"It was a period of setting goals and striving – with little or no improvements. Then one day, a week after, she asked me to scratch her head. We just finished a morning prayer. Suddenly, I heard a message whispering to me from within: ‘She’s reacting to her habit of non-performance! Look at her restless fingers moving. Summon her to scratch.’
"So I focused on my will and answered in a normal, matter-of-fact tone: So scratch, Mama, scratch that itchy part of your head. She said, ‘Please scratch,’ and I quickly replied without saying the word no. ‘Yes. Go. Scratch it. It’s so itchy already, right? Hurry up. Come on. Scratch it. It’s so itchy, I’m getting itchy, too.’ And I scratched myself. Before she realized it, her hand had swiped at her own head. I said, ‘Oh goody! Scratch some more.’ And she lifted her hand again and scratched.
"I never appreciated the elegance of how our fingers move – so innocent and pure. Her body was responding but Mama wasn’t even aware (of it). I clapped my hands and told her, ‘Do you realize what you just did? What your body just did?’
"Consider that it is not only the physical body involved. The emotional, mind and soul bodies are involved for the holistic healing process to manifest. The inner process is the one that needs to be healed. The body serves as the measure."
Chin Chin Gutierrez’s adoring public does not know that at the time when she was setting milestones by making Uyayi, the beautifully haunting collection of indigenous lullabies sung by Filipino mothers for their daughters, she was simultaneously engaged in a personal struggle to help save her own mother from the complications and ravages of diabetes.
Chin’s mother Maria Cecilia Arnaldo Gutierrez was a strong and spiritual woman. When Chin was a little child, Chin says that her mother had bouts of hypertension. But this did not seem too serious and she recovered each time.
In 1992, however, Mrs. Gutierrez was diagnosed with diabetes and treatment commenced. In spite of this, blood glucose control was inadequate and the state of her health progressively spiraled downwards.
By February to June 2004, organ damage was a certainty and dialysis was the only option. The kidneys attained a mere 25 percent of their function. There was deterioration of health and what followed was a series of hospitalizations where Mrs. Gutierrez reached critical condition.
"I realized in between going to the hospital to repair whatever was in a crisis, that we didn’t understand what the disease was all about or how to address it. We only knew that after you fix one thing, something else goes wrong," Chin recalls.
It was a long and painful period for the family as Mrs. Gutierrez had strokes that left her partially paralyzed. In addition, each dialysis session left her weak and ill.
Mothers and daughters have a special bond that allows them to feel each other’s pulse.
"When you see someone you love lose control over her body, it really is hurtful. We were confronting the end of life. I didn’t know what questions to ask. It was so bad and people were urging me to give up the ghost. Mama’s will was weak," Chin Chin notes.
It was a sad and painful time, and Chin Chin’s mom seemed ready to give up. She refused medication and dialysis, pulled out all the needles when she was momentarily left alone, and refused to have these re-inserted. Chin says, "It came to a point where we were comfortable talking about death. As a daughter, I knew what her focus was. And knowing that she has a very acute inner and spiritual life, I knew that she was dealing with her Maker."
However, Chin was determined not to give up. "I say that life seeks life. Life doesn’t seek death. Let death come in its own time. My role was to support the life force in my mother and support her will to live."
She realized that she couldn’t stand idle while her mother refused conventional medication. This was the impetus that led her to find other alternatives. They found a health coach who advocated a natural, organic lifestyle and diet. He guided them as they embarked on a radical diet regimen of fresh fruits and organic vegetables.
The mother-daughter relationship also evolved during this period. Through constant communication with her mother, Chin Chin understood that her mother was giving up partly because she didn’t want to be a burden.
Chin’s journal entry: "Mama was lingering on her childhood memories for a whole month. Most of these were her food memories attached to the loving relationship she had with her own father. She would look forward to their merienda dates of cakes and milkshakes. Or how can she rub off the memory of her game with her grandfather – he would give her strawberry ice cream whenever she would claim to have a headache. But there was wisdom in that game. She was born and raised in America, visiting the Philippines for the first time right after the Second World War. Everything was devastated; with rats and cockroaches and smoky ruins in Malate. It wasn’t exactly a fun thing for a child to see and she was getting nightmares. (I realized that) she associated ice cream with love and protection.
"What to do?: I administered patient listening time. Lemongrass water used as a mouth rinse also helped erase the memories of the taste buds. After a month, the craving stopped and the memories were not so painful anymore. And Mama started looking for dilis, when normally she couldn’t stand fish! Rather than getting upset (although it was never easy), listening is so important, you never know what is next, so let the healer within tell you (what to do) through the stories of the patient . . . "
A little over half a year later, Mrs. Gutierrez seemed better and only the insulin injections remained. The insulin dosage was eventually tapered as her health status improved. A physician had once told her that she would not last four days without dialysis, so to be able to last so long was an immense confidence-builder. The diet recommended by a health coach seemed to be working, and Mrs. Gutierrez seemed slowly on her way to recovery. Chin had been accused of starving her mother, but strict adherence to the diet seemed to do wonders. The advice of the diabetologist was also followed, and the health consultants marveled at the progress achieved.
