NOVEMBER IS CANCER MONTH

My journey
Nov.11,2007

My Journey with Cancer
Muffet Dolar Villegas
CANCER MONTH

November is a cancer awareness month. The Silliman University Medical Center Foundation commemorates this event with various activities for this month. It started during the midweek service which was held last week at the SUMC which was attended by medical practitioners and cancer patients who still undergo treatment, survivors , and supportive family members. Some of those who were present have encountered cancer through their loved ones who passed away battling the disease. The theme was Living with Cancer.
“Most of us are living with cancer in one way or another,” Said Dr. Geena Macalaua, one of my oncologists who has been actively involved in caring for her patients, not only as a physician, but who goes out of her way in organizing activities that can help her patients.
She stressed that we are part of it as caregivers, those who are in medical professions, relatives and friends of the patients and those who are having been diagnosed with the disease themselves.
Fighting cancer is part our battle to survive in the twenty first century. We have adopted a kind of lifestyle that has dramatically changed from our predecessor centuries ago.
What is a day like to you? Do you wake up early in the morning, grab a cup of coffee, and beat the traffic? Since we are living here in Dumaguete city, the traffic is not as time consuming as you live in other cities like Manila, where you spend half of your lifetime on the road as you commute to work everyday. At noontime, we squeezed in some hurried lunch, at some fast food counter and go back to work. After eating dinner at home, we spend more time to earn more money through other means until we drop dead. Let’s all face it. A regular monthly salary in our country cannot even feed the earner, how much more if you have children and they all go to school?
We spend less time in exercise, because walking an extra mile will cut our time from generating another income, sitting in front of the computer to generate extra money, or baking cakes or prepare ice candies to sell tomorrow for another precious bucks at least for transportation fares.
Our children lead the same lifestyle. We force them to wake up early in the morning, grab the same food we eat, which is often saturated with fat and preservatives( the fastest way to prepare for working moms, which our kids love too.) but sometimes, due to pressure, they can hardly eat, so we pack their lunches for school, eat a hurried lunch then go back to class and eat and drink more junkfoods in between.
We don’t want them to be absent or to be late. They have to accomplish well, regardless if their stomachs are empty. Study, study, then work and work, until one day we discover a lump somewhere or something wrong with our blood chemistry.
How much pressure and abuse can our bodies take before it screams for a STOP? How long can little children take activities after activities and stress before we discover its too late?
Cancer strikes not only the middle aged ones but children and young adults too. It waits for the right combination of stress, nutritional deficiencies that weaken the immune system before it shows up. Latest study from John Hopkins says that every person has cancer cells in the body. These cancer cells cannot be detected by standard tests until they have multiplied into a few billions. It revealed that cancer cell occur between 6 to more than ten times in a person’s lifetime.
I stopped nagging at my son everytime he can’t get up early for school since I was diagnosed with cancer. I saw many children with cancer during my treatment at the hospitals and I was confronted with priorities in life. I’m not saying that we should not urge them to the best in school, but I would rather see my son alive than lose him to cancer. Others may call it paranoia, but I live with the reality.
We are caught in the web of many celebrations. We measure our accomplishment with many events and activities. We push our limits or we drive others to it. Our crazy world tells us that you are a loser if you can’t reach its standard. The mass media is telling us how to be cool by the world’s standards. But the bottom line is our health, and the quality of life we lead. Life is a gift from God, just like salvation. But like a gift, you are free to accept or reject it.