The Breast Care Center Annex that ‘pink’ built

Three times a week, Eden Casañares fights. She wakes up at 5 a.m. to make her way to the Breast Care Center at East Avenue Medical Center for her chemotherapy treatments and her weapon is a banig. She endures hours of commute only to line up on a queue that is already too long to be accommodated by closing time — thus the banig. When she and 30 to 50 other breast cancer survivors make this trip, they do so to queue up to secure a Monobloc chair inside the clinic — a small room that squishes in 20 people — on the next day, all huddled up, toxin being pumped into their systems to rid the body of any cancer cells. If they are lucky, they can get one of the two La-Z Boy recliners. While comfortable in any other setting, they’re not of the correct height for the necessary upright position and arm support, but they’re better than hard plastic Monoblocs.

“Kailangan fight lagi,” a co-warrior says, who, like Eden, is either someone’s mother, grandmother, sister, and friend. It is why they keep fighting, whether it’s by braving the dreadful Manila commute despite their ails or wrapping their heads with printed scarves or drawing their eyebrows on, hairs on their heads and faces lost to chemotherapy.

“Babalik ako dito bukas,” another announced. “At least masarap na ang upuan!” All the breast cancer warriors giggle but are also teary-eyed with gratitude. I didn’t deserve it, but they hugged me. Eden couldn’t make it to the inauguration of The Peninsula Manila, Estée Lauder Companies Philippines, and Pink for Life’s Breast Care Center Annex last Wednesday. After a nine-month construction period — and many years of wishing and hoping by women like Eden through Philippine Foundation for Breast Care (PFBC), the NGO- accredited done institution that runs the center — is finally open and operational.

For every The Art of Pink tea set or pink dessert at The Pensinsula Lobby or at Old Manila or Escolta or for every Estée Lauder Pink Perfection palette purchased over the past four years, or if you donated directly to Peninsula in Pink or The Estée Lauder Companies’ Breast Cancer Awareness Campaign (which has been around since 1992), you helped build it. The breast cancer warriors now have something concrete to ease their fight, something that will still be around for years after they survive.

The Peninsula Manila general manager Mark Choon, who has been on board for seven months, is overwhelmed by the reception from the breast cancer warriors. “What I find to be gratifying is to see the initiative from three separate partners coming together, coming to life. Mel and I are doing things independently but in a case like this when you work together, it just goes to show how bigger things can be,” he says.

“Four years ago, Peninsula and Estée Lauder Companies, we both had separate events. They illuminated the Peninsula and we illuminated the Ayala Museum. Their focus was on providing assistance while ours was awareness. I was looking at it and I thought, wouldn’t it be nice if we just do one thing together and make it big? It just so happened that Peninsula’s former general manager Sonja Vodusek was thinking the same thing,” Estée Lauder Companies country manager Mel Lerma recalls.

PFBC head Malu Cortez recalls that it was The Peninsula Manila director of public relations Mariano Garchitorena who found them through a Visayas-based oncologist friend who knew of East Avenue Medical Center’s Breast Care Center, at the time a small room on the side of a public hospital that is operated and managed by a foundation providing chemotherapy treatments for the indigent, the only one of its kind in the country.

Malu says, “Two weeks before the start of Breast Cancer Awareness Month, Garch texts, ‘Ladies, you need to be here on October 1.’ We went, ‘ha?’ Sonja came to bring the ceremonial big cheque. We knew how much it was but we had no idea that there was more to come. Sonja said, ‘Malu, we’re here for a while. We are not going away. We have plans to sustain you.” 

Mel adds, “We weren’t aiming big but we raised our first million in the following year. It was higher than we expected. The next year, it was four million. The next was seven.”

Pink For Life, a foundation that focuses on treating patients with stage 1 and 2 breast cancer through deeply discounted chemotherapy treatments, also played a big role in pooling funds.

At the conclusion of last year’s campaign, all parties raised nearly 13 million pesos seed money which was used to rehabilitate the Breast Care Center of East Avenue Medical Center with the addition of an expanded reception area, a new two-storey wing that will house 20 brand-new chemotherapy infusion chairs together with the two La-Z Boy recliners they already have.

Mark cites a report from The Philippine Society of Medical Oncology emphasizing the importance of this project, “The Philippines has the highest incidence rate in Asia and is among the top 10 countries with the most cases of breast cancer. The disease is so common that one in every 13 Filipino women are expected to develop breast cancer in their lifetime.”

But with early detection, it is curable.

“When it comes to breast cancer awareness, there’s a lot more that needs to be done. While this is the culmination for the Breast Care Center Annex, there’s still more we can do as partners. The support for Breast Care Center will continue and also for the campaign,” said Mel.

For the entire month of October, The Peninsula in Pink campaign will keep raising funds and awareness for its breast cancer charity partners through Art of Pink Peninsula Afternoon Tea, cocktails and desserts, décor, and hotel and spa packages – all in pink, of course.

Art of Pink’s biggest fundraiser is a collaboration with celebrated Chinese multimedia artist Chen Man who donated “Nao Nao,” an exclusively commissioned series of 10 interactive photographic artworks installed at all 10 Peninsula hotels worldwide. Covered by two pink dots – symbols of breasts and the colon, a punctuation that precedes a conversation – visitors are invited to use traditional nao nao bamboo sticks (available for purchase at P300 to raise additional funds) to gently scrape the dots and slowly unveil the image behind.

In The Peninsula Manila, four photographs will be exhibited at The Lobby until October 31 and will be available for bidding via an online auction until October 24 at paddle8/PeninPink. Bids will start at P150,000.

Garch shares that while support to the Breast Care Center will continue, they are looking into working with a bigger public hospital ward in Manila in the coming years.

But that’s for another story. The breast cancer warriors surprise us with another song and dance number, singing the Rey Valera classic “Kahit Maputi Na Ang Buhok Ko” in chorus (a song that Mark, touted as The Peninsula’s singalong king, also performed for the breast cancer warriors before we all parted ways). Mid performance, they pull Mel, Mark, and Malu for a group hug, a proverbial huddle preparing for the battle ahead. This time, the battle is a team effort.