BENCHWARMER

Treating priorities
RAMON DACAWI

Before my sense of priorities ricocheted last week, I thought of filling up this space by touching on those of some towns, provinces and cities. For one, they have adopted tourism codes but see no reason why they should enact one for cultural enhancement, one that protects their culture from being turned into a commodity or tool to advance tourism. For one reason or another, they see the tourism promotion potential of, say, a newly discovered cave rather than the protection of a jewel of creation from the onslaught of unplanned tourism.

Two knocks on the door last week swept under the rug the urge to argue that there should be a department of culture that relegates under it a section or bureau on tourism promotions. Or that we have to manage our backyard garbage for ourselves rather for visitors. The topic has turned to something more urgent, albeit more personal than the lingering concern that the chronology and hierarchy of things - nature, culture, and tourism – is turning upside down.

What triggered the digression was the humility -and courage - of a father and a daughter in pleading for emotional and financial support towards medical deliverance – for his baby and for her mother. The mother – 45-year old Cristina Lagasca of Pacdal – and the baby – two-year old Edlyn Joy Dacanay of Loakan Proper - are both fighting cancer.

Cristina is wife to Danny Lagasca, my fellow Pacdal boy who’s five years younger me. He learned to caddy at the Baguio Country Club while learned to hire out ponies at the Wright Park. Danny’s been sidelined due to heart ailment.

Edlyn, youngest of three children of a barber and a salesgirl, needs three more rounds of chemotherapy for a malignant tumor of the coccyx or tailbone at the end of her spinal. Her parents were told she also would have to undergo radiation treatment thereafter.

Despite the costs, Cristina underwent three chemo sessions in her battle against breast cancer. She would have her fourth on the 22nd. Her daughter Olga said a session, including hospitalization, averaged P22,000. In-between chemo, she has to undergo radiation estimated at P4,000 for the planning and P600 daily for 25 to 30 days.

Same figures for cobalt radiation will apply to Edlyn, but after she completes the last three of six rounds of chemo at P14,000 each. Her fourth chemo is on Thursday, Aug. 7, but her parents have nothing more to sell or offer as loan collateral to be able to come up with a sum close to what’s needed.

“Even my wife’s small agricultural land has been attached to a loan for our daughter’s treatment,” explained Edgar, Edlyn’s father. “My brother-in-law had to yield the farm to the lender and came up to Baguio to take care of our daughter so my wife and I could return to work.”

Until three years ago, Edlyn had two elder brothers. Edhmer, the eldest at 13, is in first year high school at Loakan here. John Emerson would have been 11 by now, but he was killed after he was bumped by a passenger jeepney one morning in late January, 2005. “My boy was on his way to school when it happened, below the arch leading to the Loakan airport,” Edgar said. “He managed to push the other kid, thereby saving him.”

Edgar said John’s birth date – March 16 – triggered his baptismal name, after John 3:16 in the Bible: “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son.” He said he can’t give up on Edlyn Joy. He gave his cell phone number just in case a Samaritan or two out there feel they can help – 09104482716. So does his wife Melinda, who wrote an open appeal and had it photostat-copied, hoping people would read.

“It gives me so much pain to see my little angel suffering in such situation, but I am not giving up,” she wrote in part. In the rush to beat the column writing deadline, I forgot to get Olga’s cellphone number. Those who can and would like to help her mother may course their support through the Pacdal barangay hall beside the Pacdal Circle. They may ask for punong barangay Godofredo Flores or visit the Lagasca residence at 40-B Siapno Rd.(e-mail: rdacawi@yahoo.com for comments).