The most important lesson I learned from Maam Famorca

It's surprising how tides can turn in just about any second. One day you feel so proud about a person's feat and mourn for one's death the next. That is exactly what happened to one of our beloved professors in the UST College of Nursing, Asst.Prof. Zenaida Famorca, RN,MPH.

I fondly remember the day when she first spoke about having the big C in class. I was in first year back then, taking up Fundamentals of Nursing. She was our facilitator for that subject and had been on leave for several days already. When she finally returned, that was one of the saddest days we had in class. As a jolly and light natured person, that day was an exemption. Before we ended the class she told us that she had to undergo some diagnostic tests since she felt a lump on her chest while taking a bath. It flowed like a regular class discussion, introducing some basic nursing concepts here and there, while she was narrating her experience. Of course, we were in first year back then so we weren't  able to follow the train of thought that much,not expecting that it was what it was. Then she proceeded in lecturing us about breast self examination.

What passion this teacher has, I said to myself after thinking about that day again when she tried to lecture us about a topic using herself as the example. It's like the book Tuesdays with Morrie on a different scale sans the daily personal visits to their home and the sappy life learning blahs. She continued to break it to us slowly with tears starting to build up in her eyes and those much needed pauses to collect herself again. Wiping her tears after telling us the whole story, she said that she needed to take another leave of absence for her own personal fight with cancer.

A year or so came and we were all jubilant about the news that Maam Famorca was already cured of cancer due to some foreign experimental drug that seemed to be effective. A few weeks after, we saw Maam Famorca teaching again with her new hippie curls (see picture above).

Fast forward to a couple of years, she became one of my reviewers for the local board exams. She was teaching Community Health Nursing (CHN), the admitted waterloo of UST Nursing graduates. Some of our batchmates for some unknown reason didn't attend/arrived late during the review sessions with her. So she spent some few good hours in expressing her frustration with our batch's attitude toward the review. She was so frustrated that not attending seemed like a personal fault to her.

The following day was the other instance that I saw her in tears. Before the review started, she told us how she felt so bad yesterday after the review having wasted some time sermoning those who didn't deserve to hear such a speech intended to those who weren't attending. She told us that she should've appreciated those who came since she was focused too much on those people who weren't there. She kept on saying sorry to those who attended. It was a perspective changing experience. I saw Maam Famorca's clarity of thought and humility in that seemingly commonplace experience. That is probably the most important lesson I learned from Maam Famorca, which is to appreciate whatever God gives to you and mind less those what you do not have.

Roughly after year I took the licensure exam, I heard that her cancer recurred and has metastasized (spread) to other parts of her body. On the 4th of May, she suffered complications and then shortly passed away. Maam Famorca is one of the humblest and most inspiring people I know.  May she rest in peace with our Creator in heaven.

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Maam Famorca authored a community health nursing book entitled Nursing Care of the Community by Mosby Elsevier. As Sir Loa would put it, "This textbook provides a comprehensive set of concepts, cases, trends, and issues in community health nursing, as well as new public health programs. Exclusively distributed by C&E bookshop."