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Holistic appreciation and treatment of the physical systems of the body

Holistic appreciation, care and treatment of physical, mental, emotional, psychological, psychic and spiritual health

Holistic appreciation, study and application of various modalities of health care and of medicine

Holistic appreciation of synergies among various roles of healers and care-givers in an effort centered on empowered patients.

  1. Total Human Development and Harmony Through Synergism

  2. Holistic Health Care and Medicine

  3. Deep Ecology and Harmony with Nature 

  4. Sense of History and Sense of Mission

  5. Civics and Democratic Governance

  6. Culture as Community Creativity

  7. Light-Seeking and Light-Sharing Education

  8. Gender Sensitivity, Equality & Harmony

  9. Reconstructive/Restor-ative Justice

10. Associative Economics, Social Capital and Sustainable Development

11. Synergetic Leadership and Organizations

12. Appropriate/Adaptive Technology

13. Mutual Enrichment of Families and Friendships

14. Human Dignity and Human Harmony: Human Rights and Peace

15. Aesthetics Without Boundaries: 'Art from the Heart'   

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This Patient Worked for Control

By Ed Aurelio C. Reyes

Prof. Reyes is one of the foremost champions in the Philippines of the serious study and conscious application of the synergism principle on various fields of human concern. He taught synergism-oriented subjects of Applied Cosmic Anthropology, the doctoral program of Asian Social Institute (ASI) in Manila.

This excerpt comes from his book Cita Lives: Thoughts and Feelings on Living and Passing published in June 2004 by SanibLakas. The book, which has also been uploaded in the Internet, has allowed the voice of his late wife, Cita S. Soriente-Reyes, to reach many ears the world over.

MUCH OF THE EARLY history of Cita’s encounter with the dreaded disease is covered by Eric Caruncho in his article. “A Journey Towards Healing” published in the Sunday Inquirer Magazine in April 1992:

Cita Soriente Reyes was several months pregnant with her second child when they found the mole. It was hidden under the edge of her right foot, a flat black disk of oddly-pigmented skin, small and seemingly insignificant. (Cita) could not have guessed that it would dramatically alter the course of her life.

The doctors had been looking for the source of a mysterious fever that had threatened to abort her pregnancy.

“Make sure your doctor sees that after you deliver,” the neurologist who had first seen the mole said. Reyes did not give much thought to it. Many years before, as a community organizer working with peasant communities in the rural areas, she had stepped on a bamboo spike, severely injuring her right foot where the mole was. She did not see a connection, but she made sure her gynecologist examined the mole.

It was Valentine’s Day, 1984, when they operated. Just two weeks earlier, Reyes had given birth to a healthy baby boy. She was told that they would simply be “cauterizing” the mole, a relatively minor surgical procedure, as a precaution.

After the operation, the look on her doctor’s face told (Cita) something was wrong. The biopsy, the doctor finally said after some hemming and hawing, revealed that the mole was cancerous.

“They told me ‘It was malignant...’ — past tense— ‘...but it was over, it’s gone”, Reyes recalls.

“The surgeon had removed the mole and a great deal of the surrounding flesh to make sure no abnormal cells remained. A potential catastrophe had been averted. Everyone heaved a sigh of relief.

“I was totally unprepared when, three years later, I had a recurrence,” says (Cita). “In fact I was totally unprepared for cancer.”

“In December 1987 a lump had appeared in her groin, a lump as big and as hard as a golf ball. Because she did not want to spoil Christmas, (Cita) and her husband — journalist Ed Aurelio Reyes — decided to wait until the new year before having the lump removed, in spite of their mounting anxiety. The operation confirmed their worst suspicions. The diagnosis was melanoma, a rare and particularly virulent form of skin cancer, which, if unchecked, can spread through the lymphatic system or the bloodstream or attack other organs.

“That was when I felt what all patients feel when told ‘You have cancer.’ I couldn’t talk. My mouth was so dry. I was holding back the tears. My first response was anger: why was this happening to me? I didn’t want to go. Ayoko pa! (I’m not ready!) I was only 27. I was not bedridden. There was no pain, no dizziness. I could do anything.”

“(Cita) found little comfort from her physicians. One doctor told her flatly that there was little that could be done. Chemotherapy and radiation — the standard medical arsenal for most cancers — were not effective against melanomas and would do more harm than good. All they could do was to surgically remove the lump that grew, and pray that none would grow on a vital organ.”

