Many years ago, I had a bad cough. One of my friends prescribed Carica candy. “It’s good,” he said. “It will work for you. It’s made from papaya.” I took it and it did work. Then, I forgot about it. Okay, occasionally when I took a walk in the mall, I would see a Carica spread and notice that every year they offered more and more things. They added teas, capsules, syrups and sugars. You name it, they probably have it — all herbal, all natural.
On my second Sunday at the Legaspi Market, my neighbor Dan, who sells Carica there, dragged Ramon Tan over to my booth and introduced him. “He is the maker of Carica,” Dan said. Since then, the friendship began to grow. I tried the mangosteen syrup and felt relief from the constant pain in my arms and legs — a hangover from my stroke. ”It’s also a cure for cancer,” Ramon said, talking about his various products. Noting perhaps the skeptical look on my face, he told me about a cousin he cured. “I told him to take the medicines I prescribed every hour. He did. In two weeks, he walked into my office looking perfectly normal.” I asked to interview his cousin, Art Cordero.
Ramon was right. Art walked into the meeting looking perfectly normal. He told me it wasn’t Ramon’s older sister who told him to try Carica. That’s why he listened. He said it began about two years ago when he woke up with a terrible pain on his left side, diagnosed as cancer of his right kidney. He had an operation. The kidney was removed.
Then he noticed a slight growth on the left side of his head, small at first, which he tried to cover with his hair until it grew bigger and became noticeable. In the end, he also had to have it surgically removed. It was cancer right under his skull, a rare kind of cancer that was essentially incurable, so his teams of doctors did not recommend chemotherapy. That’s when he accepted help from Carica. He is, after all, Ramon Tan’s first cousin.
Ramon told him, “You must follow my instructions very well and take what I prescribe every hour.” He did. His doctors had given him three months to live. After two months he took a PET scan and no more cancer showed. “I am on my way to radiation later,” he said. “I feel really well and don’t believe I need to take radiation but my wife insists so I go.”
“Do you think Carica cured you?” I asked.
“It made me feel so much better,” he said, “and it looks like my cancer is gone so. . .” And I must add he looks very well. It takes a hard look to notice that he had surgery and some minor discoloration, maybe due to the radiation.
“I will give you medicine for your mother’s Alzheimer’s,” Ramon said. He gave me a bottle of CQ10 syrup which is supposed to develop her immune system, and Palm Syrup. “But my mother’s Alzheimer’s is advanced,” I protested. “Do you think it will cure her?” He shrugged his shoulders and said, “It will make her relax.” I took the bottles, profoundly grateful. I will see to it that my mother tries them. Maybe they will reduce her difficulties.
I am fascinated by Carica, not just because it is what it is — a natural herbal cure — but because when he was talking about his basis for research, Ramon Tan showed me an old green book titled Medicinal Plants of the Philippines. It was written by Eduardo Quisumbing, a botanist, once Director of the National Museum. He was a close cousin of my grandmother, Concepcion Arguelles Vda. De Cruz (that’s how she used to sign her name). I remember being taken over to his house for visits when I was a very little girl. To this day, I am inordinately fond of my maternal grandmother who raised me. She and her youngest sister were my surrogate mothers. “He writes about 300 plants in this book,” Ramon said. “But I have only developed 30.”
If you are anywhere like me, in search of herbal alternative cures, you can get in touch with Ramon Tan at 0917-6232330. You may tell him you got his phone number from my column — but be patient. He receives about 150 texts a day and you must know how long it will take him to reply to you. Or you can just go to the mall nearest you and look for the Carica booth. Or you can come visit the Legaspi Market every Sunday where there is a Carica booth.
But from my experience with the mangosteen syrup, I tell you the trip will be worthwhile. The cure can seem magical. That’s what my experience and my interview with Art Cordero told me.
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