(First of two parts)
About 300 meters from the point where Quezon City?s wide Quezon Boulevard splits and branches out to two narrow avenues, a relatively unknown Filipino musculoskeletal doctor has set up a small clinic in an unimposing building called Hollywood on West Avenue which lately has been drawing sports stars and even ordinary citizens suffering from serious muscle and bone injuries.
Dr. Isagani Leal, reportedly the only musculoskeletal expert in the Philippines today, is considered by many as sports medicine?s counterpart to Vicky Bello and Ed Cayanan of the cosmetic medicine.
The only difference between Leal and the celebrity cosmetics doctors is that the 45-year-old widower, a jeep driver and teacher?s son from Barangay Pangaoan, Magpet, North Cotabato, offers services not to improve people?s appearance or to enhance the sizes of their extremities but to breathe new hope of life on seriously injured athletes and ordinary people who could not afford very costly procedures in popular hospitals.
It was my brother, Magpet Mayor Efren, who told me about this doctor from the village of Pangaoan, located at the foot of Mt. Apo, who is the son of a jeep driver and a retired public school teacher who passed away a few years ago, and who has reportedly addressed the problems of several basketball players and other athletes.
This was confirmed by my other brother, Noli, who himself suffered from a torn hamstring and tendon a few years ago.
I decided to seek out the doctor to refer to him the problem of one of our boxers, former amateur standout Rolando Magbanua, whose two career losses were results of a painful elbow which prevented him from stretching his right arm to punch properly during his fights.
It was suspected to be a torn muscle. That was what everybody thought until two weeks ago when, following a fight in Baguio City, Magbanua said the pain in his right elbow was almost unbearable.
When Dr. Leal checked Mag-banua using a P2-M ultra-sound equipment, it was found out that he was suffering from a tendon tear which he compared to a rubber band with tears in the strand.
He recommended a procedure called Platelet Riched Plasma Therapy which involves extracting blood from the patient himself which is then processed into blood plasma and injected into the torn tendon guided by an ultra-sound equipment.
?The blood plasma will act like a glue which would weld the torn tendon. It is a very quick procedure and in a month?s time, the athlete could go back to his old sports routine,? he explained to me on the phone last week.
The procedure will cost P28,000 but since Magbanua is from North Cotabato like him, he was only asked to reimburse the cost of materials used valued at P5,000.
Last Monday, when I brought Rolando Magbanua to undergo the procedure, I decided to refer to Dr.Leal my problem with my left arm as well.
I broke my left wrist bone last January in a freak bathroom accident and while the broken bone has been successfully re-attached with the help of doctors at the Philippine Orthopedic Center, I still suffered from painful swelling in my left hand, a sore left shoulder which was very painful at night and left hand fingers that could hardly grip and were swollen.
After a quick ultra-sound check up, it was found out that there was a considerable problem with my shoulder tendon where I would hear a cracking sound everytime I rolled my left shoulder, my left arm muscles stiffened because of a six-week immobilization and that there was a bone chip which was rubbing against my wrist tendon which was causing the pain.
I was injected a dose of ?herbal lubricant? in the left shoulder and another shot of ?herbal solution? that would address the swelling and pain in the wrist.
For the stiff muscles which prevented me from completing my left hand grips, I was given an ultra-sound therapy.
Had I met him in the caves of Mt. Apo, I would call the results of Dr. Leal?s remedies as products of faith healing because on the very first night, I felt relief in the sore left shoulder and two days after the ultra-sound therapy on my stiff muscles, I regained my grip in my left hand, except for a little pain in my index finger.
Three more therapy sessions and Dr. Leal said he would decide whether to scrape the cracked bone in the wrist. ?If the muscle loosens and the splinter will not rub against the tendon in the left wrist, we will leave it as it is,? he said.
But if the pain would persist, he will employ a special procedure using a bone scraping equipment which looks like tiny welding machine which will be pierced into my wrist and guided by an ultra-sound equipment will scrape the bone splinter with the bone scraps sucked by the same equipment after the procedure, Dr.Leal explained.
As for boxer Magbanua, his left elbow will be immobilized for three weeks while he undergoes a laser therapy on the torn tendon where the platelet enriched plasma was injected and he will be able to fight again by July this year.
In the two visits I made to Dr. Leal?s clinic, I had the chance to talk to some of his patients, ordinary people who otherwise could not have availed of the very modern musculoskeletal procedures.
There was a woman in her 60s accompanied by her husband whose knees were so damaged that she was not able to walk for sometime, both her feet terribly swollen.
Visiting a known hospital, the couple was asked to produce P250,000 for the medical procedure. Charged for less than half of that amount by Dr. Leal, the woman underwent a procedure that allowed her to walk again after a month.
?He is really good,? the husband told me as we joined the other patients seated in simple benches inside the Center For Musculoskeletal Medicine-Asia Clinic which has only one doctor, Leal, four therapists including the one who attended to me, Sonny Urbano, and five nurses, one of who also acts as the secretary and cashier.
I was also told of a story of a music teacher from Bicol who came to the Center in a wheelchair because of a slipped-disc injury and who came back two months later for his continued therapy by standing along with other passengers inside an MRT train.
While the Center looks inauspicious, the clientele is growing since it was established two years ago.
Already, boxers Mark Anthony Barriga, our only Olympic candidate, Charlie Suarez, Joan Tipon and Delfin Boholst have already visited the Center. Pro boxers Bai Elorde and Magbanua are the first pro boxers to seek help.
Basketball players Ranidel de Ocampo, Jimmy Alalay, Ryan Reyes, Jason Castro, Jared Dillinger, Kelly Willliams and Ali Peek who all complaimed of calf and hamstring muscles injuries have already been to the Center.
Dr. Isagani Leal, who used to work with the Department of Health, was a government scholar who was sent to Tel Aviv, Israel to undergo a 4-year training program on musculoskeletal medicine at the Sheeba Medical Center.
?The basic orientation of musculoskeletal medicine in Israel is to avoid invasive surgery and allow the patient, mostly Israeli soldiers, to return to their duties in the shortest possible time,? Dr. Leal explained the new technology.
A poor village boy who first dreamed of becoming a priest and later worked his way to medical school by doing odd jobs as a hamburger outlet waiter and a motel roomboy near the Manila Central University, he was only able to take up medicine full-time when his mother retired from the public school.
?She used her retirement benefits to finance my studies,? he said. His mother died a few years ago.
While in Israel, he suffered a personal tragedy when his wife died of leukemia leaving him with an 8-year-old child.
?There is a lot we can do to address musculoskeletal problems not only of athletes but also of ordinary people if only we have the proper equipment,? Dr. Leal said adding that he has already imported modern equipment costing millions of pesos.
?Slowly, we will be able to buy more modern equipment and we will be able to serve more people,? he said.