“I went to another doctor, who told me: ‘You’re like a ticking time bomb — any time you could explode. Then again you might not. We can’t say. The only thing to do is make the most of your time, while you still have time.’ This made me all the more angry and terrified.”

One doctor wanted her to try chemotherapy and radiation, the risks be damned, against the overwhelming opinion of all her other doctors. (Cita) was tempted but eventually decided against it. Another laughed in her face when she asked him for research materials on melanomas so she could understand her disease. The information, they told her, was highly technical, implying that she couldn’t possibly understand it, and even if she could, what good could it possibly do her?

“I could accept the fact that I had cancer. But they wanted me to accept that I was going to die. That I couldn’t accept. So I became angry, and anger became my ally.”

After these frustrations, (Cita) decided to take her life in her own hands. That became the turning point. With the support of a sympathetic doctor, she embarked on her journey to healing.

Decision to be In-Charge

Refusing to watch the sunset of her life idly, she plunged into cancer research herself and adopted a self-designed approach to fighting her cancer, which defied all gloomy prognoses about her “dying soon.” And she lived on for a full 15 years after contracting the disease (ten years after first detection).

In an undated textfile in her floppy diskette marked “cancer,” we find her talking to herself, and to many, many other people who are similarly situated. She talks about panic:

“Okay, so it has been confirmed. You have cancer but you still can’t believe it. Your mind is filled with the question:

“Are you going to die?” At the same time, your doctor is urging radical treatment in a week or less. And you do not know what to say and have left it to the doctor.

“Oh, it is a terrible time, the hardest time. No words can express your confusion, your panic. In this state of kapit sa patalim (clutching desperately even on a sharp knife), you are asked to make a tough decision that feels like you may be gambling with your life.

“This period is harder for some of us if we have witnessed a traumatic experience of a dearly-loved cancer victim, and even harder for those who have experienced more than one trauma.

“But the situation leaves you not much choice. So, you must get as informed as you can be so you can make the best decisions. And this is not easy.

“Many Filipino doctors may not be helpful in educating you, partly because they are not sure how much you can take. Also, because they have not been trained in medical school to empathize with cancer patients and these cancer specialists are pessimistic about cancer in general. So how can they inspire hope in you?

“It is reflective of the present state of conventional cancer care. 

“Unfortunately, little progress has been made in effective cancer treatment.

“Both specialists and wholistic physicians say there is no ‘one method’ in the treatment.”

For this reason, Cita encouraged me to develop the idea of patient empowerment in the form of pointing out available options for informed choice. She had passed away by the time I finished an article and first delivered its contents in a talk before the First National Conference on Breast Cancer in October 1998. That article said, almost straight out of Cita’s mind:

“As a life-threatening illness, cancer disempowers people, not only through physical debilitation but also, or even more so, through demoralization. Myths woven over decades around the mind of patients and loved-ones turn the instinct for survival into a strong fear mired in the quicksand of confusion, misunderstanding and self-pity, along with acute financial and technical difficulties, especially in present Philippine social realities. Fear weakens whomever it grips.

“Much of the myths can be swept away by information accessed by any cancer patient or care-giver from a synergy of information, knowledge and wisdom that can either complement or challenge the medical and health care professionals’ much-vaunted near-monopoly of it. That monopoly has turned doctors into death-schedule-predicting gods and patients into helpless case studies obeying doctors’ orders and basically waiting to die on schedule. (The talk discussed the following points as much as possible in living experience dynamisms:)

“Empowerment can be had from informed choice, including, most basically, information about all options being open every step of the way from prevention (of cancer) to treatment modes to be chosen, if any. In at least ten important issues, wide ranges of options are actually open, by assertion, for the informed free choice of the persons with cancer (PWCs) themselves.

One of the items in my article confronts the doctors’ “infallibility” directly:

“4. Options: whether or not to believe a doctor’s prognosis especially that which predicts a definite length of time (or “taning”). Any doctor’s prognosis that gives a time estimate is definitely a guess, according to hitherto established statistics on average cases. Such past statistics cannot at all affect any present case; a present case will be part of future statistics, which the doctors will know about even much later. Doctors have been giving “taning” as self-fulfilling prophecies: they intimidate and demoralize their patients into fulfilling the scary prognosis.

