This Doc Sees Dead People Arlyn VCD Palisoc Romualdo
S Dr. Raquel Fortun in her office as UP Manila Department of Pathology chair. Photo by Misael Bacani, UP MPRO.
She always cleaned the fish her mother Amelia bought. It was a chore she loved doing. Little did the young Raquel Barros Del Rosario know she was preparing for a future as Dr. Raquel B. Del Rosario-Fortun, the first Filipino woman forensic pathologist. “Evisceration! That’s what it was,” she said with a knowing smile, connecting that childhood task with disemboweling bodies during autopsies. She had always wanted to become a doctor despite coming from a clan of lawyers and admitted that her father Benjamin was “a bit disappointed.” It was her doting aunt, Dr. Lourdes Del Rosario, who inspired Raquel. Her photo is the only one on Raquel’s desk at the Department of Pathology chairperson’s office, UP Manila College of Medicine (UPCM). “Because of her, I associated fun with being a doctor.” Even going with her to a hospital in Tondo, Raquel wasn’t fazed. “That hospital smell didn’t bother me. I saw all these doctors in white coats like her, respected by everyone. I thought it was so cool.” Dreams vs. reality Going into college, she wanted something that could be a pre-med degree but could also guarantee employment if she couldn’t pursue medicine because it was expensive.
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She enrolled in the UP Diliman (UPD) BS Psychology program in 1979 after graduating from the UP Integrated School. Three years on, she felt certain she wanted to be a doctor. She “wanted to shift to a premed program focused on the sciences like biology or zoology,” but chose to be more practical and finished psychology. Raquel wasn’t accepted to UPCM, so she went to the University of the East Ramon Magsaysay (UERM) College of Medicine, graduating in 1987 and completing post-internship in 1988. She began residency training in anatomic and clinical pathology in 1989 at UPCM, where she was also made instructor.
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The medicine-law mix While the pull of medicine was stronger, law was also Raquel’s interest. She saw the possibility of mixing both through Dr. Pedro Solis, a lawyer-doctor and her UERM Legal Medicine professor.
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She took and passed the law aptitude exam of the UPD College of Law (UP Law) twice, in 1989 and 1993. UPCM just advised against the pursuit in 1989 because it was her first year of residency. “Passing twice, I thought I might have an aptitude for law after all.” Raquel laughed when recounting her law experience. “I quit! After 10 days, maybe two weeks, I just quit! This is so embarrassing, but that’s what happened. Law wasn’t for me.” She found it “too abstract, the opposite of medicine’s tangible and concrete.” She may have quit, but more than ten years later, she was invited by UP Law to teach. “I believe some eyebrows were raised, that I, a non-lawyer, was teaching a course at UP Law.” She learned about forensic pathology from one of her seniors at the department. “I realized it was probably what I was looking for: the field of medicine, particularly pathology, applied to law. The tangible applied to the abstract.”
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