INTO THE STORM (How Our Shoes Got Wet at the Igorot Stone Kingdom)

We thought we eluded Typhoon Carina until it caught us at the Igorot Stone Kingdom...

where storm rain cascaded down steep streets
flooding the dining room of a Farmer's Daughter
and made us wait with love almost lost in a Trulab.

Suddenly, we were enveloped in a storm of surreal and scary hospital appellations...

adenocarcinoma with a lepidic growth pattern from NDCH  

who can do a thyroid transcription factor 1

but not the thyroglobulin immunostaining at BGH. 

We have descended into the storm amidst a flurry of weekly meetings, I-JET matters, the national dialogue in Vang Vieng and a regional convening in Phnom Penh, a forum and a summit in Vientiane, and early morning email catch ups that not even the payment of P216,000 for my labors in May and July can dissipate.  

My shoes were soaked as I sought refuge in leftover pinatisan, day-old carinderia food, an early birthday bash, and even paid the bills despite the still missing remittance from May.

I prayed for divine intervention from San Sebastian and the Sacred Heart of Jesus to deliver us to the best oncologist that we can afford as I forced my way through wet bike trails.

St. Luke and one of the doctors in Nueva Ecija responded with an encouraging initial prognosis and a positron emission tomography scan schedule on July 31. 

One day at a time.

I prayed during my Grab ride to the airport after checking out of Hop Inn-Morato, then waited for almost 6 hours for TG 574 in Bangkok before arriving into a  late night wecome reception in Vientiane...