Category : Diary/Journal

Sub Category : N/A

Her name was Anna…, or Alma, I can’t be sure. She too wasn’t sure. I met her a few years back during my senior year in residency. I was rotating outside my base hospital, as an internist on training, doing a month long stint to complete my psychiatry cases. A formality before I am allowed to take my specialty exam. 

The sanitarium was small, privately funded, housing 10 females, 14 males, and 3 children. The structure was that of an old house fractionated into five main parts: the lounge area, the pantry, the female and male dormitories, and the nurture room where the pediatric patients were placed. 

My main purpose of being there was to learn the basics of clinical psychiatry during a time when the discipline was under Internal Medicine. It has long earned the right to be a department all on its own. 

My task in the sanitarium wasn’t heavy as compared to where I came from. But not being a psychiatrist, I was treading on unfamiliar territory. 

I met Anna, or Alma in the nurture room. She was very pretty. Her eyes were huge and she had dimples on both sides of her cheeks. She  was also Schizophrenic. 

Most nights, Anna, or Alma would be seen either phasing her room, like a caged wild animal, or gazing at the moon from a barred window nearby, occasionally howling like a wolf. 

On one MSE session I ask Anna the usual questions, “ Do you know why you are here?”

“Dahil salbahe ako”, “because I am bad”, she said.

“ how have you been bad?”, I asked

“ kasi hindi ko maiwan ang buwan, kahit hindi niya ako pinapatulog”, “because I can’t stay away from the moon even if it robs me of my sleep”, she said. 

Anna or Alma was not allowed in the lounge. She had to be kept in a locked room, watched closely by orderlies. Her behaviour was erratic, often lashing at doctors and nurses, howling and biting, forcing the nurses to sedate her almost round the clock. 

Antipsychotic made her catatonic, unable to respond to stimulation, barely human. 

“ tinatawag ako ng buwan”, “ the moon is calling me”, she told me, as I entered her room one night during my rounds. I asked her what she meant, but she resumed her catatonic state, facing the window, gazing at the moon. 

The next day she was gone. She climbed on her barb window and dived head first on the floor. I was the only acute care physician in the house. I did my best to save her. I did my best to catch her, to bring her back,

 Back to what? 

Back to a dark, stinky, lonely cage she had been kept in for two long years; Back to her delusions and warped reality; Back to her isolation, to stare at the moon, yearning to be free; Back to strong sedations and antipsychotics; Back to a life where she was barely human. 

Yes, I tried to save her. And I cried when I failed 

She wanted to be free. 

She was 10- years-old


Everytime I look at the moon, I remember Anna, or Alma, and I wish she is finally happy.