despite immuno suppression, when there is a big infection somewhere, the immune system becomes hyperactive and the transplanted organ is inadvertently attacked. Thus rejection happens.
My normal creatinine level fluctuates from 1.3 (normal) to an allowable high of 1.7 ng/nl. During my recent crisis, my creatinine level went as high as 3.8 ng/nl. That immediately put me on RED ALERT status.
But with my good doctors working round the clock, headed by the legendary Nephrologist, Dr. Claver Ramos, with friends from the Focolare, Gawad Kalinga, Couples for Christ joining my family in prayer, I was very fortunate once more to elude my eventual face to face meeting with my Maker.
As it is, I have already been allowed a second (1988) and third (2002) lease on life. This is easily the fourth lease. The Good Lord must have wondered what I did right to deserve the entreaties of so many good souls as no doubt many good souls prayed lately that I be allowed to wreck more chairs.
Of course, there are the doubting Thomases who will insist that the extended stay was nowhere what I’d like to project it to be. For one, there is Carlo Gentile of the Focolare who insists that I have been granted these added leases on life simply because God is not yet ready to meet with me.
Expect a MoA-AD resurrection
I don’t think that the Chair Wrecker column is the only one about to stage a resurrection. Expect the stinking MoA-AD on the BJE (Bangsamoro Juridical Entity) to do the same.
The BJE will resurrect not because Madame Gloria Macapagal Arroyo (GMA) wants to revive it but because she will find it very hard to say NO to US geopolitical designs in our region. You see, only the idiots really think that GMA is a powerful, strong leader — mistaking a bad temper and bad manners to be hallmarks of strong leadership.
By idiots, I resort not to name calling. Rather, I refer to the term often used by the eminent Prof. Emmanuel Q. Yap of the People’s Patriotic Movement that clinically describes idiots as those who do not know the historical truth. In this regard, we do have many idiots running around — some of them purporting to write and even teach history.
In canceling the GRP Panel, GMA merely sought to protect her flanks from the fallout (read impeachment) of the MoA-AD scandal when the nation suddenly woke up to the sellout of the richest part of Mindanao and one of the most strategic locations for an eventual US-China confrontation. But can GMA just as easily dismiss US interest to establish their base in the BJE from where they can control the oil fields on the South China Sea and check the shipment of China’s oil supplies from the Middle East and Africa?
Of course, China is not to be expected to let this US maneuver happen unchallenged. Expect China to launch its countermoves. Having dealt with China like a hidden lover, GMA will find herself caught in a superpower squeeze play — the kind of squeeze play teeny weenie ants find themselves in when they play elephants against each other.
Cha cha wants to resurrect too!
Consistent with their rather thick skin, the Congressmen are dancing Charter Change (Chacha) anew. “They want to consult the people” they say. As if they ever listened to what the people wanted!
What poppycock! What humbug! What did we ever do collectively in our past lives to deserve these representatives!
Most of us wanted a perceived illegitimate ruler impeached. Did these congressmen even listen to us at all? NO, all they flaunted to our faces is that they have the numbers. Survey after survey, the majority expressed their desire for an impeachment process to settle the raging issue of the stolen 2004 presidential election. And these jackals have the gall and the temerity to boast to us that they have the numbers — that this is a numbers game!
Just what are the cretins going to consult us for? So they can add insult to injury?! Is that it?
Listen Speaker Prospero Nograles and your ilk. Your gift bag days in Malacañang are soon going to be over. The judgment of the people will soon be upon you. Do not tempt the fates. Everything has a breaking point. You may not want to be around when this nation decides that finally, enough is enough. You delude yourselves when you think that the people who taught the world the finer lessons of People Power have altogether forgotten the reasons of its success with that formula.
The country is at war, whether we like to admit it or not. There are superpowers that will fuel that war in Mindanao. Wars have a way of making the under control uncontrollable.
The equation has been altered beyond what you can control or even hope to influence. This is not the time to play dangerous games. This is not the time to be stupid. This is the time to rise above yourselves.
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