BY PRINCE GOLEZ
Manila Reporter
MANILA – Feisty Ilongga Sen. Miriam Defensor-Santiago has stage 4 lung cancer.
“I have cancer of the left lung,” she announced in a press conference yesterday.
The 69-year-old senator said she and her doctors have “no clue” what caused it.
She neither smokes nor drinks, Santiago stressed.
Despite her illness, the senator known for her mercurial temper has not abandoned her plan to run for president in 2016.
She, however, set two conditions: “When I go into remission” and “If they don’t clean up pork barrel scam mess.”
“Kun daw kagamo gid sining mga kaso nga ini hanungod sa pagkawat sang bilyon-bilyon nga kwarta sang gobyerno, hinali mapadalagan na lang ako sa pagka-president para matapna naton bala sang kaisugan naton,” she said.
Santiago is hoping to be fully cured of the illness “in six weeks.”
She is under medication “for the mass tissue to degenerate,” she shared.
If her condition does not improve, Santiago said, she may undergo further treatment at the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, USA.
A sister works there, she revealed.
Santiago vowed to fight the cancer.
“Ako pirme gid ya may fighting spirit. Kontrahon ko gid ni ya ang sakit nga ini,” she told Panay News.
A report prepared by the Department of Pathology and Laboratories of Makati Medical Center showed Santiago’s left lung had “adenocarcinoma.”
Santiago is not losing hope.
“Sa akon lang ya nga panumduman, siguro mga duwa lang ni kabulan, maayo na ako,” she said.
Supporters of the senator took to Twitter to express their sympathy.
Minutes after her announcement, hashtags #MiriamFight and #Sen.Miriam trended worldwide in the social networking site.
On June 3, Santiago announced she had decided not to pursue her job as International Criminal Court (ICC) judge in The Hague, Netherlands.
“Since I was elected in December 2011, I have secured neither alleviation nor treatment from the medical profession for my illness, known as Chronic Fatique Syndrome,” said Santiago.
The former Regional Trial Court judge was elected to the ICC in 2011. She was supposed to serve from 2012 to 2021.
“My illness has occurred periodically over a period of some 10 years. But it appears that in its present manifestation, things have come to a head and I am rendered virtually dysfunctional,” she also wrote the Civil Service Commission last year.
In a previous interview with DyFM Bombo Radyo-Iloilo, Santiago said she would ask the ICC to elect another judge if she could not report to them this year.
“I have good days and bad days, like cancer patients. Sometimes they feel better, sometimes they feel worse. Even if I have a good day, I can only work for an hour or two (only),” she shared./PN
