Bettina after the storm

Bettina Lopez Osmeña has what many would describe as a charmed life. Born beautiful and privileged, she married an accomplished man from an illustrious clan, and together they had four beautiful children. At 43, she looked 28. Life could not have been any better.

Till she found out she had breast cancer after a routine mammogram. Just like that.

"There was no lump, but there was microcalcification. So there was this cluster that was abnormal looking," recalls Bettina of that day three years ago when she thought her fairy tale was over. "I remember it so vividly, it was a Friday and my OB-gyne told me, ‘Does cancer of the breast run in your family?’ I texted her, ‘Why?’ I didn’t know anything about cancer. And then she said, ‘Ang dami mong lesions.’ I was so really depressed that weekend. The breast clinic was closed and the breast surgeon was out of town. I had no one to talk to. I was so stressed out."

Those who have been in that excruciating place between discovery and confirmation – whether it’s about illness, death, a board exam that you don’t know the results of, etc. – know that sometimes, waiting is more unbearable than the moment of truth. Luckily for Bettina, a common friend arranged for her to meet with Kara Alikpala, a breast cancer survivor who founded a support group, the I Can Serve Foundation.

Being with Kara helped Bettina get though the weekend. That Monday, she met with breast surgeon Dr. Diana Cua, who looked at the test results and told Bettina that if it was cancer, it still wasn’t serious.

Actually, after the initial shock, Bettina was determined to go on with her life. She and husband Sen. Serge Osmeña and their four children were scheduled to take a trip to Australia and she didn’t want to postpone the holiday, because it was one of those rare times when everyone was on vacation.

"So anyway, Dr. Cua told me, ‘If I were you, go on your trip because Stanford Hospital is not easy to get an appointment with. Go na lang to the States when you come back from Australia. If you want, give me your free dates, I’ll make the arrangements for you.’ So she did."

At Stanford, Bettina underwent an MRI-guided biopsy, a procedure that was not yet being done in the Philippines. It cost $4,000 – luckily she had medical insurance.

"The cancer was confirmed," says Bettina. "So anyway, I had a lumpectomy, meaning they just removed the localized area but it wasn’t successful because they did a pathology and the margins kung saan ako tinanggalan ng lumps, meron pa ring natitirang cancer so they really told me, you need a mastectomy. So I did it. Parang I had two surgeries in a span of three months."

When she got back to the Philippines, she had cosmetic surgery done by a Filipino doctor whom UCLA was reportedly, "dying to get," Dr. Eric Arcilla.

That was also the time that Bettina joined her support group, I Can Serve.

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Three years after, Bettina is in the pink of health. Because her cancer was discovered early, she did not have to go through chemotherapy (she feels it is her mission to remind women to have a regular mammogram). Aside from her duties as wife and mother, she is kept busy by her jewelry export business, one of Cebu’s best-kept secrets.

Bettina has a core group of about five workers in her workshop in Cebu, which she visits every 10 days. When orders are big (she exports to as far away as Russia), she sub-contracts to some housewives in different barangays in the city.

She quips that she hopes one day to earn more than her husband, who is retiring from the Senate next year.

"What I’ve been doing the past year is I’ve had three small mini-bazaars in my house where I sell my jewelry, with about four other people who don’t have store. So we’d get together and sell our wares in my house and Kara was present in one. She told me, ‘Ang galing naman, daming taong pumupunta. Why don’t we have a bazaar?’ So I said, ‘Yeah, sure.’ So what I did is I still got these people together plus some exporters from Cebu and from Bacolod. So we decided, let’s be different from other bazaars, let’s invite people who don’t normally join bazaars and who export and those whose products you normally don’t see in stores."

The two-day bazaar will be held this Saturday and Sunday (Oct. 14 and 15) at The Loft, Rockwell, from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. Dubbed, "Tickled Pink," it will give 25 percent of gross sales to I Can Serve.

* * *

With the support of her family ("Serge never gets depressed.") and I Can Serve, Bettina can look back to that unforgettable day three years ago and treat it just as a memory – not a curse." I did have friends who had breast cancer, I used to feel that, oh my God, I’ll die if that happens to me. Yung parang the thought of mastectomy was a killer. But then it happened to me, it was nothing pala. It’s absolutely nothing. I wasn’t devastated by it."

In fact, during the height of typhoon Milenyo, when she was caught on the road with her car shaking like a leaf, Bettina thought she would die from a wayward billboard. "I was in the highway when the typhoon really hit Metro Manila. I told my companions, ‘Akala ko I’d die from cancer. Mamamatay lang pala ako being blown away by a typhoon’."

She survived that, too, thank God, in one beautiful piece.

Her near brushes with death have taught Bettina, "not to sweat the small stuff and to simplify."

"Definitely, I have become less materialistic. I’m happier with less."

(You may e-mail me at joanneraeramirez@yahoo.com)