by Johanna Patricia A. Cañal, MD, MHA, MSc Pregnancy can be one of the most wonderful experiences in a woman’s life. At the very least, it is life-altering. It is a 40-week long process that changes a woman’s body and her physiology. How does one know that she is pregnant? The simplest way to tell…
by Johanna Patricia A. Cañal, MD, MHA, MSc There’s been a lot said lately about hospital bed capacity. The national government has ordered hospitals to allot 30% of their bed capacity for COVID cases. Seems easy enough to understand, right? But this is not quite so simple. Authorized bed capacity is the maximum number of…
by Johanna Patricia A. Cañal, MD, MHA, MSc Ask any doctor. Viruses are scarier than bacteria or parasites or fungi. Ok. So what’s the big deal? Good grief, they’re not even complete cells! Technically, they’re just genetic material and protein that’s looking for a host. And maybe that’s precisely its problem. They can attach to…
by Johanna Patricia A. Cañal, MD, MHA, MSc Germs…that’s what we called them…before we knew the differences. I won’t go into the details here but, in general, it is one of anatomy and physiology. A bacterium is a microscopic organism that is made up of a single but quite complicated cell. Our body has a…
by Johanna Patricia A. Cañal, MD, MHA, MSc Let’s talk about something that is not usually discussed out in the open: constipation. Simply put, constipation is infrequent bowel movements or difficult passage of stool. Easy enough to understand. But, let’s make this clear, there is NO specific number of bowel movements that is normal. Perfectly…
by Johanna Patricia A. Cañal, MD, MHA, MSc I am a cancer specialist and work with cancer patients every day. I’ve been questioned many times why I chose to specialize in Oncology. There are so many other specialties. I’ve also been asked why Radiation Oncology, which sounds so exotic…and frankly, quite scary. No, the answer…
by Johanna Patricia A. Cañal, MD, MHA, MSc Ever wonder why you have so many doctors? Wasn’t there a time when we had one family doctor and he addressed all needs from childbirth to signing the death certificate. This was during a more idyllic time in Philippine history when life was less complicated. That was…
by Johanna Patricia A. Cañal, MD, MHA, MSc It has been described as having someone sitting on your chest. The chest is very heavy. The left arm becomes paralyzed. Some patients just collapsed. Others were able to drive themselves to the hospital. Some reported epigastric pain or “sinisikmura pero iba”. The problem with a heart…
by Johanna Patricia A. Cañal, MD, MHA, MSc Attack. He had an attack. Inatake si Mang Juan. For lay people, that is fairly understandable. That’s bad news. For doctors, that just leaves us confused. That could mean either of 2 totally different entities. A heart attack happens when the heart loses its blood supply. Huh?…
Last night, a post from a netizen Mico Tan, quickly went viral showing a kid with her lola sitting while checking out of what seems to be a mobile phone. According to Mico, her name is Emma Abucay Monta, a vegetable vendor earning about 20 to 50 pesos a day. She saved all her earnings…
by Johanna Patricia A. Cañal, MD, MHA, MSc Does it seem to you that your doctor wants too many tests done? More blood, more imaging, another urine test? Does he just want you to part with your money? It may seem so, but there is good reason for this. Many different diseases manifest the same…
by Ria Leonardo We all know what it is. At some point especially during this quarantine period, if we hadn’t already installed it in our smartphones, we have (at the very least) watched a few videos, viral or not, appearing on our Facebook or Twitter timelines. And I think I can speak for everyone…