27 July 1999
Ottawa, Canada
Opening Plenary
Opening Plenary
2nd World Conference on Breast Cancer
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A most beautiful morning to all the gallant women and men in
the global movement for the eradication of breast cancer. My name is Rosa Francia-Meneses and I am from the Philippines.
When Laurene Clark asked me to talk in this opening plenary,
I felt challenged. To speak before such a huge audience baring my soul, if not
my chest…that is tough Yes, living with breast cancer is really tough. Tougher
still when you have to recount the terrible pain of a not so distant past. It’s
like scratching a wound and exposing the raw part of it. I go through this
motion many times when I talk – so you can imagine how often I bear the pain.
Recalling the pain serves a purpose – to remind myself that
dealing with it is living with breast cancer. As I do so today, I am reminded
of the many other gallant women doing the same. My story is the same as every
woman with breast cancer.
In February 1997, after my two year old daughter refused to
suck from my left breast, I went to a doctor because of a nagging lump I
thought was dried breast milk. I went alone, thinking that it was a routine checkup.
Nothing prepared me for the shock that followed.
He was not a doctor of my choice but one referred by my
health maintenance plan. After enduring the pain of a mammogram, he coldly told
me I had cancer and had to undergo surgery at once. He didn’t wait for any of
my family’s presence for that heartless declaration. With utter disbelief, I
told him I couldn’t have cancer – no one in my family had cancer. My ears then
just shut off and I no longer heard whatever he was saying afterwards. Walking
away from the hospital like a lost soul, I don’t even know how I got home.
My 21 year old daughter was eager to learn of the result.
Suddenly, the tears I had been holding back flowed like Niagara Falls. No words
came out but it was enough for my daughter to know that death was casting its
shadow on us. My husband had to be brave for both of us. He brought me to his
childhood classmate who was a cancer surgeon. I must have been stricken with
total numbness for I just left everything up to them.
His friend had me immediately confined in preparation for a
frozen section biopsy. Being both ignorant, we left everything up to the
doctor. Again, nothing prepared me for what happened later on.
I was brought to the operating room early in the morning and
regained consciousness from the anesthesia early evening. Upon opening my eyes,
I saw the sad faces of my family and friends around me. I thought I had died.
My body felt torn apart, like some blasted wall. I instinctively reached for my
heart where the pain hurt most. Realizing that my left breast was gone, I could
only wish I was back in my mother’s womb.
The days that followed were like preparing for a final exam.
My husband and I devoured as many information available on breast cancer and
sought anyone with knowledge of this disease. It was to get myself ready for
chemotherapy because I was given a very bad prognosis of advanced breast cancer
with 16 out of 23 lymph nodes found malignant. With chemo, I was being given a
5 year statistical chance of survival but without chemo, I was not to survive
more than two years. Five months later, I had not yet submitted to any further
assault on my body.
By fate, a friend had informed me of the 1st World Conference on Breast Cancer in Kingston, Ontario. This time, my feeling
was not for anyone else to decide for me. I had to be fully armed with
knowledge and understanding before facing another battle.
I gathered all my inner strength to travel all by myself for
the very first time outside my country, at a great distance on an extended
airfare payment just to attend that historical conference in July, 1997. It
turned out that I was the only breast cancer delegate in attendance from the
Philippines. It was as if I was the only one with breast cancer from my
country.
I clearly remember that time when I was among the audience,
simply overwhelmed as I listened to the plenary talks of the late Bella Abzug, DevraDavis, Annie Sasco and Sandra Steingraber. By some unexplained force, I was
drawn to the concurrent session of Joan Reiss. As she presented, I was already
contemplating on what had to be done to prevent my three daughters from getting
breast cancer.
Traveling back to the Philippines, I chanced on Akiko Domoto
at the airport and told her of my intention of holding a similar conference in
my country, no matter the burden for a sick woman like me. At hindsight, there
seemed to be an unseen hand leading me to people who would later mean much to
what I would be undertaking.
