BY PRINCE GOLEZ
Manila Reporter
MANILA – Iloilo City’s Sen. Miriam Defensor-Santiago has a message to those who doubt she has stage 4 lung cancer: “I wish!”
“Some people doubt I have cancer at all. You mean it’s a figment of my imagination,” said Santiago yesterday as she showed her fingers and toes with bandages to Senate reporters.
A person who suffers from lung cancer is prone to bleeding, explained the feisty Ilongga.
This is also why she wears sandals to work, said Santiago.
On a normal day, Santiago said, she would never report to office with bandages.
She continued drawing laughter from her audience: “You think these are necessary accessories for beauty (and) sex appeal?”
Her cancer, according to the legislator, took away “all (my) immunities” and made her “vulnerable.”
“I used to have a high tolerance for pain. That’s why I am in politics. I could tolerate any kind of pain in the neck,” said Santiago.
Now that she has cancer, Santiago said, she could hardly defend herself.
These times are best to hit her in the head or attack her, she joked.
Santiago previously complained of having difficulty “moving my papers properly” because her fingers were bleeding.
Known for her mercurial temper, Santiago shocked the nation on July 2 by announcing she had lung cancer.
The 69-year-old senator said she and her doctors were clueless on what caused it.
She neither smokes nor drinks, Santiago stressed.
Last week, Santiago announced she was getting better and would return to the Senate. She also said she might run for president in 2016.
Still her feisty self despite the cancer, Santiago keeps on dishing out witty punch lines that people love to hear.
She said she has been touched by the public’s expression of support through various social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter.
With her “high number” of followers, Santiago said, she does not have to cheat to win an election “unlike other candidates.”
In a previous interview, Santiago urged the voting public to elect a female president in 2016 because the male-dominated Congress is “corrupt.”
Santiago ran for president in 1992 but lost to then Defense secretary Fidel Ramos. She claimed she was cheated.
She ran again for president in 1998 but the eventual winner was then Vice President Joseph Estrada.
“I can rise to the occasion (again), although I was following the other sign posts on the road to recovery,” said Santiago./PN
