A Reluctant Infirmarian

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A Reluctant Infirmarian

Br. Mervin G. Lomague, OP

Never during my entire initial formation years have I been assigned as an Infirmarian until recently, when the Holy Spirit made a prank on me and moved the Studentate Council to give me such task. I was neither excited nor displeased, and I welcomed it simply because I thought it would not demand much time from me. Now that I am on my second cycle of my academic studies which only has a number of class days (I take up MA in Cultural Heritage Studies today in the University of Santo Tomás) and I am back as well to the Social Communications Team of the Studentate which only operates seasonally, the additional task of being an infirmarian was sure to be as easy as eating butong pakwan. In fact, when a brother is sick, all an infirmarian does is to bring him food or prepare him an excuse letter for the class he will be missing. As an infirmarian, I may be assigned to accompany a brother to the hospital but very seldom does it happen since usually a brother succumbs only to a simple cold, fever or stomachache. 

Then COVID-19 struck Manila and we are all in lockdown. After the localized quarantine of the Studentate and the precautionary measures were put into place, we all felt safe. After all, we all look healthy and no brother is manifesting any shortness of breath or flu-like symptoms. KADAUPAN, our Justice, Peace and Care for Creation Group, started packing relief goods. A brother ingenuously devised an improvised face shield and with the help of the rest of the brothers, they had these face shields reproduced for the benefit of the frontliners connected to Sto. Domingo. As for us working in the media ministry, we started having the Holy Mass viewed via digital platforms, prepared an online recollection for the people and had almost everything streamed in the internet from the Exposition and Benediction of the Holy Eucharist to the Exorcism Prayers and Deliverance Prayers against Covid-19! For the sake of social distancing, all that we hold in common were done in a manner that we should not come close to one another. 

As for me, I was doing my personal 14-day countdown while praying to Our Lady of La Naval that we all be spared from the virus, lest an entire generation of Dominicans will be left in a building turned into an infirmary. What we were dreading about took place when one after another, brothers began manifesting symptoms similar to that of COVID-19 patients. Within a span of 2 weeks, we had people under strict room quarantine. One of my batchmates was among them. The task I thought would be as simple as eating butong pakwan turned out to be like eating a whole buko. Personally, the burden of being an infirmarian is not in assisting the sick brother. It lies on the fear that one may contract the virus and become an asymptomatic carrier himself. For me, nothing is scarier than being a carrier of this virus. Imagine, one negligence on my part may cause a possible outbreak in the building occupied by more than 50 persons. 

Our anxiety later turned into sighs of relief a week later when we were told that he was tested negative. He told me that he actually cried the moment he learned the result. I understood what he meant. He was brought to the hospital one night without any idea of what he was suffering from. All he knew then was that he could hardly breathe – a symptom that a person under quarantine should take seriously. I was told that he was crying sorry to his brothers repeatedly as they frantically brought him inside the van. He asked our head infirmarian who happened to be a nurse as they were on the way to the hospital: “Am I going to die?” 

When the news came to me, it hit me hard. I cringed with the thought that it all happened when I, the infirmarian who was assigned to look after him, was not around. I was in the set of Lakbay-Buhay doing our last-minute production for our online recollection. You cannot imagine the guilt-feeling I had then, for I admit that since he was placed under quarantine, I was not really looking after him. One of my batchmates volunteered to check on him daily and bring him meals since everyone knew I was busy over the daily coverage of the Holy Mass. That night when he was brought to the hospital, I was waiting anxiously for updates. It was around past 2:00 in the morning when they came back. He looked fine except that he moved slowly and breathed heavily. He was smiling at me as he tried to describe what happened earlier that evening. He did not know that deep inside, my guilt was eating me up for not being there during the time when he needed most his infirmarian. Seriously, the next day, I brought him all the food I could bring from the refectory and stuffed them all into his stainless steel meal container. It became this way for quite some time until he messaged me one afternoon: “Fray, bawal akong kumain ng marami…” See. That’s why even my other batchmates do not trust their health concerns to me. 

Looking back, I learned that the work of the infirmarian reminds us of something fundamental to our preaching as Dominicans. For how could we preach charity if it has not been given first to a brother or sister in our own community? How could a preacher preach about the suffering of the world if he in the first place is estranged from the suffering of his brother? And if indeed every apostolate we do outside our convents stems from our own practice of apostolate in the community; it should imbibe those endeavors, such as Justice, Peace and Care for Creation, should first find its place within our own communities. As for us who are more encouraged to stay indoors during community quarantine, I know now that I do not have to go far in order to reach out to someone. 

An infirmarian knows very well where to start.

Source: Phildom, March-April 2020