The Kingston Conference was the reason why my husband and I
have decided to commit our lives to the movement for the global eradication of
breast cancer – to live or even die so that others may live. The conference
galvanized me and to this very day, I have not submitted myself to any form of
chemotherapy or radiation, 29 months after my radical mastectomy. How did I
manage to stretch the time, struggling to live to once again be with all of
you, not anymore the “lost” soul from the Philippines but as a plenary speaker.
Immediately upon my return from Kingston, along with my
husband and a few close friends, I established the Philippine Breast Cancer
Network on the 28th of August 1997, patterned after the Canadian
Breast Cancer Network.
Against many odds, we were able to hold the first ever
Philippine Conference on Breast Cancer on October 1998. We were blessed with
the presence of Andrea Martin of The Breast Cancer Fund, Kimiko Goldberg of the
Japan Breast Cancer Network and Cindy Termorshuizen (representing Akiko Domoto
of the Japanese Diet). Devra Davis sent invaluable materials which have since
become the core of the PBCN’s information and awareness initiatives.
In spite of the spiraling increase in breast cancer
incidence and mortality in the Philippines, no considered the highest in Asia,
there has been no organization whether private or government focused on the
issue of breast cancer alone, prior to the PBCN. All were general cancer groups
that were hospital based, initiated by doctors and which maintained a purely
medical point of view. All were just preoccupied on how to cope with medical
treatments, how to accept one’s fate and how to prepare for one’s death. None
at all even slightly touched on the causes of breast cancer.
Breast cancer patients in the Philippines have no rights.
They have no right to speak or to ask. They have always been considered to be
the walking dead – people to take pity on and offered prayers for. It’s just
tough luck if one gets breast cancer in the Philippines.
During the recent public deliberations on the Total Ban of
incinerators in the Philippines, our Department of Health (DOH) wanted an
exemption for medical incinerators, our Fertilizer and Pesticide Authority (FPA)
wanted an exemption for chemical incinerators and our Department of Environment
& Natural Resources (DENR) wanted an exemption for solid waste
incinerators. Our own government and not the private sector were unsupportive
of the total ban. During the Belgian Dioxin Scare, our DOH stated that our
government was not in any position to act on dioxin in our food, water and air
supply, even as far as saying that “a little amount of dioxin was nothing to
worry about.”
The 5-Year Health Priorities for Research of our Department
of Science and Technology (DOST) focuses on cure and treatment and simply looks
upon cancer as an unavoidable cost of progress. Our Department of Agriculture
(DA) actively promotes and encourages chemical farming. Our tri-media is more
concerned with sensational news of rape and kidnapping, not knowing that the
same level of violence is committed everyday of hundreds of women diagnosed
with breast cancer.
The greatest risk of getting breast cancer tomorrow is being
born today in a developing country. The greatest risk of not surviving breast
cancer today is being a woman in the Philippines. But now, the landscape of
breast cancer in the Philippines is changing. To this day, the PBCN has been
able to enlist more than two hundred women with breast cancer and several
hundreds more of women at risk of getting it. The PBCN has conducted a series
of 7 lectures and 6 symposiums all over the archipelago that had more than a
thousand in attendance. On October this year will be held the 2nd
Philippine Conference on Breast Cancer.
A month ago, a nurse who was moved by one of our provincial
symposiums; a daughter who had just lost her mother to breast cancer; and a
female surgeon who is disturbed by the high incidence rate in her locality –
each made separate contact with us expressing their desire to do something. To
commemorate the PBCN’s 2nd year of existence with the help of these
3 women, the PBCN launched the first ever breast cancer prevention project in
the Visayas, the first ever “Fight Breast Cancer Week” in the University of the
Philippines and the first ever breast cancer symposium for Philippine Muslim
women. Talk about things just happening through some unseen hand.
