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Doctors operated on a 39-year-old gay florist in a Cebu City
hospital recently to remove an object that somebody shoved up his
ass. The operation was successful but the doctors are in big
trouble. When the 15-centimeter long spray canister was being
extracted, the doctors and nurses started laughing. Somebody
captured the whole episode on video, particularly the laughing part,
and shared it with the world through the Internet.
Never mind that the operation was successful.
Their laughter has provoked a storm of protests from the clergy,
politicians and various groups. Calls for an official investigation
started to snowball.
The doctors and nurses apparently found the
situation funny. How could they not laugh? To suppress laughter is
no joke. I mean it’s not easy stopping yourself when your funny
bone has been tickled. Spontaneous laughter is an automatic reaction
similar to the casual scratch you make with an irresistible itch.
Of course, they could have bitten their lips to
avoid laughing. But some people said the patient should be thankful
they did not bother to suppress their laughter. To stop laughter
requires a major effort. It is a struggle and it would have
distracted their attention from the job at hand. The struggle to
stop laughing would have endangered the life of the patient.
According to press reports, video footage of the
incident was posted in the YouTube. As a doctor gingerly pulled out
the spray canister from the patient’s rectum, somebody shouted,
“baby out” amid loud cheers.
It was clearly a cheerful group. No one can say
with certainty that they were the first to give vent to laughter in
the operating room. But they may be the first group to be caught (on
video) laughing and chattering about somebody’s ass.
Health Secretary Francisco Duque said three
doctors and two nurses face charges and their licenses would be
revoked if found guilty of unprofessional behavior. “If protocol
was observed, it [surgery] would have been praiseworthy. Instead of
highlighting that we have excellent and world-class doctors, we
shoot ourselves in the foot,” he told reporters.
But some coffee shop philosophers said they
don’t agree with Duque and they question his metaphors. One
grizzled philosopher said: “Shot in the foot, my ass.”
Duque said other doctors pray before surgery.
“This is a far cry from what the medical staff did—they laughed,
talked and did everything else wrong. It’s shameful.”
And the coffee shop filosofo said: “Doctors
also pray after surgery when the patient is dead. If you were the
patient, which would you prefer: to see them laugh or pray?”
Monsignor Achilles Dakay, spokesman of the
Archdiocese of Cebu, said the blame should be on the patient and not
the doctors and nurses, who did a good job. He said the florist put
himself in an embarrassing situation by engaging in a homosexual
act. “People are blaming the doctors for what they did. But I
think they should blame the victim for what he did,” he said.
I think we are straying from the issue, which is
about laughing inappropriately. We could not laugh at what the
florist did because it was not captured on video. We can only assume
that the culprit was also laughing when he shoved it up.
But maybe the monsignor is right. Maybe, we are
missing the point even if we see the object.
Why blame the doctors and nurses, indeed?
Shouldn’t we be looking for the culprit instead? Authorities
should go back to the patient and retrieve (again?) from him the
name and address of his partner.
The monsignor said the incident was scandalous
and shameful and called on medical schools to put more stress on
ethics in the curriculum. He said professors should give medical
students plenty of pointers on morality. (Assuming, of course, they
already have the skill to retrieve objects from the rectum.)
It is unthinkable for politicians to be quiet in
the face of a scandal over somebody’s behind. Two bills were
promptly filed in the House of Representatives seeking penalties for
medical malpractice and a formal investigation into the incident.
Does it look like it’s too much trouble over a
simple operation on a person’s butt? The issue sizzled for days,
and it refused to die down.
Laughter, it seems, is not always the best
medicine. It can also be a bitter pill to swallow.
palaciosjp@sss.gov.ph
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