Pasmado Ka Siguro

One time I had a half-Aeta-half-Tagalog patient who has just given birth to a baby boy. Since it was extremely hot in the room (this happened last March) she was profusely sweating. Her hair was already disheveled. Her maternity dress was scruffy. Seeing this, I instructed her that she can take a bath if she wants to. This is actually my tactful way of saying ‘Hey missy, I think you need a bath, you already smell.’

But then her Aunt (who is a traditional “hilot”-healer- in their area) butt in, and rejected my idea and started lecturing me about the ill effects of bathing just after giving a delivery. “Baka malamigan, mapasma pa yan at mabaliw.” (She might get cold, she might catch pasma [a traditional “illness” characterized by tremors and cold sweats], this might lead to insanity.) she said as-a-matter-factly. As a Nurse in Training I told her that this belief has no medical basis but to my horridness Reza, my classmate, joined the little conversation, siding with the old woman.

She started explaining that pasma may eventually lead to binat, another folk sickness, that may eventually lead to death. The old woman nodded triumphantly. Then Reza started giving an example where a guy, according to her, took a bath just after being cured from a sickness. After a week, according to her, the guy returned to the doctor sick again, and in an even worse state. He, she concluded, therefore acquired BINAT and eventually died… the doctor was left dazed with the guy’s peculiar condition. And that was according to her. Again.

I tried to explain things to her until we were both shouting in a really massive debate, with my patient and her client clearly believing everything Reza was saying; until the Nurse on duty came inside the room.

I glanced at the nurse and directly asked her, “Maam nanganak na po ba kayo?” (Maam have you given birth already?)

She replied yes. So I asked her if she took a bath immediately within 24 hours after giving birth or she waited for weeks (or months) before she did so. She said she bathed just after an hour after the delivery.

My face smiling with glee, then asked her, “Maam may nangyari po ba sa inyo nung naligo kayo?” (Maam, did something happen to you after you washed yourself?)

She snorts and said, “Luminis ako.” (I was cleaned.)

I looked at Reza with the word “SEE” etched on my face. She was dumbstruck, silent and pouting her mouth.

The Issue:

Since I became a nursing student, it has been really difficult for me to explain traditional sicknesses like pasma, bati, binat, and usog to many people and even to my own family. I have always been confronted with questions about these and my answers that these sorts of illnesses were just traditional Filipino beliefs, just as Kapre and Dwende, always meet some skepticism. They argue that if these aren’t real how come they experience it. And alas, I read last Wednesday in a Newspaper about pasma which was continued in the same column today. It is a study done by some University of the Philippines students comparing a group of labanderas (laundry maids) who verbalizes symptoms of pasma and labanderas who do not. After undergoing numerous medical and laboratory examinations, it was concluded that physiologically, the pasmados were just as healthy as the non-pasmados. There was no significant difference but one; the report says that the women who reperted the symptoms of pasma “have higher blood pressure than the women without ‘pasma.’ Not only that, it took longer for their blood pressure to return to normal.”

They then concluded that pasmados were people who are facing much greater stressors, as evident by their longer working hours (which was also seen in the research). And thus the symptoms of pasma might be, as the columnist wrote it, “an objective reality… of overworking.”

Pasma might then be a type of somatoform disorder where the person present physical symptoms as a response to stress.