Cita herself wrote, in a situationer for Laban sa Kanser (LAKAS, a support network for cancer patients) that: 

“Hardly anyone understands cancer: not the patient, the family, the public, nor even the medical community at large. Many cancer doctors hardly educate patients and encourage them to fight this disease. Standard therapies are hardly explained.”

That is why it is understandable that many patients, when told that they have cancer, tend to abdicate all their capabilities and even their stakeholdership in their own survival and quality of life and “leave everything to the doctors.”

Panic over a life-threatening illness in one’s own body can numb or paralyze one’s rational thinking (like perhaps my own if I were in that place). Still, in Cita’s case, her firm decision to squarely confront that situation enhanced all the more her thirst for information and sharpened her mind for clearer comprehension.

Striving to be well-informed

She started preparing herself to become well-informed on the subject, from its generalities to the particularities of her own type of cancer.

Dr. Myrna Soriente-Estrada, M.D., her own sister and a founding Board Member of LAKAS, had prepared a long orientational paper on the basics of cancer, which Cita studied diligently as a starting point. Titled “What is Cancer? What is Cancer Rehabilitation?”, Myrna’s undated paper starts off with the following introduction:

“Cancer is caused in all or almost all instances by mutation of cellular genes that control cell growth and cell mitosis. The mutated genes are called oncogenes. Usually, two or more different oncogenes must occur in a cell before the cell will become cancerous.

“Only a minute fraction of the cells that mutate in the body ever lead to cancer. There are several reasons for this.

“First, most mutated cells have less survival capability than normal cells and therefore simply die.

“Second, only a few of the mutated cells that do survive lose the normal feedback controls that prevent excessive growth.

“Third, those cells that are potentially cancerous are usually destroyed by the body’s immune system before they grow into a cancer. This occurs in the following way: Most mutated cells form abnormal proteins within their cell bodies because of their altered genes, and these proteins then stimulate the body’s immune system, causing it to form antibodies against the cancerous cells, in this way destroying them. Indeed it is believed that all of us are continually forming cells that are potentially cancerous but that our immune system acts as a scavenger that nips these abnormal cells in the bud before they can become established.

“Why is it that we do not develop literally millions of mutant cancerous cells? The answer is the incredible precision with which DNA chromosomal strands are replicated in each cell before mitosis takes place and also because the ‘proof¬reading’ process cuts and repairs any abnormal DNA strand before the mitotic process is allowed to proceed. Yet, despite all these precautions, probably one newly formed cell in every few million still has significant mutant characteristics.”

Soriente-Estrada’s paper then proceeds to identify several predisposing factors that increase the probability of mutation, such as ionizing radiation, certain types of chemical substances, physical irritants, hereditary tendency, and certain viruses. It also illustrates the two major differences between a cancer cell and a normal cell, and explains how cancer cells kill by competing with normal cells for nutrients.

Eric Caruncho’s account continues:

The first step (for Cita) was to know the enemy. (She) began to read everything she could about her disease. The sympathetic doctor, who by now had become a friend, gave her some materials. She wrote to the National Cancer Institute in the U.S. and to a melanoma research center in Australia, both of which offered more information. She wrote to clinics in Sweden and China, where experimental therapies were being tried out. In a short while she became an expert on melanomas.

Indeed, I was a witness and an extra hand as she embarked on a wide search for names and mailing addresses of sources of such information. She knew well that to assert her right to decide on what is to be done on her body, she might as well know fully all the attendant factors for choice so that her own decisions would be as educated as possible.

Here’s a partial list of cancer-related institutions in the world she wrote to, a good number of which sent her letters and/or useful materials:

— American Cancer Society, Los Angeles, California, USA;

— Australian Cancer Society, Sydney, Australia;

— British Association of Cancer United Patients;

— Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research – Melbourne Tumour Biology Branch, Melbourne, Australia; and

— Office of Cancer Communications – National Cancer Institute, Bethesda, Maryland, USA.

She even sent a letter to Sweden presenting her case to Dr. Bjorn Nordenstrom, who had discovered an electric approach to healing in general and destroying tumors in particular.

