The fault with cancer is not in the stars

KYLE Ferolino (second from left) enjoyed the Christmas party thrown by Kaibigan ng mga Kabataang may Kanser at a fast-food restaurant in Mandurriao District on Dec. 18, 2010. He died of acute lymphocytic leukemia on June 26, 2011. DR. RUBEN RAMIREZ/CONTRIBUTOR

ILOILO CITY—The lines  in Iloilo City’s theaters were long, and teenagers and adults came out teary eyed.

For some, the movie adaptation of the book “The Fault in Our Stars” was an opportunity to speak about the realities of Filipino children living with cancer.

Dr. Socorro Martinez, founder and head of  Kaibigan ng mga Kabataang may Kanser (Friends of Children with Cancer or KKK), said the movie struck a familiar chord for her group because it showed cancer from the point of view of teenagers.

KKK is an Iloilo City-based, nonstock, nonprofit organization formed by a small group of doctors and concerned citizens in 2007. It aims to give financial support to cancer-stricken children of poor families.

The comparison between the movie and the reality that KKK deals with every day, however, ends in the movie being about teenagers with cancer.

Unlike Augustus Waters and Hazel Grace Lancaster, protagonists in the John Green book, Ilonggo cancer patients enjoy no perks at all, said Martinez, a radiologist for several hospitals on Panay Island.

“The cancer patients we deal with in KKK are hard up,” she said.

“Some have only one parent to take care of them. They have no perks. They don’t even have anything for their basic needs,” she said. “Their only ‘dying wish’ is to get well.”

In the movie, the two teenagers get their dying wish of going to Amsterdam to meet Peter Van Houten, favorite author of 17-year-old Lancaster.

The protagonists also have two parents who are both supportive and well off.

Martinez narrated a cancer case that is similar to the movie’s story only because it involved a teenager. It was that of Allen Joy Galvez, a 15-year-old from Nueva Valencia town on the island-province of Guimaras who has acute lymphocytic leukemia (ALL).

Martinez recalled that before she visited Allen Joy in 2007, the girl’s mother, Tessie, had told KKK at a meeting that she had sold almost everything she owned to pay for Allen Joy’s chemotherapy that all that was left in her house was a bench and three cats.

“We thought she was joking,”  Martinez said. “But we found that Allen Joy’s mother was being literal. They, indeed, had no [piece of] furniture except for a bench,”  Martinez said. They had the three cats, too.

“Their clothes were on the floor, and you can describe their house as having four walls and half a roof. Part of the flooring even came apart when one of the doctors stepped on it,” Martinez added.

“Letting our poor cancer patients watch the movie would be an insult to them,”  Martinez said.

“They won’t be able to relate and they will most likely ask, ‘Why don’t we get these perks? Is it because we are poor?’” she added.

Trial drugs

Carol Joy Deduro, a volunteer for KKK, said she considered the film’s protagonists “lucky” not only for having cancer perks but for having the full attention of their well-off parents who could afford expensive “experimental medicines” that prolong cancer-stricken children’s lives.

“No child at  KKK can afford these trial medicines. They can’t even afford expenses for a laboratory exam,” said Deduro, a volunteer for the group since 2011.

Martinez recalled the case of Kyle Ferolino, a 6-year-old boy suffering from ALL in 2011 and had his grandparents as his caregivers.

Living in Barrio Obrero, a depressed area in Iloilo City, Kyle’s mother left without a word together with his  5-month-old baby brother Ton. The mother has not been heard from since.

When Kyle was featured in a local TV program, he said his last wish was to see his baby brother but he also made it clear he did not want to see his mother.

His father left his family when Kyle was only 2 years old.

Child’s wish

One of Kyle’s wishes was to be a taxi driver. To fulfill his wish,  Martinez and Dr. Ruben Ramirez, one of two vice presidents of KKK, had him hold the steering wheel of Ramirez’s car while it was slowly moving.

Kyle is one of 12 beneficiaries of KKK who have died. The rest are classified as “active recipients” of KKK’s chemotherapy financing.

Two are considered “absent without leave”—not giving any explanation for leaving their treatment.

Most of the beneficiaries have ALL, one of the most common types of cancer in children.

“Sometimes, they do not even have money for fare or daily food,” said Martinez, trying to explain why someone with cancer would opt out despite help.

According to the profile of KKK, the organization was formed not to fight cancer but the hopelessness that children with cancer and their family grapple with.

“This is the most important intangible contribution that  KKK gives. We try to help them financially for the chemotherapy of the children and, hopefully, emotionally by letting them feel that they are not alone and that they can turn to us for support,” the KKK profile said.

The beneficiaries are medically managed by pediatric hema-oncologists and KKK members, Dr. Ma. Lita Fe Paclibar and Dr. Joselito Caso, who are both practicing in Iloilo City and are consultants in major hospitals in the city.

The need for help does not end but so is hope. And as a popular quote from the movie “The Fault in Our Stars” goes: “Some infinities are bigger than other infinities.”