Blood sucker

A bottle of blood was sucked out of my body. And it wasn’t by sparkly vampires, the walking dead or re-electionist congressmen.

To de-stress recently, my wife shot me full of Ketamine, wrapped me lovingly in a straitjacket, squeezed our four-year-old daughter, 300-pound eight-month-old Buddha baby boy and four yayas into the van, and brought us for a sorely-needed getaway to the Farm at San Benito, Batangas.

No, no, it’s not that kind of a farm where livestock are turned into nuggets. The Farm is an integrated medical, holistic healing and wellness center that offers a menu of wellness packages and customized detoxification treatment programs. And there are no nuggets in the menu.

The Farm is a place that I will never forget — not just for its lush expanse of vegetation, the ubiquitous mandala floral patterns in clay pots and the occasional lascivious peacock, but because it was the first and only place where I had a hundred-foot-long tube inserted into my holy of holies, followed by having my intestines flooded with warm water and then finally getting impacted fecal matter that had been stuck in there since the Marcos regime flushed out of it. This intimate encounter is called a “colonic irrigation.” Until today, my sphincter muscles will never let me forget how intimate that sacrilegious day was.

Once we had arrived at The Farm and my wife gleefully slapped me back into consciousness, we were welcomed to the resort by Jennifer Di Lonardo, The Farm’s resident manager. They offered my family a chance to vegetate in their newly built Narra Villas, with its heated swimming pool, hydro jets, outdoor and covered terraces, private gardens with a view of the Batangas jungle, a bedroom, a day bed, a palatial bathroom with double sinks (finally someone has acknowledged my royalty), showers, bathtubs, two individual toilets (no need for my wife to share a seat with me when our bowel movements synchronize), an energy-saving inverter style air conditioner, cable TV, DVD player, an iPad docking station and — most essential of them all — hairdryer (although I did feel a pang of loss for my Macbook when I found out that the villa had high-speed WiFi connection).  Finally, my wife and I could cozy up in superheated, hydrojet pool and get as intimate as possible while being watched by two children and four yayas.

But on top of the new villas, our visit to The Farm was a refreshing change because it is now a more child-friendly resort. “We’ve got more activities for the kids, like mandala flower arranging, soap making, fishing, live cuisine preparation classes, and feeding the chickens, peacocks and goats,” Jennifer shared.

“That’s great!” I exclaimed. “We should get our kids into manual labor as soon as possible! It builds character and muscle mass.”

 â€œAre you ready for your detoxification treatments?” Jennifer said as she handed me a glass of water with a sprig of mint leaves. I gulped down the water and played with the zesty aftertaste in my mouth. “That’s refreshingly healthy. It’s like I can feel my toxins involuntarily seeping out of my orifices.”

“That’s great to hear,” Jennifer enthused. “It’s good to be relaxed before we draw half a pint of blood from you.”

And then my wife had to put me out again. This time without Ketamine.

When I woke up, I found out that my wife had used her inhuman strength to drag me to the Farm’s Spa treatment room where we would be getting a couple’s purification massage treatment. I was quite worried about this because I was unsure how much of me would be left by the time the massage was over.

The masseuse explained that the massage was a “value pack” treatment — first I was going to be scrubbed with a mixture of sea salt and virgin coconut oil (insert virgin joke here) all over my body, including my face, hair and other hard-to-reach parts of my anatomy. After the thorough scrubbing (after which I hoped all the appendages would still be intact), I was going to get a light massage, then wrapped up like a lumpia. While wrapped, I was going to get a head massage (insert head joke here). “It’s good for detoxification, Sir,” she reminded me. 

“As long as my happy ending ends there, or else my wife will purify me for good,” I reminded her as I lay facedown.

The masseuse started rubbing her hands together then laid them over my head. “Sir, it is time for you to relax and clear your mind,” she requested.

“Naku, if I clear my mind, it might go back to factory settings.”

