CANCER without morphine or cobra venom to deaden the pain is a very agonizing disease. Nana Ulli cried and agonized day and night until she died. Pat did not suffer like her because she was very well cared for by Dra. Lourdes Loreto in the St. Joseph’s Hospital (in Tampa, Florida) with her MEDICAID insurance that paid all her hospital, medical, and doctors’ bills that amounted to around $37,000.00 when she died of the same sickness as her mother: CANCER OF THE CERVIX.
When we arrived in Bayombong, her mother was in the care of a friend of hers in Barrio Busilac who tried herbal remedies to cure her.
Every weekend we took a caretella and visited her there. We stayed with her the whole day on Saturdays. We brought her lots of fresh fruits, meat, and fish to be cooked with the vegetables they raised in the barrio.
When her case got worse she requested us to take her to Bayombong, where Pat and her younger sister, Nona Udis, attended to her needs. She was continuously having plenty of foul-smelling discharge of blood and mucus and was forced to use diapers made of rugs.
Every day, early in the morning, Pat and I with our three kids went to the Magat River to wash her clothes and diapers.
On the stony river bed, half a mile away from our house, was the river where we took a bath and washed her dirty clothes and diapers.
Pat carried Betty on her hips and a basin of clothes on her head while I carried Tony and tagged along Boy. Soap was no longer available and so Pat had a hard time cleaning the bloody diapers and clothes of her mom.
On our way back home the stones were hot and so I carried Tony and Boy while Pat carried Betty and the basin of clothes.
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