Manila: She had once said that she eats death threats for breakfast, dared male fellow senators to a fist fight, and now Philippine senator Miriam Defensor-Santiago is facing the biggest battle of her life.
“I’m the only senator who was diagnosed with lung cancer as of last week,” Defensor-Santiago said in a press briefing at the Senate on Wednesday.
The Senator revealed that she had been diagnosed to have stage 4 lung cancer.
“My lungs were already filled with fluid and it just appeared as a small blur on the scan,” she said.
Quoting her doctor, she said cancer cells afflicting her lung were “not spreading” — a positive development which she attributes to her “living a healthy life.”
She said her affliction was a fluke, possibly due to defective genes that she had inherited.
“I don’t smoke, I don’t drink. I don’t commit adultery and tell lies to my husband,” she said in her usual candid-cum-sarcastic manner in a veiled swipe at, nonagenarian Senator Juan Ponce-Enrile, her arch-nemesis.
The Senator said her doctors had told her that she had acquired cancer as a result of “behavioural mutants.”
The Norris-Cotton Cancer Centre website said “gene mutations” also increase an individual’s risk of acquiring lung cancer.
“Certain rare genetic patterns predispose people to lung cancer — if these people smoke it is very damaging for them,” Dr Christopher Amos, associate director of population science at the Norris-Cotton Cancer Centre, says on the website.
“For people with this genetic make-up, smoking is especially harmful as even light smoking for these individuals greatly increases their lung cancer risk,” he said.
Lung cancer can also be acquired from second-hand smoke.
“I’m not afraid of cancer,” Defensor-Santiago said.
She says she is already resigned to whatever her fate is.
“God never asks us for an opinion. God just goes ahead and does whatever is in his hands. I just say okay. I am very happy with the life God gave me. I am very happy with the life I have lived,” she said.
Defensor-Santiago, who is from Iloilo in Central Philippines, gained popularity during the late 1980s during the administration of President Corazon Cojuangco Aquino, the current Chief Executive and Benigno Aquino III’s mother.
She had been regional trial court judge before she appointed by the Aquino-Cojuangco matriarch to the post of Immigrations commissioner, before being assigned as agrarian reform secretary.
During the 1992 elections, she ran for the presidency but lost to Fidel V. Ramos.
Three years ago, Defensor-Santiago was selected as one of the judges in the International Trial Court, but due to her health condition, she was unable to perform her duties and had to resign.
Asked by a reporter once how she copes with the number of death threats she received when she was immigrations chief, Defensor-Santiago said 20 years ago that she doesn’t mind receiving threats against her life.
“Death threats? I eat them for breakfast,” she said.
Santiago-Defensor said she would undergo chemotherapy.
“If I don’t go into remission who knows? I just might run for the presidency in 2016,” she said.
