MANILA, Philippines—Instead of burying himself in his books for the medical board exams, Marky Jod Abay Pandes took care of his two young children at the hospital.

So when friends called on Thursday night to say he had taken the top spot in the tests, he thought they were playing a joke on him.

Pandes, 26, said he had steeled himself to receive the bad news that he had failed the licensure exams for physicians because he was not confident about his chances. He had spent only a month studying in preparation for the tests.

Pandes, who studied medicine at the University of the East-Ramon Magsaysay Memorial Medical Center, got a score of 87.25 in the examinations.

Kids got sick

“My expectations were the exact opposite. I was almost sure that I flopped the surgery exams. I was expecting to get at least 50 on other subjects, but I was not too sure about surgery,” he said in a phone interview.

“In the exams, if your average is passing but you fail one subject, you won’t pass,” he added.

“Friends started calling me last night, saying I passed the exam and I was No. 1. I thought it was a joke.”

Pandes said he was supposed to review for the Feb. 8 exams starting December, but his children suffered bouts of pneumonia and diarrhea and had to be placed under observation in the hospital.

Isaac and Seth

Pandes and his wife, Maria Carolina, who is also studying to become a doctor, have two sons, a 3-year-old boy named Isaac and an 8-month-old baby named Seth.

At the time his sons fell ill, Pandes said his wife was away because of work in Palawan so he had to set aside his studies to look after them.

“I had to take care of the kids. I did very little studying,” he said.

Power of prayers

Pandes prayed hard to pass the exams.

“More than anything, it was a spiritual experience. I had to rely on God. I prayed while answering the questions, I prayed even during the breaks,” he said.

Pandes is looking forward to becoming a neurosurgeon. “I really can’t see myself in other professions,” he said.

One of his grandmothers has Alzheimer’s syndrome. While it was not the main reason for his decision to go into neurosurgery, Pandes said it made him realize that the brain is medicine’s unexplored frontier.

“The human brain is very interesting. There are still a lot of treatment and modalities that can be explored,” he said. “Brain cancer, for instance, still has a high mortality rate so there’s a room for improvement in the treatment of it.”

Pandes wants to train abroad to become a neurosurgeon but wants to practice in the Philippines. His family is here and there is a need for neurosurgeons in the country, he said.

The personal touch

Being a doctor in the Philippines is also more personally rewarding.

“In the States, they are really strict about malpractice suits and I think it limits the art of medicine,” Pandes said. “It is also more business-oriented there. Doctors here maintain very good relations with their patients.”