Ligaya "Gaye" Jocson-Quijano
Email: LQUIJapril@aol.com
Address: Hayward, California
Home Phone: Home Phone (510) 538-3722 Work Phone (510) 784-4256
Birthday: April 5
Ligaya "Gaye" Jocson-Quijano
Email: LQUIJapril@aol.com
Address: Hayward, California
Home Phone: Home Phone (510) 538-3722 Work Phone (510) 784-4256
Birthday: April 5
I graduated from the Philippine Women's University (PWU) with a degree in Chemistry and after graduation, I worked for a small textile company along Shaw Blvd in Mandaluyong doing screen printing. I was not the screen printer but I was the chemist doing all the colors for the printing. I was mixing the pigments and the acid dyes. I did this for about six months and later on I was employed by Floro Textile Mills at Caniogan, Pasig, Rizal. I worked in the textile Industry for about 3 years. I also worked in the spinning mills to process raw cotton, make them into threads and wove it into cloth. I was not doing the machine work but I was in the Quality Control.
My knowledge of the fabric was my visa to come to the United States. I was on my way to New York to work with Crompton and Knowles. While in San Francisco my aunt asked me to stay in the Bay Area instead of going to New Year. She told me that it would be difficult for me being alone, whereas in the Bay Area I would be with family.
My Uncle Peping, the youngest brother of my Mom, had a friend named Carl and introduced me to him. From that time on, Carl never left me alone until we were married. After my marriage, I worked for Clorox Co. in the QC department but I was not very happy with the kind of job I was doing, so while I was working, I was dialing phone numbers looking for another job. With my little experience at Clorox Co. it helped me to find my way to another job opening which was at the Institute for Metabolic Research.
This was during the infancy of Cholesterol, Triglycerides, Phospholipids, etc. We did not have all the fancy gadgets that we have now and all we had then were gas chromatograph, petroleum ether column and thin layer chromatograph. I worked at this place for about three years. Most of my contemporaries were doctors, given grants that they received from all over the world and they worked with us. It was a very good experience for me because it led me to a bigger field. When I saw some technologists working at the bench doing lab work, I would asked them how they found their jobs. From them I learned that I needed to check with the Public Health to find out if I would qualify to do the same job.
I sent my credentials to be evaluated by the Public Health Laboratory Field Services and was told to take the State Board Exams. In 1960, I also found out that Kaiser then had a school for Medical Technology and they were looking for students. Instead of taking the exams right away, I opted to get into the Med Tech program, but I had to go back to school to take 16 more units of biological sciences and if I make it they would take me.
Needless to say, I aced the classes and I was one of the eight students out of two hundred that was accepted into the program. It was very grueling program, for one solid year. I did not go to parties even with my family. We had exams every week and at the end of the program I had to take two boards, one was for the Registry for the College of American Pathologist and the other was for the State of California. Once you have these boards its like a ticket to seek employment anywhere in the United States. I can go to any State in US with the ASCP license plus CA license and apply for a job.
The rest is history. I have been in this field for almost 40 years now. I am now a Supervisor, but I still do the bench, meaning doing the work itself, like hematology where you can find blood problems such as anemia, cancer, blood problems and deficiencies, etc., Urinalysis, if you have bladder problems, kidney problems, Coagulation problems, different clotting factors, chemistry biological problems, like electrolyte inbalance, glucose, triglyceride, troponin, cardiac enzymes, liver enzynes etc. and of course blood banking.
Since I have reached the peak of my career I am now trying to venture into another phase in medicine which is the Point of Care. This is a phase that is new where the intervention in medicine is now at the bedside of a patient. Instead of the patient's lab work being done in the lab, there are test that are needed immediately and these are done at the bedside of the patient. My role now is to prepare the instrumentation and do all the compliance needed for this particular testing, and teach the nurses on how to use it and do their proficiencies every three months.
