Project Profile

I have a plan.

I’ve been following Humans of New York (please check it out, its really a nice!) and I was quite inspired. That’s how I got inspired to write about mama. I don’t even think she knows that I wrote a piece about her, and yes, we are facebook friends, but everyone who knows my mom would know that she doesn’t know anything about computers. Hence, she hasn’t read my blog. Haha

Anyboom boom pow!

I’ve decided to do something like Humans of New York.

I want to write about people. I want to write about the people I’ve learned to love and have met along the way. I want to write about them the way I see them because I believe that in a way, they deserve to know how incredible they are (even though they don’t know that I am doing this to them) and I want to share that with you. I want people to see how ordinary people become extraordinary. I want people to know that there is such a person living in this world. I want you to know how I think about people.

I don’t know if this is going to be a good thing. Or a bad thing. I just want a lot of things right now and this, I’m really excited about because this will be my 2014 project. I want to share the stories and the moments I’ve shared with these people to everyone.

So I’m sorry if you will be one of the lucky ones or (maybe) the malas ones, but I do hope that if I do choose you, please don’t get mad at me for sharing our story. I promise to not make you look bad.

Delia the Warrior Princess

10 days ago she almost lost her husband. 4 days ago her first granddaughter was born. Yesterday was her birthday. She is now 54 years old. (Sorry for sharing your age hehe)

Who is this person? She’s my mama!

Not a lot of people ask how the spouse is when the other one is in the hospital bed. Of course we can’t blame anybody when the center of attention is the one in the actual bed. But I want to share you how I saw mama those past few days (if you’re not familiar, stop reading this and read my earlier post and get in the loop dumb dumb!)

As I was saying…

We’re really not a family of criers. If we do cry, we don’t have those family moments where we hug together and cry. We simply choose to stay in a corner by ourselves and weep. Wipe our tears and look strong. I don’t know why we are like this, but I choose to think that we want to show our loved ones that we really aren’t as “affected” to the situation even though we all know we actually are.

When papa was doing his angiogram, I saw lola, mama, Tita Chelle holding their rosaries quietly praying while Tito Pat reads his newspaper. I swear, at the moment I thought papa was already dying. They all looked soooo pale and nobody was talking. I couldn’t help but notice how stressed my mom looked. I wonder what she was thinking.

When the angiogram was over and we found out that papa and mama both decided to have his angioplasty, it was the first time I saw mama smile. Lola and mama watched the whole operation, I opted to cry in the bathroom and waited outside. Again, I wondered what she was thinking. How can she watch that? What if something went wrong? I mean seriously, when I saw the blood I couldn’t even hold my tears.

Mama never left papa’s side the whole time he was in the hospital. She didn’t even want to go home and rest a little when papa was still in the CCU. The only time she left papa’s room was when she had to go get food heated and…

And… when ate was rushed to the hospital to give birth. It was so funny because she was just so excited. We were hanging out inside papa’s room and we heard that PNoy was coming to visit, but we also knew that ate was gonna give birth soon. When we found out that ate was gonna push that cutie pie out of her belly, she just left the room and said, “bahala na kayo dyan ha!” she didn’t even care that PNoy was gonna go inside papa’s room. Haha it was hee-larious!

Anyway, I just wanted to share to all of you that my mom’s pretty great. She’s a warrior. I guess all moms are. They become these giant soldiers with mighty swords or something and protect us from harm. I just want to write about her because I always share my daddy-daughter stories but I always down play her importance. So today, I want to let everybody know that mama’s awesome. She doesn’t ask much, but she gives a lot.

PS. In fairness to her, when PNoy came to visit, she still had the time to call me and remind me to make ham sandwiches.

A Heart Attack and a Baby

Good bye 2013, hello 2014!

This is a brief report of my first 10 days of 2014.

Im really happy 2013 is over. I hated that year so much I wanted it to end the moment it started. Im pretty sure a lot of you can attest to that. I mean really, it felt like I was at-the-bottom-of-the-pit-kinda-feeling. So I was very excited that 2014 was knocking at my door. I mean where else could I go right? I was already in a state where nothing can go wrong, like there was nowhere else but to go up! Right?

