PRESIDENT Rodrigo Duterte admitted to having his heart checked on Monday after experiencing chest pains, adding in jest, quoting his doctor, the pain was merely “extrajudicial.”
“I went to [have my medical check], that’s why I’m late, pardon me, I had EKG. Because I was not feeling well. It’s because I felt pain in the heart,” Duterte said during a speech before large-scale taxpayers in Pasay City.
He was referring to an electrocardiogram [EKG or ECG], a test that checks for problems with the electrical activity of the human heart, with line tracings on paper, the spikes and dips in the line tracings being called waves.
Duterte had his medical check with Dr. Agnes Del Rosario of the Cardinal Santos Medical Center in San Juan City, where he was checked for any abnormal activity in the electrical pulses in his heart.
“When Dr Del Rosario of Cardinal Santos came over, she brought with her her EKG (machine), there seemed to be nothing wrong with me,” the President said.
His doctor supposedly also made a joke about his condition.
“Your pain is just extrajudicial,” the President added in jest, repeating what the cardiologist said – a pointed reference to killings outside of the judicial system.
“She was caught in a snarl in the monstrous traffic in the metropolis. I was supposed to arrive by land, but I took the chopper because I was delayed,” he added.
In the same speech, Duterte denied earlier reports claiming the President made a “secret trip” to China to seek cancer treatment.
Duterte earlier said he was suffering from severe migraine, aside from suffering from a rare disorder called Buerger’s disease, an inflammation and thrombosis in small and medium-sized blood vessels, typically in the legs and leading to gangrene which has been associated with smoking.
