There’s a particular discomfort in being competent at one thing and incompetent at another. For years, I knew what I was doing. I could walk into a room and trust my training, my experience, my reflexes. That certainty shaped not just my work—it shaped how I moved through the world as a physician.
Then everything shifted.
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I’ll never forget what the EMT told me that night:
“The patient died on their way to another hospital, Doc.”
It was only thirty minutes after I received the referral—a multiply injured patient from a hit-and-run. In the chaos of emergency medicine, that moment crystallized a painful truth: in the Philippine healthcare system, Patient X—who has no one, and no resources—has alarmingly slim chances of survival.
Even those of us within the system know how overwhelming the costs can be. I’ve heard my kin say, “Health is expensive these days,” and I’ve swallowed that frustration more times than I can count.
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A physician-writer exploring medicine, movement, learning, recovery, and the outdoors.
