Neuralgia and the Maze called Makati Medical Center

One Wednesday during a very hectic week when our Global HR Leadership Team from Europe were in town, I had the most terrible headache experienced ever. I had to be at work at 7:30am that day to attend a Leadership forum and I attributed the pain to lack of sleep and stress. As the day progressed I had continued to do my desk job while nursing an ice pack at the back of my head. I went home early with the hopes of sleeping it off. The next day, went back to work, sharp pains still kept on shooting from the back of my head. I managed to do a presentation with the top HR guy (pale-looking and disheveled hair, mine not his!) and attended a few meetings but requested to leave early again. By Friday, I decided I really needed to see a doctor. Pain reliever was my new best friend over the weekend because it was the only think that kept me functioning normally. I did all required ENT tests (paranasal sinus xray, skull APL xray, audiometry, etc) to rule out possible ENT causes. When all tests came back normal, my last stop was a neurologist! Questions here and there, tests and checks....and voila, I was diagnosed with "Neuralgia". It's caused by affected or infringed nerves, in my case, emanating from my stressed and stiff neck. It was aggravated by 2 things -- heavy laptop backpack and sleeping with high pillows. Change in carrying-habits, medications, hot compress plus weekly light massage (wheeeee!) should make it better in the next couple of weeks. It's been 5 days since and I'm back to A-okay.

In the past days that I had been running to and fro around the newly renovated Makati Medical Center....it was all one giant maze! I kept on

getting lost...I'm not sure if its because it was too crowded or if they lack the signages. While it seemed to have significantly improved for posterity sake, I don't find it patient-friendly! So much walking to move from doctors clinics to laboratory, restrooms are not conveniently located, elevators are quite far from doctor's clinics... errr.... if I were in excruciating pain at that time, I would have probably be short-tempered already (thank God it's Maxicare paying for my check-ups otherwise, I wouldn't find it worth my pesoses).

With so much construction works still going on at that time, I hope it was just a phase that the maze is there to bear. Otherwise, I would recommend other hospitals to visit to.