Laughing, loving and healing with Loren

Please help me during the campaign, I am calling you early so I will be the first to borrow you from your boss,”  Assumption Convent Class ‘77 high school classmate — and fellow Section 6 member — Loren Legarda requested me in a phone call three months before the start of the official election period.

As the public relations officer of Senator Rodolfo G. Biazon since 1992, I have been “borrowed” by other candidates during campaigns when Senator Biazon was not in the race.

“I already spoke to your boss, he said it was okay,” Loren chirped excitedly during a February 2 telephone call (the start of the campaign period) as I was on my way to work.

Two years ago, I was diagnosed with breast cancer. It was a reality that, at the age of 45, I was forced to accept.

Senator Biazon knew that it was just over a year ago when I went through the physical and psychological pain of a mastectomy. He knew for several months, when I had lost hair and was wearing a wig, that I would have to go through six cycles of chemotherapy and, later, endure 28 sessions of radiation.

Since then, Senator Biazon often starts his requests with a question, “How are you, are you all right?” He always reminds me that, if I am too weak to go to work, I should not push myself; to which I reply I would just cry at home if I didn’t work.

“If it’s me you are worried about,” Biazon confided, putting his right hand to his heart, “I want to help Loren.”

“Okay, Sir. I think I can cope,” I replied, thinking I could never really say no to Loren after all the moral support she had given me during my dark days at the hospital and just after my operation.

Despite being busy with her election protest against rival Noli de Castro, Loren was among my faithful and compassionate callers when I was confined, always insisting on visiting me.

Because I bore the discomfort of two long plastic tubes hanging from my chest, I always pleaded that we wait to see each other when I was out of the hospital, hopefully at a healing Mass she could organize for me at her home.

And she did.

Right after I was discharged, aside from gifting me with a huge plastic bag full of sugar-free ampalaya tea, she invited Fr. Nico Bautista and our Assumption classmates to a heart-warming healing Mass and dinner at her house.

I remember her cautioning me that night not to adopt any alternative healing method, but rather to go through chemotherapy, citing a classmate of ours who refused chemo and had just passed away. Loren’s mother died of breast cancer, too. Since then, Loren has been an active supporter of many breast cancer support groups including my own, I Can Serve.

My first Loren motorcade was the one around Erap’s San Juan. I remember being moved to tears because I witnessed how, as our huge truck bellowing the “Loren, Loren Sinta” jingle was about to arrive, the people in the streets were excitedly jumping, the children dancing ecstatically, waving the No. 1 finger sign at us. That was just the intro music; Loren was not even with us then.

I realized the depth of appreciation people still had for Loren, despite her not being an incumbent public official during the last three years.

This scenario repeated over and over around the country during our campaign sorties from Laoag to Pagadian. Loren got mobbed! The crowd was moved to a frenzy by her presence and swooped around her.

As my tears fell at the generously exuberant reception given to Loren at the fish port community in Zamboanga, she took a step back and whispered to me: “See why I have to run, Pam? It’s for them, they want me to do something for them.”

In Laguna, even from inside her van, standing up through the sunroof to wave at crowds, I saw people attempt to push their way through to give Loren pastillas, buko pie — even a pair of embroidered slippers.

“Ate Loren, gutom po kami. Ate Loren gusto ko po mag aral,” the children in Navotas cried out to her.

Loren repeatedly told me: “Gutom is the major problem, Pam, and I intend to activate 1,000 feeding centers around the country with the support of the country’s top 1,000 corporations.”

I understand why Loren is not afraid to dream big. It is because during her previous term as senator, 40 loops of the South Super Highway that are now flourishing mini forests, and all the tress enveloping the highway, were planted with the help of Loren’s friends both in government and in the private sector.

Through all this, as Loren felt her strong calling for public service, I was reminded of a feeling of similar intensity: my own desire to live.

I recalled those agonizing days when, terribly afraid of being pricked by the needle, I forced myself to bear the pain to allow passage for one tray of assorted toxic chemotherapy medicines to be infused intravenously in my body to kill what my doctor diagnosed as “vascular invasion” of cancer cells.

With the same passion that Loren desired to serve, I wanted so much to be cancer-free, to be alive.

My main job during the campaign was to go in advance to the different provinces where Loren would be campaigning to organize press conferences with the provincial media, including those from Manila who were assigned to travel with and cover the senatorial candidate.

“How is your love life, how did you cope?” the provincial media in Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao would ask Loren, referring to the several losses that seemed to come in a succession of blows — her loss to Noli de Castro, her separation from her husband, and her becoming a single mother — including the loss of a huge amount of money spent on her election protest and the still-pending case at that time with the Presidential Electoral Tribunal.

