Stories of survival
Lulu, my beloved secretary for years, has a reputation for being tough — a tough talker, one who’s decisive and who gets things done for me and everyone else. Prepare for the PMA Class ’83, including hotel, food and lodging for the homecoming. Check. Drive me all around Europe. Check. Mail my packages. Check. Coordinate my children’s activities with mine, and more. Check, check, check. The thing about being tough, though, is everyone supposes that you can breeze through everything. Not so.
Towards the fourth cycle of her chemo treatments, she called her doctor to say she had decided not to go on with the treatment. She had undergone enough radiation; chemo was depleting her of life. Chemotherapy was taking a toll on her, and her body thought it couldn’t take any more. But her oncologist, Dr. Edward Castro, who’s her son’s godfather, wouldn’t hear any of it. He talked of the pros and cons of stopping the treatment and then there was a lot of cajoling and taunting in between. So yes, he prevailed and thank God because now, she’s in remission.
Cancer of the breast. While she understood that cancer is very treatable, especially if caught at an early stage.Wow. Here’s what she worried about: it would take a lot of money to treat; there would be a lot of sacrifices to be made by family; her life as she and everyone else knew it would change. Lulu was a classic case. First there was the initial shock. Then the denial. She thought the lab might have made some mistake. Then anger, expressed in ill feelings towards God, because she goes to church every day and had been a good girl, so “Why me?” She was really angry and stopped going to church and stopped praying. Then Lulu tried to bargain. She bargained with God: “I will do this if…” And she bargained with Dr. Castro: “I’ll drink my oral medication religiously, please no chemo.” Then she was simply paralyzed with depression. She stayed in bed, didn’t eat much and didn’t talk to anyone for days. But eventually, she was resigned to her fate and went back to praying for help from God and Our Lady of Guadalupe. In a moment of deep prayer, the “Why me?” was answered with “Why not you?” Then she realized that it might have been more difficult if it happened to someone she loved. With that realization, she was more at peace.
Lulu narrated: “The treatments began April 2008. After a quadrantectomy, I was advised to undergo radiation therapy. Every day at the Cardinal Santos Memorial Hospital I’d be sequestered for five to 10 minutes in a vault-like room for the treatment. There was no pain involved but in the end it was a bit tiring. Then, I was asked to rest for three weeks and the chemotherapy began at V. Luna. It required six cycles, one cycle every three weeks. This was the most difficult and painful part of the treatment. As one battle-tested Marine put it, “Parang nakikipagsuntukan ka sa sampung demonyo. Sure, I moaned and groaned too, but I am tough and I triumphed over those devils.”
Putting those seven months behind her, Lulu has survived and we’re all proud for our heroine. She’s physically weaker at the moment, but the lessons and the wisdom that “this journey” has provided her has made her “solid.”
First, she learned to accept help. “I was the type who didn’t want to owe anyone anything… but I couldn’t have done this alone. With friends knowing our financial state and knowing our present need, help immediately poured in. Without that support, remission might still be far away. In my journey, I learned that it’s okay to have utang na loob.”
Second, while “money does make the world go round,” she found out that family and friends will keep you sane and grounded. She learned that a kind word heals, a smile assures, a hug encourages and a phone call comforts. When she felt like jumping off the veranda to stop the pain, she drew strength from the people who loved her, who themselves were making sacrifices for her. She told herself, “I couldn’t fail them.”
Third, Lulu said to me, “You can’t be always taking care of others, sometimes others should take care of you. I was always the independent, take-charge type. I’ve not been that since I was sick. My family took care of me. My eldest sister literally held my hand each time the needle and the painful meds went in; I had to hang on to my sons when I walked, asked my daughter to accompany me to the toilet. My husband had to help me stand up from a chair. They and many others took care of me in my hour of great need.”
Lastly, Ms. Tanalgo experienced this axiomatic truth: “What you sow, you reap.” It’s simply the law of karma. Also: “God won’t give you a problem you can’t solve nor a challenge you can’t overcome.” She’s a living testament to that.
In the end, she was humbled by this experience. It was a profound journey where she learned the power of prayer, the innate kindness in people’s hearts and the strength of the human spirit. The year 2008 was difficult for her; here’s hoping 2009 will be easier.
I’ve had the same experience with my two daughters. Although my children Liaa and Pin are very, very private, for the sake of womanhood I’m writing about their treatments and the strength they gave me to face their health travails.
