Twenty feet outside me.

Ben, my long time friend, drove a hundred miles to fetch me from new jersey and take me to new york city. Funny how i could say that sentence without blinking. I feel like I'm one of those persons who travels the world. I mean how many people from my place could say that they jet off to florida when they feel like it? Go to chicago because they want a chicago pizza?
Or go to NYC because they just want to see the sun set over the Hudson River?

Where other people wade in the floods of Manila, I was wading in Soho New York City.

But for all the riches i have been blessed to experience, the struggle to be true to who i am is constant. You see success and free time could be a dangerous combination. Sometimes, the worse trial of a man's soul is having everything. When you lack, you learn to rely on faith.

And I was dangerously close to living a life that was all about me.

Benedict said that usually happens. He is successful. Parang kailan lang pareho kaming naglalakad sa SM, naka jeep pa. Commute. Tsinelas. It happened to him. The important thing is to regroup. Take a step back and learn from your mistakes.

Take for example me. Being in the american hospital system made me jaded. Wala na masyadong patient care. Puro patient cure. Do this, do that. No touch of the hand, no warm smiles for my patients. No sitting beside them and just laughing with them. I could save a life, but i wasn't touching it.

And that gnawed on me. Me, Cheen, who set out to be a great doctor. The same person who would work her butt off just to see a patient breathe again, the same person who cried for her patients' loss, the person who shared food with people who can't afford to pay her medical services, the same person who got angry when other doctors told her a doctor could not make a difference, isolated herself from the very people she vowed to help.

I guess i was narrow minded. I couldn't reconcile how some of the patients i meet are just miserable spoiled brats. But that's besidethe point. It was about me. Who i was, who i am and who i wanted to be. To always be true to the basics is hard. I could blame other people, how they stripped me of my basic trust, but i could always look on others and see how their lives, by their action or inaction, changed others.

So i started with changing me.

Me rounding after rounds. Talking to a patient. Holding their hand. Holding back tears. I'm not sure if i made any difference, but it made a difference to me. Earlier today, during rounds, one of the patients who came out of coma grabbed my hand and whispered, my daughter told me all about you doctor. She said you were great.

Such a big honor. But all i did really was i came to her room one night when she was critical, saw the fearful look on her daughter's face and then sat beside her daughter. We talked about her fears, her struggles and i just became a shoulder she could lean on. A familiar face in a place where the angel of death regularly visits.

And those regular visits meant a lot to her. It made them more relaxed, but it slowly changed me to who i used to be, and who i wanted to be. It's an everday decision. I don't think i could change the whole wide world, but i could make the people within my twenty feet radius feel the warmth of God's love pouring from this broken vessel. Maybe if i'm faithful to my twenty feet, it would go on to become thirty feet and forty and who knows how far?