“I have no love life,” Loren laughingly answered, “but 15 million Filipinos (those who elected her senator previously) love me, so that is fulfilling enough. As for my other crosses in life, I pray hard. Bumabangon po ako. Tumatayo ulit. Kailangan po dahil madami hong umaasa sa akin. I have to be strong especially for my children and the many others like yung mga scholars ko who are depending on me.”

“Sounds like me,” I remember telling myself, “trying to be bold in spirit each day and always hoping for the positive.”

Like my classmate Loren, I am blessed with the loving comfort of family and friends who have supported me through my sickness and each day, as courageously as I can, I silently accept the loss of my right breast. I pray for continued healing and try hard not to cry and flagellate myself with self pity.

One of the best lessons I learned while in the close company of Loren those months was the way she managed her time.

This was Loren’s first campaign without a husband. She was on top of everything and anything.

Loren’s campaign secret of time management? She refused to waste even a moment bad-mouthing other people, especially other candidates.

“Let’s just focus on being positive,” she would remind all of us who offered updates on others in the senatorial race.

And this was exactly what my oncologist, Dr. Antonio Villalon, and my sisters in my breast cancer support group, I Can Serve, have advised me from day one: the best cure for cancer is to always have a happy, hopeful attitude. They strongly cautioned that cancer calls would, in fact, thrive on depression, dejection and misery.

As a cancer survivor, it was actually healing for me to be traveling with Loren because she is so hilarious. Her comments often surprised me. Leaving the makeshift wooden stage at the Guadalupe, Makati rally of Mayor Jejomar Binay, she extended her arm up to me. I told her, “Go ahead, I might fall down on you pa,” as I was trying to make my way down the narrow flimsy steps just behind her. Loren replied, aware of my being overweight, “Yun nga baka daganan mo ako, kaya inaakay na kita!”

In the middle of a discussion on future plans, schedules and assessments while on flight, she suddenly cautioned me, “Try not to make wee-wee in the plane, the toilet bowl might just suck your pwet!” She related a true story of a friend of hers who suffered for five hours before being extracted from the airplane’s toilet bowl.

Bo Roco put it well when asked how he found the campaign: “One big party.”

In between the motorcades and rallies, we marveled together at the historic centuries old houses of Calle Crisologo in Vigan and shopped for locally woven blankets; enjoyed the pristine white picturesque beach of Boracay and teased each other about the beach outfits we were wearing; relaxed in a Gone with the Wind- themed mansion hidden amid Bacolod’s largest sugar plantation while savoring our refreshing halo-halos; and climbing the steep steps behind the miraculous Our Lady of Manaoag while taking our turns touching her sacred gown.

Despite being surrounded by the frenzied media and local supporters, Loren cried out looking for me to make sure I also touch the image and relating, “The  Virgin of Manaog gifted me with a miracle a few years ago. I had no voice and had to be operated on my throat. I was so afraid. But I prayed to her and I was cured.”

Truly among my most memorable experiences while campaigning with Loren was being so fortunate to be at each and every religious endorsement given to her — in the proclamation ceremonies in Davao City attended by 30,000 followers where the “chosen ones” (senatorial hopefuls) who were revealed at the Holy Mountain to Kingdom of Jesus’s Pastor Apollo Quiboloy were formally announced, prayed for, blessed and gifted with holy shawls, oils and Bibles; at the Quirino Grandstand with El Shaddai’s Brother Mike Velarde where thousands of candle lights flickered in the darkness as the multitude swayed and sang their prayers; at the Jesus is Lord and other religious groups press conference at Club Pilipino led by Brother Eddie Villanueva and those teary happy moments in Cotabato following the call to Loren from the elders of the Iglesia ni  Cristo informing her of their support.

I will treasure being with Loren when she filed her candidacy at the Comelec, walking with her as she cast her vote in her precinct near her ancestral home in Malabon and eventually sharing her joy and amazement when proclaimed at the PICC, when she revealed that she purposely wore a Muslin-inspired blouse to symbolize her gratitude to the exceptionally high number of votes given to her by the people of Mindanao.

Loren is like that — always grateful. She has this very kind habit of frequently texting her staff her appreciation for their efforts.

My reply to her “thank you” text right after her proclamation ceremony: “Perhaps God brought us together now, because he knew it was when we needed each other most.”

Two years ago to the day I write this, I was diagnosed with cancer. By the most powerful Grace of the  Almighty God, I remain cancer-free. I continue to claim my healing.