My second girl was named Josephine because I liked that “dignified” name and Victoria because we had won an earth-shaking battle for my husband’s congressional seat in 1965. Years back I encouraged her to undergo a thyroid operation as her neck was disfigured. No, she’d have a scar, was her answer; she thought it would go away by aspirating. A year passed and her neck took on various shapes from large to small. It was gone, then there it was again. Treat it, I nagged her, but she had cows to attend to, cattle to fatten. I remember 150 of them all died from a pest after she purchased imported cattle. That was a dreadful event! She had a gas station in Tarlac, too, that she was trying to get off the ground. The wonderful aspect of her Tarlac trips was her presence. I lived in Tarlac with Lulu, Baby Antonio (my math whiz) and Baby Blanco (my museum caretaker). One day I was on the campaign trail when my host’s telephone rang. It was Pin sobbing, saying she had, after the removal of two small cysts from her neck the year before and recurring fluid, been diagnosed with cancer.
Her results were kept in limbo at a hospital laboratory for a week without us being informed by her doctor of the results. Liaa, her sister, walked by that lab and an angel must have nudged her to enter it and inquire about the delay. The answer was the test results had been ready and no one had come to claim them. Unfortunately, they were positive! The next day she required an operation. In two weeks she had two other findings, this time in her parotid glands, that ultimately required radiation. The prayers, the consequences, the recovery — all are familiar from our memories of my brave daughter. I knew she was getting better when a year later she decided to puncture her ear lobes, claiming back her womanly vanity.
I bought a plastic puncture machine and in the quiet of the night her sister Liaa and myself calculated the new distances for new earrings with a ruler, using a measuring tape and a Pentel pen. But Josephine had a better idea: Why not test the tiny machine on my ear, since I had just had a minor restitching of my ear lobes and it was ready for just a little puncture when we arrived in Manila. So, why wait for the return trip?
Liaa, having been exposed to puncturing baby ears as a pediatrician, was elected to do the procedure, yet she had never handled such an unsanitary bathroom procedure with a contraption we had never seen before from a pharmacy. All the more the irritated Dr. Liaa threatened to walk out on us. “Let’s go, if we’re going to proceed!” I said. Pin got the home machine ready. I knew where I wanted the earrings to eventually rest and Liaa held the antibiotic cream and alcohol and bang! went the contraption from Pin’s hands but — oops! — it got stuck in my ear. Blood was oozing out and we couldn’t undo the connection. We were nervous. Then we laughed beyond control and my husband wanted to know what the bathroom commotion was all about. “Nothing,” we answered simultaneously, quite comically. While Liaa held the towel below my ear, Pin read the instructions to undo the source of the — literally — bloody mess.
After a couple long minutes, and with trembling hands, my girls managed to remove the jaws of the “toy” while I closed my eyes, praying. That experience drew the three of us closer together, and made Pin more confident that she could take “just a little pain” when her turn came, because we had learned how to handle it.
Above all else, my daughter — with St. Anthony around to lend a hand — had healed. Just eight months later, with apprehension, she announced she was pregnant. Too soon, I thought, but Josephine’s story ended happily, even with continuous and regular checkups. And Liaa? She is well after the treatment and becoming a brave young working mother whom I admire. As I said, she’s ultra-private and on the road to recovery. A hitch here and there that won’t get her down, thanks to her prayers and devotion to the Blessed Mary.
My last survival story is about Mrs. Jimena Piga, or “Mommy Ara” as she is fondly known to her office family. She is our chief accountant, afflicted with Type 2 diabetes. She was admitted to the Capitol Hospital with difficulty in breathing, continued vomiting and uncontrolled bowel movement. Her feet were swollen due to infection. She was found to have water in her kidneys that caused enlargement of her heart and complications affecting her body organs.
She was confined to the ICU, where she breathed through a respirator and ate through a tube while attendants extracted water from her kidneys. On the fifth day her sugar level dropped to 1 — any lower than this could make her comatose. Mrs. Piga held onto her rosary with nothing in her mind but petitions to God to have mercy on her.
On her 10th day at the ICU, one by one, they removed the respirator, the dextrose, all the tubes where the medicines passed through… It was a miracle that she survived, let alone recuperated after eight months, and now she’s back to attending to our numbers.
Love and care from family and friends are indispensable. But for those of us with health, how blessed we are to be able to pursue our missions in life without being ill.