The PBCN has been moving forward and taking strong action,
breaking the silence and shattering the walls of apathy and ignorance. We have
been taking a journey in unknown territory that has never been seen in the
Philippines. We have had to rely on help from friends here and there, now and
then, in whatever form and in whatever way. We continue to uphold and defend
our dignity and self-esteem, never cowing to statements that in fund raising,
“beggars can’t be choosers.” Though we have not received any major funding from
whatever source, we will never beg for our lives.
Four months ago, I attended a breast cancer conference in Brussels,
organized by the US National Breast Cancer Coalition. A week before, I had
surgical removal of a lump due to recurrence. This did not stop me from
traveling because it was my first opportunity to be a plenary speaker in an
international setting. What almost prevented my attendance was the Belgian
Embassy in Manila. They doubted the conference and they doubted me. It took
five visits and several communications within a brief period before I was
finally issued a visa – and believe it or not, just a day before my flight
departure.
Recurrence for a woman with breast cancer is of extreme
anxiety. But the recurrence of a foreign embassy’s arrogance and discrimination
of women living with breast cancer makes matters far more unbearable.
Today, I stand before you, a single-breasted woman with a
recurring hurt in my heart. I bear with me the memory of sixteen women from my
country who have gone ahead and the faces of five women of my delegation who
should have been among you right now, to witness this historical conference.
The Philippine delegation to this 1999 World Conference onBreast Cancer underwent a radical mastectomy, performed by a supposed embassy
of goodwill and friendship which has made them diplomatic surgeons armed with
the skill and precision only a woman who has lost her breast can never forget.
The Philippine Canadian Embassy felt that this World Conference was not reason
enough to be granted an entry visa and worst of all, considered the Philippine
delegation a scam. My five colleagues: a nine year breast cancer survivor, a
medical doctor, a nutritionist and two physical therapists never felt so
rejected and humiliated in all of their lives. They had prepared and looked
forward to coming with me, most specially Chit Marfil, who said, “Do I have to
undress and show these embassy consuls the scar on my chest?” Like men in
white, these diplomats felt no need to neither explain themselves nor apologize
for their acts.
Imagine the shock I got when our delegation was called a
scam and denied visas? A delegation that I had long worked for to realize? They
cut up my delegation just like when my breast was cut off. They had rudely and
coldly shut the door that was opened two years ago in Kingston where I was also
all alone. I find myself all alone again. What does it have to take for a woman
to wage battle with breast cancer?
Not only are we faced with the uncertainties of medical
science and the greed of a cancer industry, but now, we are even insulted with
the indifference and callousness of a host country’s embassy officials. This
incidence has now become an international concern. The outpouring of letters
from all over the world in support of the rejected PBCN delegation to the
conference has finally shown the true meaning of global action.
But then there will be no winners- only losers. On the side
of the Canadian Embassy, their decisions must not be questioned, much more be
pressured. On the side of the Philippine Breast Cancer Network, our motives and
actions must not be undermined, much more, be insulted. On the side of the
organizers, of this world conference, this undertaking must not be doubted,
much more, be exploited. On the side of women all over the world who are
afflicted with breast cancer, our condition must not be compromised, much more,
be aggravated.
Women have long been the watershed of man’s bruised ego. And
when she gets breast cancer, she becomes his nightmare. She is cut, burned and
poisoned but much worse, she is doubted, insulted and robbed of her dignity.
She who nurtures life has lost her value. How much longer does this have to go
on? How many more women have to get breast cancer?
I call on every country to each have a national breast cancer network with a patient’s perspective. I call on the creation of a World Breast Cancer Network. Our numbers have been growing and the army of breast cancer warriors are uniting and closing ranks for one purpose. Together we will change the world that all our daughters may never experience the pain and agony of breast cancer.
And just by being with all of you today, I feel no longer alone. I may have lost a breast and I may even lose my life, but I will never lose my heart.
To each of you, I give all my love from deep beneath my bare
chest.
