I distinctly remember when I was a child, my mom who worked as an RHU nurse, would be called for by local folks if somebody is delivering a baby. Most of these deliveries happen at night or at dawn. And my mom would be there almost the whole night waiting for the baby to come out.

As a token for spending the entire night with them patiently waiting for the baby, staying up all night and still had to work the following day (such is the work in the RHU), the husband or close relatives of the woman who gave birth will give vegetables and fruits and sometimes live chicken to her as gifts.

I have never encountered such practice while I was studying Medicine in any of the hospitals I attended to in Manila. And I thought that it was a thing of the past. Until I had my own practice back here in the province.

My husband’s practice deals mostly with geriatric patients. Most of this patients are suffering from hypertension (high blood), diabetes, and other complicated geriatric diseases. He spends one day each month giving them free blood sugar examinations with free consultation, one day each week of free consultations to senor citizens, and he gives free samples to those who cannot afford to buy medicines. Sometimes, with a little cajoling, he can easily lower the price of consultations (much to my disagreement HAHAHA!). He is so soft hearted that sometimes he gives everything for free. And in return to all his goodness, patients come with baskets of vegetables, fruits and live chicken.

This practice of giving continued up to this time. And our fridge has never run out of vegetables and fruits coming from patients. In fact, our meals are mostly based on the available vegetables given by patients.

Now don’t get me wrong, its not only patients receiving free goods who are giving something in return. Even paying patients do, especially those who had been with us from the time we started. During harvest time, we receive shrimps, bangus (milkfish) and lots of other fishes from fishponds. This is a classic example of giving from the heart.

Look at the pictures of chickens. Are they a sight to behold? They have multiplied and grown bigger. And all of the big ones came from patients. Some of them are now gone because we cooked them. But we stopped the practice of killing them when my kids refuse to eat chickens coming from our backyard.

Tags: backyard, chicken, gifts, tokens, vegetables and fruits

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 30th, 2009 at 4:53 pm and is filed under Family, Food, Health. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.