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“Blood pressure”

I was woken up by my sister that early morning, saying my mom needed me to take her blood pressure because she felt these pains on her chest. I had left my sphygmomanometer in my locker back at school, and I could only stare, helpless, as she tried to take her blood pressure on an automatic sphygmomanometer. All I could do was record the results on my phone and watch as she called her sister, a nurse, abroad.

My mom would always complain of chest pains, constrictions on her heart, but for some reason, I never really took them seriously, maybe because she never really made us feel that it was, or perhaps I was too insensitive to care. When she texted me that she would be going home from the hospital that day, all I could feel was this rush of relief, a breath that I didn’t know I held for so long. She could’ve been confined, things could’ve been worse. But there she was, back at home, like nothing happened.

On the way to a relative’s house one night, my parents were talking about things like “angioplasty”, “aneurysm”, and a myriad of prescription medicine. And at that moment, it made me wish that I listened to our MRL discussions more.

(01/09/2012)