REFLECTIONS
I AM AN IMMIGRANT
Teresita Bacani-Oropilla, MD
Why am I here?
I
am a retired physician. I come from the eastern part of our earth, dubbed“ the Pearl of the Orient Seas,” the Philippines. My nuclear family and I are also proud US citizens having migrated, lived, loved and raised another generation in this country for almost half of a century, 44 years to be exact. My husband rests in peace where the sun shines bright in Kentucky.
Life in the Philippines was great. Being professionals, we belonged to the middle class. I had a thriving pediatric / family practice using much of the training that I had previously acquired as a rotating and pediatric resident at the University of Louisville after graduating from medical school in the late 1950’ s. For 15 years, with great satisfaction and limited resources, I treated whomever and whatever came to my clinic, adults and children alike. I treated pertussis, malaria, helminthiasis, typhoid, tuberculosis, and the like; revived a victim of the dreaded“ Cholera El Tor,” and even reattached a finger that had been“ hanging there for a week” instead of cutting it off per request of the mother.
Malnutrition was rife. I advised on raising premature triplets, and fed children suffering from kwashiorkor with donated samples of powdered milk or eggs from their only family hen. I also introduced immunization for children and“ cured” a deaf grandmother, to the delight of her family, by removing impacted cerumen from her ear canals. Now she would hear the horn from the tricycles as she crossed the streets!
My husband was an executive manager in a diversified plywood lumber / agricultural company. Our young son and daughter were in private schools. We were respected leaders in our community. Life was good! However, Communism was spreading in the neighboring countries. Ngo Dinh Diem was assassinated in Vietnam. Cambodians had been killed by the millions, divested of property and sent to the fields to raise food. The Philippine local communists were beginning to take hold of the farmers in our mountains. Our American Maryknoll friends advised us to leave before the Philippines would also be overrun.
It took us four years to apply and be issued a proper visa to enter the US as professionals. By then martial law had been declared in the Philippines and we were allowed to take out $ 1,500 for our family, $ 500 each for us two adults, $ 250 each for our two children, and our clothes in four suitcases.
In retrospect, there were many adjustments for a newly impov-
10 LOUISVILLE MEDICINE