Press secretary downed by New York pizza, ginger ale
By Christine Avendaño
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 20:06:00 09/28/2008
Filed Under: Government, Politics
MANILA -- A slice of pizza and a glass of ginger ale that he took from a pizza joint were the culprits behind the three-day hospital stay in New York by Press Secretary Jesus Dureza.
Still confined at the New York Presbyterian hospital but feeling much better, Dureza sent word to the Manila press on Sunday that doctors had told him that his intense tummy aches were the result of a bad case of food poisoning.
The 60-year-old Dureza said that he would leave the hospital on Monday and take the plane right away for Manila. He is due back home on Tuesday, in time for the birthday of his wife.
The press secretary was part of the lean delegation of President Macapagal-Arroyo who went to New York last week to attend the 63rd session of the United Nations General Assembly.
The President returned home early Saturday morning, while Dureza stayed behind in New York on orders of his doctors who at that time were still running several tests to determine what was ailing him.
Dureza is the second member of President Arroyo’s official family to land in the hospital in less than a month.
Only a few weeks ago, National Security Adviser Norberto Gonzales had an angioplasty, a procedure that corrected blocked blood vessels in the heart. Gonzales had since returned to his job.
Last August, President Macapagal-Arroyo had a bad case of food poisoning after she had a "lethal combination" of dinuguan (pig stew) and bilo bilo (glutinous rice), which she ate during the wake for the mother of Transportation and Communication Secretary Leandro Mendoza in Batangas.
More than three months into the job as press secretary, Dureza, who took over from Ignacio Bunye -- now a member of the Monetary Board of the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas -- said it was the first time that he ever landed in the hospital.
"I have never been hospitalized," Dureza said in a phone interview.
According to Dureza, the intense stomach aches he suffered came an hour after he had a slice of pizza and ginger ale in a New York pizza joint last Thursday (Friday morning in Manila).
He said he had gone to the Fifth Avenue restaurant for a late lunch after accompanying President Arroyo to her bilateral meetings with world leaders.
"I returned to my hotel room and called up my sister who is a doctor from Davao," he recalled when he said the antacids he took did not help ease the pain.
After describing to her his symptoms, Dr. Marjorie Dureza-Culas told her brother to go to the hospital as he might even be having a heart attack.
"It was a continuous numbing pain that seemed to be radiating all over my body," was how Dureza described the pain he had then.
After trying to call 911, the emergency number there, he said he decided to just go to the hospital after his sister told him that a cousin of her husband was working there.
But when he got to the hospital, the emergency room was filled up with patients that included a pregnant woman.
With the pain unbearable by now, Dureza said he saw a Filipino nurse and then went up to him and said: "I am a Filipino and I think I had a heart attack."
He said the nurse then helped him. The cousin of his brother-in-law had just arrived in the hospital.
Dureza said doctors ran several tests to check suspicions he had a heart attack or an aneurysm.
It took the doctors one more day to determine that it was food poisoning.
Before the diagnosis, Dureza said he was given morphine for the pain and that he had a fever.
But all throughout his ordeal, Dureza said he was not worried because he had just months ago undergone an executive check up in preparation for his new job as press secretary and was given a clean bill of health by his doctors.
Dureza said during his hospital stay, he talked twice to President Arroyo, who last called him on Saturday.
The President, he said, couldn’t help but find it funny that his troubles came from a slice of pizza.
"Natatawa sya (She was laughing)," he said of President Macapagal-Arroyo, who had been hospitalized previously with acute diarrhea as well as a spell of fever and colds.
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