With a series of rhythmic movements uniquely developed at The Farm called Yin and Yang Strokes, the masseuse rubbed sea salt warmed by coconut oil onto body parts I thought were no longer functioning to energetically balance my body (don’t worry, no yangs were injured during the course of the massage). Apparently, sea salts are rich in minerals that speed up metabolism, repair damaged cells and absorb “negative energy.” I think that the masseuse rubbed so much salt into all of my crevices that I might just be preserved until the next Ice Age.

But all this de-toxification massage was merely prelude to my innocuously named “Ozone Treatment” a.k.a. I’m A Gonna Suck Your Bloooood (Cue: Maniacal laughter of Sesame Street’s The Count in background).

The doctor pulled out a 23-foot needle that she would insert into one of my veins to connect me into the machine that caused several of my appendages to shrivel. “Ozone is a naturally occurring gas composed of three oxygen atoms,” she explained as she carefully poked the needle underneath my skin.

“Doc, I don’t think this is the right time for a science lesson!” I exclaimed.

“Medically-supervised ozone therapy is used to improve a person’s blood and immune status. Ozonation increases oxygen concentration in the blood, combats the free radicals in the body and it’s good for people who are recovering from illness and cell renewal. Bacteria, viruses and fungi are rapidly destroyed when it reacts with the extra oxygen atom. Ozonation also detoxifies the blood from chemicals, blood impurities and endotoxins.” (At least, that’s what I think she said because I couldn’t hear her too well above my screams.)

“But Doc, I’m afraid if it takes away all impurities and toxins, I may lose my sense of humor altogether.”

“Then we would be doing the world a favor,” she remarked as she switched on the machine. “We will be drawing about 200 cc’s of blood from your body. After we collect it and ozonate it, we will return the blood to your body.”

“200 cc’s!? Isn’t that like one litro of Coke!?” I screamed. “Are you sure my blood is being ozonated, or are you carbonating it and bottling it for vampires and aswangs!? My blood won’t taste fizzy enough, you know! I’m vegetarian!”

“Lower your voice, Sir,” she reminded me, “or else I will stick nine more needles into you just for fun. When the blood returns to your body, you will notice profound changes like the brightening of your blood.”

“So parang (it’s like) an oil change, Doc?” I asked.

“If your blood is viscous, you will see that it will have thinned out after it’s been ozonated. The side effects are only minor.”

“Has a grown man ever fainted in the middle of the procedure?”

“There’s always a first time for everything, Mr. Ledesma,” she answered. I could hear my blood curdling.

The doctor jiggled my blood as it gathered in the vacuum bottle to prevent it from coagulating. When enough blood had been extracted from me to provide a full meal for a vampire, the machine began to ozonate my blood while simultaneously returning it into my body.

“It’s like your blood was cleaned and now your ozonated blood will circulate around your system to provide a nourishing effect to your body,” the doctor elaborated.

“So what are the immediate effects of ozonated blood, Doc? Will I gain mutant powers? Will I develop a mutant healing factor, unbreakable steel claws and really thick sideburns? And for the sake of my wife, will I end up looking like Hugh Jackman?”

“Some of our clients report that they feel better and much more energized right after the treatment. Others receive this treatment on a weekly basis to treat ailments like joint pains or muscle pains. Do you feel lesser pains around your joints, Mr. Ledesma?”

“I’ll let you know once the yayas let go of my arms and legs and you get my son off my chest.”

Once I had regained sensation when the ozonated blood rushed in my extremities, I admit that I did feel a bit more perky and well lubricated. In fact, I was raring to go for my next treatment.

“Are you ready for your colonic irrigation, Mr. Ledesma?”

“Ah, I think I’ve had enough poking for today, Doc,” I squeaked.

And besides, the one-two combination of the purification massage and ozone therapy left me particularly tingly all the way to my hairy parts. I was eager to test-drive the effects of my newly-ozonated blood with my wife inside the superheated, hydrojet pool in the most PG-way possible while sharing the pool with my two children and four yayas.

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E-mail Ledesma.rj@gmail.com or visit www.rjledesma.net. Follow @rjled on Twitter.

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For more information on The Farm’s latest offerings, please visit www.thefarm.com.ph.