Those of you who have some connection to the Phillipines have been aware that former president Corazon Aquino has been battling colon cancer for some time. However, that battle apparently took a turn for the worse as the AFP is reporting that the president is no longer accepting medical treatment as ha called her family to her side.
MANILA (AFP) — Former Philippine president Corazon Aquino, who is battling colon cancer, has decided to forgo further chemotherapy or any other medical treatment, her spokeswoman has been quoted as saying.
The 76-year-old Aquino, who led the Philippines from 1986 to 1992 after the fall of Ferdinand Marcos, was admitted to a Manila hospital last week, and is reportedly being fed intravenously.
"The country's icon of democracy is fighting the hardest battle of her life," spokeswoman Deedee Siytangco wrote in an article published in the Manila Bulletin.
Siytangco said Aquino had been moved to a private room, in a decision "she and her children made in consultation with her doctors." Family members have rushed to her bedside, she added.
"She is no longer receiving any chemotherapy or any other medical interventions," she said, quoting a family member.
Members of the Aquino family and the former president's doctors were not immediately available for comment. Reporters who converged at the hospital were asked to leave, an AFP photographer said.
Politics still remains the family business with her son, Benigno Aquino III in the Philippine Senate. Her daughter, Kris, is prominent in the entertainment industry. If you talk to enough Filipinos you will learn that she was no as univerally loved as the American media would have you think. My gf adores the Aquinos talks of her childhood in the provinces when her family and friends feared the Marco regime. On the other hand, I know someone who defends Marcos' (even Imelda's shoe collection) and curses Cory to this day. Whatever their opnions, the country's attention is now focused on her condition and what her family will do next.
*Sidenote: My gf knows someone here in San Francisco who claims to have worked on Marcos' staff and accompnaied him after his exile.