'When you're happy, your body heals'

Her zest for life is infectious. When she laughs, her expressive eyes give her away — her happy countenance and her happy disposition in life. Her present state of mind betrays the seemingly insurmountable fate she had in 2004, the year she was diagnosed with breast cancer.  

With discipline and determination, however, former beauty queen Minnie Cagatao-Jentes faced up to the challenge and surpassed it.

“It is the inner strength innate in women that has kept me going,” Minnie tells me at the Lakas Loob launch of Anlene, where she is a brand ambassador. “If I did not fight it out, depression would have sunk in and I wouldn’t be here now,” she adds.

For someone who was careful with her food and who exercised regularly, finding that she had cancer four years ago was such a blow. Like a soldier at war, however, she was more than willing to continue the battle with the resolute will of winning it. And she did.

In 2004, she underwent an operation and three cycles of chemotherapy in Manila. She was happy to note that her cancer was just “Stage 0.” In 2005, when she was visiting her mother in the States, she felt successive shooting pains in her right breast which was also having discoloration. The oncologist in the City of Hope Medical Group, a cancer hospital in Pasadena, California, found that Minnie was having a more aggressive stage of cancer as evidenced by the 2.9 cm tumor found in the affected area. From August 2005 to February 2006, Minnie underwent eight cycles of chemotherapy where, after each treatment, she would be left with severe headache and nausea. “I also felt like having fever, the type which was 10 times worse than having the normal flu.”

In her moments of trials, Minnie banked on her sense of humor. “I was crying not because of my life but because I was losing my breast. I was vain,” jokes the former Miss Republic of the Philippines. She was only 17 when she ranked No. 7 out of 65 delegates in the 1970 Miss World competition held in London. She joined the Mutya Ng Pilipinas first in 1970 when she was discovered by a costume designer while dancing for the Salinggawi Dance Troupe of the University of Sto. Tomas where Minnie took up Medical Technology.

She continued to amuse herself by going to the infusion room — the waiting area in the hospital for patients undergoing chemotherapy — in her sartorial best, happy and proud of her brown, bald head. Always, always, she would be a sight to behold for American patients who would ogle at her hat, at her dress, at her jacket. For Minnie, she was just happy to make them happy in that moment in time. 

When the supply of her own sense of humor got depleted, she was blessed to find her family beside her to inflate her spirit anew with loving kindness. Her mother “mothered” her again. Her two sisters in the States took turns in taking care of her needs — from emotional and spiritual restitution to physical and financial support. Minnie’s two sons were worried sick but her willingness to survive touched and comforted them. 

But more than anything else, it was her faith — which to this day is still her No. 1 armor — that saw Minnie through.

“Lord, You created me whole and whole you will make me again,” she remembers her prayer during the times when she was suffering from the Big C. And now that she is on remission, God proves to Minnie that He never fails those who believe in Him.

In her battle with her infirmity, says Minnie — who now runs her own online travel agency and helps manage Schwarzwalder German Restaurant — what also helped her cope was her capacity to love in times when she was in deep pain, to give when she had almost spent everything and to laugh when she was actually being torn apart.

“When you have cancer, you cannot help but be positive and surround yourself with positive people,” says Minnie, who joined I Can Serve, a foundation for women with breast cancer, in 2006.

When she was in the States, in between her treatments, she took up painting, calligraphy and dancing classes and watched funny movies and played badminton with her sisters. (“I fought out my cancer even in my weakest moments,” she says.) She balanced her having fun by being hands on in understanding her ailment. Aside from reading inspirational books, Minnie would research on medical breakthroughs about cancer. 

Patience, she says, is the virtue she mastered when she was battling cancer. She did not hurry up her bid with The Guy Up There to give her a clean bill of health. With faith and fortitude, she waited for deliverance. While waiting for her imminent grace, Minnie took time, so to speak, to watch the sunset and smell the flowers, recognizing that she was truly living on a borrowed time.

“Negative thoughts are not allowed. If you wallow in despair, it won’t help you. When you’re happy, your body heals,” says Minnie, who now embodies the Anlene woman.

Minnie knows she has so many blessings — big and small. She counts them every day. The more she counts, the better she heals. And Minnie will never stop counting them.

(For your new beginnings, please e-mail me at bumbaki@yahoo.com or my.new.beginnings@gmail.com.

Have a blessed Sunday!)