Her efforts were rewarded with much material pouring into her personal library, mailed by the institutions she had written to, or handed over by friends and relatives who would photocopy articles in various libraries. Cita would painstakingly study even those photocopies that were barely readable. The materials pertained to clean and healing diets (like bio-dynamic vegetables, bran diets, macrobiotics, etc.), some unorthodox therapies (like coffee enema and urine therapy), and, most importantly, readings focused on her own illness—malignant melanoma. Some of these readings were:

—“Malignant Melanoma: Recognition and Management,” by Neville C. Davis of the Queensland Melanoma Project, Princess Alexandra Hospital, Brisbane;

 —“Malignant Melanoma” by the Cancer Information Service of the British Association of Cancer United Patients (BACUP);

—“Information for Patients Relating to Malignant Melanoma,” compiled by the Sydney Melanoma Unit, Royal Prince Albert Hospital, Sydney, Australia; and

—“Specific Herbal Literature on Cancer,” part of the Ticzon Herbal Manual, published by R.R. Ticzon Management Corporation, Mandaluyong, Metro Manila, Philippines.

Cita got to understand her illness well enough that, one time, a doctor was talking with her about using a certain drug for a proposed chemotherapy procedure on her, and she flatly told the doctor, “But that particular drug does not work on melanoma!” After doing his own research, perhaps more carefully this time, the doctor returned the following day to tell her she was right.

Cita upholds that every patient has the right to decide what is to be done or not done on her or his own body, even on the basis of intuition, instincts and “gut feel.” But she says it pays to be well-informed enough.

Cancer is something you cannot control, but Cita felt she could confront cancer with dignity in active stakeholdership.

In a diary entry in February, She defined her framework, indeed an invincible one:

“I cannot allow cancer to hang over my head like the Sword of Damocles—paralyzing, intimidating me to inaction, non-enthusiasm, being aimless and purposeless.

“Blocking the way, blinding me to what I need:

“To discover about life, its meaning, its purpose, its worth; “To discover what life is for;

“To live life to the fullest, loving its wonder and glory, its splendor and beauty.

“To learn to be strong amidst sorrow, to be graceful under pressure.”

Cita kept a copy of an anonymously written poem, What Cancer Cannot Do:

Cancer is so limited… It cannot cripple love,

It cannot shatter hope,

It cannot corrode faith,

It cannot destroy peace,

It cannot kill friendship,

It cannot suppress memories,

It cannot silence courage,

It cannot invade the soul,

It cannot steal eternal life,

It cannot conquer the spirit.

Caruncho’s account continues:

“In 1989 (Cita) had another recurrence. This time, the lump appeared in her abdomen. Another operation was performed and several more lymph nodes were removed. The setback plunged her into a depression, but it did not last long.

“Should I now accept that I might fail, that I might not recover?” she asked herself. “Can I plan for the next five years? The next ten? Life holds no guarantees. I resolved to live by the day, as fully as I could. I began to pay attention to other aspects of life, apart from being well.”

It was a full life she actually lived between and after all of those six surgeries, that people did not suspect she had the “Big C.” Those who were told would refuse to believe, and those who had to believe could hardly contain their admiration and amazement. For most of that time she seemed much healthier, and was definitely more active, than they!

Enriched by a deeper spirituality in her last year, Cita made out a “Living Will,” wrote and circulated her profound thoughts linking spirituality with active service of the people in an unjust social order.

She also breezed through art lessons that I gave right at her post-operation sickbed. Her visual arts talent now shines in watercolor (non-classic) and oil paintings the Soriente-Reyes family gave out as gifts during her last Christmas season.

Caruncho’s article continues:

(When Adul de Leon died,) Reyes began to find meaning — and comfort — in a few lines of verse that her husband Ed (Ding) had written years before, upon the death of a friend:

Magawa ko sanang ngumiti

Sa aking paghimlay:

Tuldok sa pangungusap

Ng aking buhay.

Death is nothing more than the period at the end of a sentence. The important thing is not the period, not even whether the sentence is long or short, but what it says.

She also learned that the struggle with cancer need not be a grim contest, that it can be a journey toward healing and self-discovery. As she learned more about herself, (Cita) found new sources of inner strength. It allowed her to weather two more recurrences, and the death, after a brief battle with breast cancer, of another close friend, environmental activist and Lakas founding member Len Jos.

“When I reached my sixth and then my seventh year, my doctors began to congratulate me,” Reyes says. “They said: ‘You’ve proven that you can coexist with your cancer.’ Others said my body must be very strong, or the cancer must have been weak, but I believe that a healthy diet, a healthy life-style, physical exercise, carrot juice therapy and maintaining a positive attitude all had a role to play — plus, of course, the support of my doctor. It takes a lot of support, a lot of study, a lot of introspection, to trigger the healing process. But when mind, heart and body are harmonized, you will reach that point.”

