Love as the greatest miracle

By Ramil Gulle

 “HE LOVED HER BACK TO LIFE” is how one colleague described what Chet did for his wife Margie, as they stayed for more than three months in India while she recovered from two near-fatal aneurysms. Their ordeal—and the miracles that followed—are all in Chet’s book “88 Days in India: A Pilgrimage of Faith, Hope and Love”

 LOVING AND EMBRACING LIFE. Chet (far left) with Margie (second from right) and their children, Catherine, Patricia, and Mark.

 HE DIDN’T HAVE ANY MONEY IN HIS WALLET on their first official date. He had invited her to the restaurant to celebrate his birthday—but as things turned out, she ended up paying for their meal. In terms of romantic etiquette, that was nothing less than a disaster.

And yet, it was this same guy, Chet Espino, who would spend 88 days in India caring for that same woman who paid for their meal—now his wife, Margie—after she suffered two aneurysms during her official trip there. Chet and Margie’s story is truly inspiring in both the romantic and spiritual sense. Their story is told in detail in the book “88 Days in India: A Pilgrimage of Faith, Hope and Love”; the book’s nearly 200-page length is a compilation of Chet’s daily e-mail updates, sent to members of an e-group created by her friends. The e-group served as a support network of prayers and wishes for Margie’s healing. It was a book that, as Chet says, had practically written itself.

The couple’s life-changing ordeal happened in November 2008 when Margie, as Business Features Editor of the Philippine Daily Inquirer, was invited by a private firm to cover the company’s corporate social responsibility awards ceremony. What was supposed to have been a four-day business trip turned for the worst when, during a trip through Faridabad, industrial district of the Indian state of Haryana—about an hour from the nation’s capital, New Delhi—Margie was stricken with an aneurysm.

The company flew Chet to India on November 29^th, where he finally joined his wife in the hospital. It was a desolate and frightening time for Chet, who had no clear idea of his wife’s condition, or even if she would still be alive once he found her in the hospital. He writes in the book:

“The 11-hour trip to New Delhi, including a lonely, five-hour layover at Singapore airport, was very frightening. There was always the fear of not knowing if I was going to find Margie alive in India… The bumpy ride from the airport to the hospital in Haryanna district was eerie. The haze formed by mist and dust that enveloped India let me know all the more I was indeed in extremely unfamiliar territory.

“Within an hour we arrived at the hospital in Faridabad. My heart beat faster as we made our way through the corridors and into the intensive care unit. Margie, my beloved wife of 17 years, mother of our three children, whom I kissed goodbye just days ago when I brought her to the airport in Manila, was there all right.

“She was in coma.”

Chet watched over and took care of Margie there for 20 days, until the time when it became urgently necessary for her to be moved to another hospital in New Delhi; it was the best facility available to treat her condition, which had become critical.

For more than three months while Margie was under the care of Indian doctors in New Delhi, it was an emotional roller-coaster ride for Chet and his teenaged kids who were left in the Philippines to fend for themselves while their parents were in India. Margie went through two aneurysms and had to survive further complications including hydrocephalous, meningitis, bedsores and bouts of infections.

Margie showed signs of recovery at one point, only for her to be confined in the ICU yet again when a second aneurysm struck, causing her brain to bleed. After she shook off, miraculously, the major clinical events that occurred, she still had to recover her normal brain functions. There were times when her brain could not process what her eyes were seeing. She’d lost most of her memory, even forgetting Chet himself. She told him at one point, “I’m a married woman.”

It was indeed a great struggle for Chet, Margie, her family and friends, until the day when she finally returned to the Philippines on February 26, 2009. It was a homecoming that was also still the beginning of more recovery, a slow resurrection back into the fold of her loved ones. She still couldn’t walk. She had to re-learn normal human functions, which meant painful physical therapy sessions.

“I used to wonder why we need to have a health card, but now, I’m using Medicard. Medicard has been taking care a lot of our medical bills. It’s good we have a health card now,” said Margie, who is still undergoing physicaly therapy and other treatments. Her recovery is ongoing, although the degree to which she has regained her health and functioning is just amazing.

The president of Medicard, Dr.Nicky Montoya, even visited Margie a few times at the hospital here in the Philippines. Chet and Margie recalled that they never knew he was actually the president of Medicard because he never introduced himself as such. It was only much later, to their surprise, that they found out that Dr. Montoya was not merely a representative of the HMO.

A deeper love

Fast forward to 2012. Margie is back at work, editing the Business Features section of the Philippine Daily Inquirer. She is still recovering—a fact that is made noticeable by a gimp in her left leg. Margie, however, is every inch a living, walking miracle. A recipient, according to her and Chet, of God’s miraculous providence—it was really God that pulled them through and restored Margie back to an amazing life.

Margie says that her love for Chet has grown deeper with the knowledge of how much he struggled to help her recover. Chet, on the other hands, says that he came away from the experience with the insight that in a marriage “it’s really not about what you can get from your spouse in the marriage; it’s about how much you can give your husband or your wife, and how you can keep on giving.”