Chin’s journal entry: "We gradually reduced insulin since June 17, 2005 and by August 20, 2005, (this was) reduced by 50 percent with twice-a-day monitoring. We asked our diabetologist for advice on how much to decrease every three days because the diet was working and bringing her blood sugar levels down and making them stable. Close monitoring is advised for patients in critical condition. (One needs to) consult both conventional doctors and your health adviser/coach who has a vocation for natural healing . . . "
Today, Mrs Gutierrez continues to recover. It will be a difficult and prolonged struggle, but both mother and daughter reaped an unexpected blessing from the experience. Chin tries her best to articulate the quality of the spiritual gift that she received as a caregiver, "When you go beyond your role as mother and daughter, when you become a soul administering to another soul, then the relationship changes. It becomes more spiritual in nature. We shared an inner communion with our Maker while taking separate spiritual paths. . . "
Throughout the interview, Chin Chin Gutierrez constantly repeated that it would be very irresponsible for anyone to simply stop the medications that their doctors prescribe. This is simply a sharing of what she and her mother went through. There are no miracle diets that could wash away disease like it was surface dirt. A healthy, organic diet is just the sidebar to the real story. The real story behind Chin Chin Gutierrez and her mother’s story is the importance of human faith – of always believing that there is hope.
1 large bowl of 2-3 blended sour or citrus fruits with 1 serving spoon of rice bran (RB). Add toppings like shredded buko and nuts (raw peanuts, walnuts, cashew) for trace minerals, color, texture, and taste. Presentation is a precious ingredient, too. Add a few slices of strawberry, kiwi, and mint leaf, for example. Be creative and enjoy Filipino fruits.
After 30 minutes, take any of these hot cleansing drinks:
• Fresh lemon grass tea (tanglad) with organic muscovado sugar or pure/wild honey.
• Boil 1 tablespoon of flaxseed in 3 cups of water. Drink continuously in between meals.
• Fresh sambong tea.
• Water from boiled organic corn is very good for cleansing (use the corn for a snack or use in the meals).
After 30 minutes, if you are still hungry, you can have an organic cookie or banana.
• Thirty minutes before lunch, take all-raw veggie juice (yacon is naturally sweet and acts as a perfect substitute for sugar). Don’t use tomatoes as it’s acidic.
• Blend or juice a combination of: fresh yacon, carrots, red beets; yacon, carrots, kalabasa, celery, malunggay leaves (for low blood), and yacon; yacon, raddish, cucumber/sayote, carrots.
Lunch
Consists of taking raw salad and antibiotic salad dressing, organic red, brown, lavender or wild rice with half-cooked vegetables.
Okra Salad
20 pcs. organic young okra, sliced thinly diagonal
2 pcs. organic carrots, grated
You may use other combinations: pechay and carrots/ cabbage and carrots/ kangkong, okra, and carrots
Salad Dressing (these are essential antibiotics)
Blend all and combine with the salad:
1 medium-sized onion, chopped
cloves of garlic
1 tsp. combination of fresh/dried herbs (thyme, tarragon, margoram, rosemary), more or less to taste
tsp. organic wild honey
tsp. organic calamansi or concentrate*
tbsps. soy sauce (no msg)
This can be cooked without oil so no frying is needed; just gently heat the pan – start with garlic, onion till light brown or with light scent. Add soy (one without MSG), herbs, mushroom. Simmer 5 mins, add carrots, sayote, then beans and cabbage in this order. After about 3 mins, you can thicken sauce, add rice mixture. Cook 5 more minutes.
To make rice mixture: In another frying pan without oil, toast 1/4 cup of raw brown/red rice for 15 mins. Then with a blender, grind toasted rice, add 1 cup of water. Serve hot with TLC.
Soak 1/4 kilo cracked monggo overnight, then rinse 10 times the next day to remove uric acid and to hasten cooking time. (Keep uric acid water for rinsing dirty cooking utensils. Save water.) Boil in 5 cups of water with 1 med.-sized onion sliced finely and 1 whole peeled garlic, around 20-30 minutes. Add another cup if not cooked enough or if you want a soupy texture.
While monggo is boiling, saute without oil 1 med.-sized onion and 5 cloves garlic chopped finely with choices of: mushroom, malunggay leaves, alugbati, ampalaya leaves. Keep low heat so as not to burn veggies. These green leaf vegetables nourish the blood. Add cooked monggo, Bragg’s soy sauce, and rock salt to taste. Add 1 cup pure coconut milk (no water) and simmer 3 mins. Serve hot with TLC.
Dinner
Combination of one bowl of organic raw sweet fruits – light and easy as a cleansing diet and fructose from fruits will give just the right amount of healthy sugar needed during sleep and to prevent low blood sugar, which is just as dangerous as the patient can fall into a coma. Fruits could be avocado, banana saba or papaya, durian, marang, rambutan, chesa, langka, atis, etc.
Thirty minutes after dinner or before sleeping, take water and/or tanglad tea.