Although she realizes that, owing to its chronic nature, melanoma will be a lifelong battle, she believes that she has already triumphed.

“The longest survival record for melanoma is 25 years,” she says. “I’ve already reached the mystical five years and I am now on my second five. There will be more fives for me.” 

Fighting at Least For More Time

Cita S. Soriente-Reyes eventually “returned to the Source” at the age of 39 minus two months, way before she could “begin life at 40,” on June 11, 1994. Some years before, she wrote in her notebook that I later put in as the “Encouraging Prologue” to the book, Cita Lives: Thoughts and Feelings on Living and Passing (Manila: SanibLakas Editorial and Publishing Services, 2004, 80 pp.). That prologue encourages thus:

“SO YOU THINK you’ve been given a death sen¬tence when the doctor told you that you have a malignant tumor? Well, not necessarily so. Cancer need not be that deadly.

“In every battle or every game, there is always a chance to win victory – call it a winning streak, call it luck, whatever! You can take that chance.

“Taking that chance is no guarantee you would really win over cancer. But refusing to even try to fight will most likely guarantee defeat.

“Taking that elusive chance to win over cancer is actually a decision only a person afflicted with cancer can make. Dying of cancer does not make the decision wrong or useless. It may mean that the odds were not overturned. Often the odds are beyond the patient’s control.

“So how does one take the chance to win over cancer? Take control. Strengthen your body. Your best ally is your immune system. Never compromise this. Make intelligent decisions. Have courage.

“Courage does not mean putting on a cheerful face all the time, having no tantrums, not being afraid. It’s being strong enough to face difficulties, dangers and disappointments. Courage is not caring if you lose but caring enough to try to win.

“Here are some action points to consider:

“Know yourself, know the enemy, and you can win a thousand battles.

“Study, understand, know well your vulnerability and shield it from cancer. Beef it up with wellness through a good diet, enough sleep and rest, exercise, and keeping a healthy mind.

“A lot of cancers are caused by toxic chemical and physical agents in the environment. Stay away from them.

“Cancer is caused often by certain lifestyles that include smoking and too much coffee. A healthy lifestyle is certainly a ticket to remission.

“Watch out for the danger signals of cancer.

“Embark on a wellness program or regimen (physical and mental).

 “Undertake a lot of introspection for self-discovery that can harness your inner strength.

“Harmonize your body, mind and heart/spirit to trigger your natural healing process.

“It is difficult and rough and tough. Remember that ‘when the going gets tough, the tough get going.’ Victory over cancer is tough; it requires a lot of hard work. It also requires patience.

“As you patiently wait for the ‘mystical five years’ to be over, embark on a cause larger than yourself. This will put a lot of your problems in perspective, especially if you connect it to a social context.

“Most of all, trust and believe in yourself, in the power of Life and the forces that govern it.

“Then, live with abandon, adding a little frivolity once in a while.

“Be challenged, not discouraged by life’s difficulties. Live your life one day at a time. Any misfortune, no matter how large, can be overcome one day at a time. Before one knows it, the storm has passed over and one has weathered it through.

“Go with life’s bliss and splendor. Don’t joy, happiness and love seem boundless as one savors every minute of it?

“So, life goes on even with cancer. Whether or not you lick cancer would not really matter, once you’ve discovered a quality of life that cannot be constrained in space and time.”

(That) Prologue came from the prolific pen of a lady writer who was afflicted with malignant melanoma, a type of skin cancer that has been described as “among the fastest-growing and most-resistant to treatment.” But she outlasted all those grim prognoses. She even outlasted one of her doctors, and completed about a decade and a half of active and fulfilled life from the time the first malignant melanoma cancer cells were suspected to have emerged within her right foot.

She fought cancer and won many more additional years of active life, enriching it by her profound discernments about the value of life and its very purpose.

That lady writer who wrote this challenging Prologue took the same challenge and, by her own reckoning as expressed above, gloriously triumphed. Her name was Carmencita S. Soriente-Reyes. Most of the material in this book came from pages of her diary, handwritten as a living journal of her struggle. The other parts came from her various letters.