It’s touching to hear them recount their story, three years after their experience in India—even when they joke about the times when Chet was courting her. She and Chet revealed that their courtship phase was marked by what could be described as a comedy of errors—mostly because of Chet.

Filipinos can learn a lot from the story of Chet and Margie, a story that is best told in Chet’s book. It’s a story of how a husband, who once couldn’t pay for his wife-to-be’s meal, was able to “love her back to life” as one writer put it.  It’s a story of how God works miracles in His own inscrutable way, to show us a model of true faith.

Inspiring medical care

The humorous anecdotes make the love story between Chet and Margie more human, more touching and more real. But there’s another story—besides the story of their faith and the story of their love—that one reads as a subtext in “88 Days in India: A Pilgrimage of Faith, Love and Hope”: it’s the story of how providential it was that Margie’s illness happened when she was in India.

Many of those who were receiving updates from Chet while he was with Margie in India were probably surprised at the quality of medical care that she was receiving. While the Indian healthcare system has been recognized as one of the best in the world for many years now, it’s still different to see it from Chet’s perspective.

Chet gives a grateful account of the competence and concern displayed by the Indian doctors and medical staff. Margie’s first neurosurgeon in that hospital in Faridabad was the pillar on whom Chet relied on for strength and hope when it came to her medical treatment. And yet, even the doctor had to admit that he no longer knew what to do next, when Margie had a second bout of bleeding when a second aneurysm struck.

Chet was very resistant of the suggestion that Margie be moved to the hospital in Delhi, fearing that a transfer would endanger her more. He only agreed after he had a husband-to-husband talk with the doctor. Chet asked the doctor, “If your wife was in my wife’s place, would you transfer your wife to this other hospital?” When the doctor said yes, Chet consented to the transfer.

The medical team took care of Margie in the hospital in New Delhi. It was at that hospital that Margie recovered from her complications and where she became well enough to be fit to travel back to the Philippines.

Learning from India

According to Chet, what struck him most was how the Indian doctors treated patients with a spirit of humble service. He explained that the Indian doctors who attended to them put on no airs, and even drove modest car models. And of course, Chet believes that the expertise of Indian medical care, along with faith prayers and God’s providence, was a big factor in Margie’s recovery.

Chet also mentioned that doctors in India are very aware that word of mouth about how they treat patients will impact the reputation of Indian medical care, and so they always strive to do their best—especially since India is now a hub for global healthcare travel or medical tourism.

So Chet’s book is also, in its own way, a story of how important it is for any nation to bring its healthcare up to excellent standards. Indian medical care took off to a new level when the government worked with private and public healthcare providers to raise and meet world-class standards. In India, this is done through accreditation with the National Accreditation Board for Hospitals and Healthcare providers or NABH, which is one of the international accrediting bodies under the ISQua (International Society for Quality in Healthcare) just like JCI and others.

 “It was the story of Chet and Margie that made us realize how good healthcare in India really is,” said Joyce Alumno, Executive Director of HealthCORE, a think tank for research in global health travel and now the country representative of NABH International.

According to Joyce, she was advocating along with DOT and DOH the quality of medical care in the Philippines for years, only to be awe-struck by the story of Chet and Margie’s experience in India.

“When I heard the story of Chet and Margie, I was very humbled upon realizing that, while the Philippines has very good doctors, nurses and other medical staff, our own healthcare system still has a lot to learn from Indian medical care,” said Joyce. She cited the fact that Margie was given first aid in a small lying in clinic in Fadirabad as an example.

“Margie and her companions were desperately pooling money in order to pay the clinic. They ended up paying only P6,000 all in all, and the clinic even gave them a bagful of medicines for Margie to use, which was good for few months’ supply. The incredible thing is, even a small lying in clinic in India is competent enough to give initial emergency to someone like Margie, who suffered from a potentially fatal aneurysm. That says a lot about the high degree of healthcare quality in India.

“If the lying clinic didn’t have the competence, then they would have failed in the initial emergency care of Margie—and who knows what could have happened. And they were able to help save her life—only at a cost of P6,000. Imagine if we could do the same thing here? Imagine what would happen if even small Philippine clinics gained the competence to provide quality care in potentially life-threatening illnesses—and at lower cost. If we could do the same thing, all Filipinos would benefit, especially the poor,” said Joyce.

The story of Chet and Margie inspired Joyce to go into talks with NABH of India to ask them to assist the Philippines learn from India’s healthcare system. These talks resulted in HealthCORE becoming the official Philippine representative of NABH.

Currently, NABH is working with HealthCORE in providing seminars and workshops to Philippine healthcare providers, to help them begin the process of upgrading the quality of their operations and services to become world-class like India’s. Philippine healthcare providers who attend these HealthCORE seminars and workshops also have the option to apply for international accreditation through NABH International, the global accreditation arm of NABH.

As Chet mentioned during this interview, “In life, there are no accidents.” So there may be readers out there who are encountering Chet and Margie’s story for the first time, or those who may have heard about it in passing. Well, it could be that Providence is leading them to a path towards renewed faith or simply to a source of inspiration in loving and living. In that case, it would be a good idea to get a copy of Chet’s book, which is a love story that we all need to hear about.