That’s what I thought.

The past 10 days of this year has been… how do I say this? CRAZY.

I will try to briefly tell you what happened.

on 1 January 2014, papa and mama decided to check themselves in at St. Luke's Medical Hospital for an Executive Checkup. I thought it was really smart of them to do this as they were both feeling something. Both of them passed with "normal" test results and went home the next day at around 2:00 PM.

By 5:00 PM, papa couldn't breathe. 

My father had a heart attack on 2 January 2014. I was on my way home when mama called me to go straight to St. Luke’s. I didn't know what was happening then but all I could do was pray to the Lord and ask Him why now? Don’t let him die, please! And all sorts of plea to God because I wouldn’t know what to do if he left us. I am a self proclaimed daddy’s girl and I honestly don’t know what I would do if I lost him. By the 3^rd, he went through a series of tests and more tests just to confirm that he did in fact suffer from a heart attack and that we needed to act on it quickly. By 11:00 am, his angioplasty was over and we thought he was saved. Few days have past and by Sunday, the 5^th, he went home to us with a smile on his face and we had our Sunday Best lunch. 

Everything was good. 

By the 6^th, I thought everything was A-okay, but mama texted at around 4:30 PM that I had to go straight to the hospital as papa was admitted AGAIN. I was at work when I got the message and decided to not wait anymore. All I can do was finish my work for the day while I silently cry and prayed to God to not take him. He was my pillar of strength and my inspiration. He was my dad after all.

Oh, did I mention that my sister, Ginny, was already at the verge of giving birth to the first apo of papa and mama? Well, yeah. So all this time, we were also waiting for the baby to come out. I didn’t even want to think as to how my sister handled all of it. All I know was that I could barely hold my tears every time I saw papa on that bed, what more my sister.

Anyway, back to my story.

He was admitted again because they saw that he had deep vein thrombosis on his left leg. We learned that it had reached his lungs and so they had to fix that problem. The only good thing about this was that he did not have to go under any kind of surgery. It was blood thinners and more blood thinners to fix the leg problem. I learned later on that if we did not see that problem the blood would’ve rushed to the lungs and he wouldn’t be able to breathe. 

I don’t know if God loves papa so much or if He listened to all of our prayers, but saving him twice in 7 days is just a miracle. Even the doctors said that they couldn’t believe how he survived a stage 2 heart attack and the deep vein thrombosis that reached 40% of his lungs. I don’t know. But all I can think of was that if I was at the bottom of the pit last 2013, I was at the bottom of the bottom of the pit this year. A place I thought never existed. I thought 2014 was going to be a better year. 

By the 9^th, Archie, my sister’s husband, knocked at my door and shouted, “manganganak na si ate! MANGANGANAK NA SI ATE!” (your sister is going to give birth! YOUR SISTER IS GOING TO GIVE BIRTH!)

By 10:00am, they went back home because she was only 1cm open. I don’t know what that meant, but her screams by 12:00 noon said that that baby wanted to come out already. And by 5:02 pm, baby Calia Denise Puno de Leon was born.

Whoever said that LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL knows what he was talking about, because that baby made us all realize that life is soooo freakin AWESOME. She’s just so cute and fat that you’d want to squeeze her all day. And you know what the good part is? Papa was able to see her.

So today, the 10^th day of 2014, two GREAT things happened today: (1) Papa was discharged from the hospital and (2) I got to hold Baby Calia for the first time.

Even though my first ten days of 2014 had a bottom-of-the-bottom-of-the-pit-kinda-feeling, it made me realize how lucky we are as a family. and how miracles do happen. and prayers do work. and that when there's life, there comes more life. 

Papa will now be eating tasteless foods for the next coming years, but im pretty sure he’d choose that over seeing his first grandchild grow up and be at more family events. We now have our new fat bundle of joy to love and to annoy as she grows up, and lastly, I am now out of the bottom-of-the-bottom-of-the-pit-kinda-feeling. 

I guess 2014 will be a better year after all.