Atta women!

I certainly pay tribute and express my high esteem to our two Honorable Senators who, despite being in the opposition, have exercised statesmanship unlike some of their male counterparts from the anti-administration ranks. Senators Pia Cayetano and Loren Legarda demonstrated such statesmanship in the manner they reacted over the hullabaloo on President Arroyo’s much-maligned breast implant surgery done more than two decades ago.

For the macho society that we have here, they derisively call it “boob job.” Thus, such foul term is already an affront to womanhood that Senators Loren and Pia took up the cudgels for, and certainly not in defense of President Arroyo. 

That medical procedure returned to haunt the President. She decided to undergo what the Palace defenders described as “medical necessity” at that time. From the medical history of Mrs. Arroyo that I know since the time I covered her at the Senate, she is really prone to polyp growth. A benign growth in her right or left hand, I could not recall which one, was surgically removed from her while she was a Senator. When she was still Vice President, she underwent a surgery that removed polyp growth in her stomach. It was thankfully benign also.

Now 62 years old, this latest surgery of her sensitive part of the body she went through, is now causing her medical crisis of sorts. It’s not because it was anything serious but because it titillated so much her foes and allies as well to talk about her “breast implant”, more than addressing the more important national problems that we have like the latest security threats due to bombings in Mindanao and “planted” bombs in Metro Manila. Sorry for the pun.

It all started about two weeks before she embarked on her latest foreign travels when the Chief Executive suddenly made the un-announced executive checkup at the Asian Hospital in Alabang, Muntinlupa City. After media got wind of it, the Palace disclosed she merely underwent a “gynecological” checkup. There were no other details given by the Palace, except that the hospital visit was also timed before she went abroad. Fine.

Fresh from her arrival from a 12-day trip to four nations — Japan, Colombia, Brazil and Hong Kong, Mrs. Arroyo proceeded again to the Asian Hospital. The complication on the latest visit to the Asian Hospital was the Palace announcement that the President decided to undergo a 10-day self-quarantine due to the highly infectious A (H1N1).

It burst into the open allegedly due to a “leak” or illegal disclosure of medical information of a patient and from within official circle at Malacañang. While the latest medical surgery went well — thank God for that — the loose talks over her “breast implants” are the ones now causing the non-medically-related headaches to the presidency.

What made matters more serious was the seeming breach also of patient-doctor confidentiality. Be that as it may, it was enough to trigger an uproar over what became a big issue of Palace cover-up for her latest medical surgery.

Senators Loren and Pia agreed it was not good to blow the issue on the President’s breast implants out of proportion. No pun intended. The two lawmakers cited it would not hurt if the President would not disclose everything about what had been done on her body in the past. They pointed out that for as long as it would not involve a serious health condition, then it should not be a national security concern or to endanger public interest.

From hindsight, the two lawmakers who are also staunch women-cause advocates both conceded the President could keep some things private as regards her body if these were not interfering with her job as leader of the land. They pointed out, however, that Mrs. Arroyo should have been honest from the start about her latest medical situation that afflicts many women of any age.

Raul B. Guanzon, a cosmetic surgeon, who did the surgery on her vouched the President is “in the pink” of health after an hour-long “excision biopsy” that successfully removed the lump on the left side of her left breast. Obviously, out of medical professional courtesy, Dr. Guanzon though, refused to comment whether the lump had something to do with the “breast implant” of the President.

To help dispel ugly rumors, Dr. Guanzon agreed to be interviewed by media. He freely disclosed that the two conclusive tests showed that the two-centimeter lump removed from Mrs. Arroyo was fortunately benign. Guanzon surmised the Palace apparently did not want to alarm the public for not initially revealing it.

But what was revealing to the disclosures of the cosmetic surgeon was the fact the President was put on major anesthesia to make her sleep and feel no pain during the one-hour medical procedure. He noted the presence at the hospital of the First Family led by First Gentleman Jose Miguel who was gallantly beside her during the surgery along with their eldest son, Pampanga Rep. Mikey Arroyo. But there was no mention of any member of the official family being present at the hospital, most especially Vice President Noli de Castro.

I distinctly recall the time that former President Fidel V. Ramos underwent a life-threatening carotid surgery when he suffered a near-fatal stroke at the Palace on Dec. 23, 1996. The late Presidential Security Group Gen. Jose Calimlim immediately notified then Vice President Joseph Estrada to proceed to Makati Medical Center before Mr. Ramos was put to sleep under major anesthesia. As constitutional successor, the Vice President was quietly alerted and was required to be physically present at the hospital for whatever the results would be. Fortunately, the surgery was a success and everything went back to normal. But credits go to the late PSG chief who made sure the constitutional requirements were followed.

The media got wind of the surgery after it was all over. There was no coverup. But fortuitously for the Ramos administration, it happened when everyone was celebrating Christmas at that time and nobody thought that a very strong Ramos would have such medical problem.

Did anyone from the official circle of President Arroyo think about the constitutional requirements? Or, they too were kept in the dark when Mrs. Arroyo was too shy to reveal her “private” medical situation in the past that might have caused her breast lump?