Your Lola Survived the Mindanao Quake. Week Three Is When the Damage Sets In.
Senior citizens make it through the shaking. Tarps, missed meds, and a cold floor in an evacuation center finish what the fault line started.
Your lola walked out of the shaking. She made it to the covered court, the school gym, or a relative's living room somewhere in Mindanao. She is on the count of survivors, not casualties. That count is the easy part.
What hurts seniors after a quake is rarely the quake itself. It is the three weeks that follow.
The meds run out first
Maintenance medication for hypertension, diabetes, heart failure, and arthritis does not pause for disasters. The blister pack she keeps in the aparador stays in the aparador, or under whatever is left of it. The barangay health station may be standing. The supply chain feeding it is another question.
PhilHealth's Konsulta package and the Senior Citizens Act discounts assume a working pharmacy and a senior who can get there. After a major quake, both assumptions tend to collapse. Families end up paying full retail in the next town, or skipping doses until something gives.
The evacuation center is built for the median body
Tarps and tents are sized for adults who can squat, climb over a knee-high barrier, and sleep on a mat. Lolas with bad knees, bad hips, or a recent cataract surgery do not fit that template. Neither do the lolos on dialysis schedules that nobody at the DSWD desk has time to track.
Add the heat. Add the dust. Add a comfort room shared by hundreds of people and a queue she physically cannot stand in. Urinary tract infections, pressure sores, and dehydration arrive a few days in and stay.
The grief lands late
Older Filipinos who lived through Bohol in 2013 or the Cotabato quakes of 2019 know what comes next. The first week runs on adrenaline and relatives. The second week is logistics. The third week is when she sits on a plastic chair, looks at a cracked wall that used to be her kitchen, and stops eating.
Geriatric depression after disasters is documented and undertreated. Mental health and psychosocial support teams at evacuation centers are stretched thin across Mindanao, according to humanitarian organizations working in past response operations. The closest psychiatrist is often in Davao City or General Santos, and the referral chain assumes she can travel.
What the family actually has to do
Write down her medications now, generic names and dosages, before the box gets lost. Photograph her PhilHealth card, senior ID, and PWD ID if she has one. Save them to a cousin's phone in Manila or Cebu, because hers will run out of battery by Tuesday.
Pull her DAFAC registration yourself if she cannot stand in the line. The form gates AICS cash assistance from DSWD, and seniors get skipped when relatives assume someone else filed. Bring a folding chair to the queue. Bring water. Bring her.
Call her doctor's clinic in the city and ask for a refill prescription you can fill at a pharmacy branch that is still operating. Drive the meds in if you have to. The relief truck is not carrying Losartan.
She survived the fault line. Week three is a different fight, and it is the one the family has to show up for.
