By Luzviminda O. Cañete

The author lives with her husband, their 14-year-old son and their 10-year-old twins, a boy and a girl, in Midaslip, Zamobanga del Sur.

It was like a flash of lightning and the roar of thunder when my attending physician at Mercy Community Hospital, Iligan City, told me, after a series of blood tests, that I had Chronic Myelogetic Leukemia (CML). That was 12 February 2003, around 3pm, the time our Lord Jesus Christ shed his precious blood and died on the Holy Cross for us. I was shocked and speechless. Tears didn’t fall - my eyes were wide in shock and my mind numb. I kept saying to myself, ‘God, I cannot believe it ... even in my worst dreams I hadn’t expected this. Of all people why me? Why not the drug lords, the drug pushers? Why not the rapists, the kidnappers?’It’s not easy to face reality immediately. There were thousands of ‘whys’ in my mind, the diagnosis echoing in my ears until my sister-in-law held my arm and consoled me by saying, ‘Kaya mo iyan because God has a special plan for you.’