The therapy

ILIGAN City ― It was a revelation of a kind of therapy of sorts. Or maybe, impacted most of the audience, so it might be some kind of therapy that might end all therapies. I don’t know. This was about two weeks ago.

This lawyer, the President of a Visayas and Mindanao-wide advocacy called “Ludabi” or “Lubas sa Dagang Bisaya” had several mouthfuls of this kind of therapy. Let’s call him L for the moment.

He said in a part of his speech that one day the joints in his legs felt funny. It was unsettling, he said. Because, when he walked the joints in his legs made some “noise”. What was happening?

So L said he consulted a doctor. And he was told that the cartilage in his joints had become loose. An operation was needed. Otherwise, it would become so serious if not treated on time. His legs had to be operated on.

Asked about the cost of such a procedure, he was told some “around” thing. Around P500,000 or P400,000. What? Such a shock of course. It was too much even for a lawyer like him.

So he sought another opinion. This “Bisaya” kind of therapy. And the herbalist told him that all that needed to be done was just drink this one taken from the coconut. This drink is called tuba, a drink favored by folks in the provinces colored red because of that element called “tungog”. But this drink, he said, is colorless. Because there’s no “tungog” in it.

So, he drank that concoction. And by and by there was no more of that funny noise in a matter of several weeks of drinking that, he said. No more destruction of some cartilage?

This cartilage stuff, I remember is this thing allied to the bone part of some animal that’s not a bone. Because it is soft. But not as soft as the flesh of some slaughtered animal. I always like that part whenever we ate some meat in the house when I was a kid.

Really, it was a revelation. And then, L continued, years later, he revealed that his back became very painful. A doctor told him that there was a cyst in his spinal column. I then remembered in a speech he delivered sometime in 2009 to the same advocacy group, he seemed to be saying goodbye. Because of that painful thing in his back. He was going to Cebu City, he said. to have this disturbing thing in his back consulted. Hinting at the same time that this might be “goodbye” for him!

Such a reveal impacted us, the audience. And we grew silent for some seconds.

But when I saw L some months later he did not exude anymore that unsettling, deathly look on him. He was as animated as before.

Anyway, in that speech two weeks ago, he revealed to the audience, that it was Virgin Coconut Oil that cured him! Of that trouble with his back. He’s so much an advocate of this thing produced from the coconut now that he said, “if there’s no VCO available. one can just munch on this meat from the coconut.” So he said, that from time to time, “if you see me munching on something, that’s coconut meat.”

Well, hello! This coconut stuff that we have plenty of in our province in Southern Leyte when I was still living there as a kid, was just taken for granted. And now, this might be a cure-all? Well…

I remember, during the lockdowns when the pandemic was reported to be at its worst, this VCO suddenly disappeared from my favorite drugstore. Because it was reported that it “cured” Covid 19. Especially since the vaccines weren’t available yet in this country. That was in 2020. I now think the blow-by-blow, minute-by-minute report on it, created panic in vulnerable people like us. And so, the VCOs disappeared from the shelves of my favorite drugstore. Because I had a “relationship” with it, an off-and-on one, brought about when it was introduced to me in 2007 by my son Yuri. So, I knew of its disappearance.

Later though in the latter part of 2020, the VCO returned to the shelves, I observed.

The VCO bottle, by the way, has this sign, just like the others| “No approved therapeutic claims.”

Oh, by the way too, it’s time to reveal that lawyer who had this “affair” with the VCO stuff or yes, coconut. He is Atty. Leo Montalban Zaragoza.

And may I reveal too that on my way to Hong Kong in May 2010, I brought with me a newly bought bottle of VCO. In the airport though, it was taken from me during the inspections. What’s the lesson on this? Obvious, di ba? As in never, never bring with you some VCO in the airports. Especially if it is placed in a bottle!

I then remember some things about this coconut stuff, where copra comes from.

In a themed notebook of an elementary pupil where the theme. “How copra is made,” she said in the introductory sentence: “First we separate the good coconuts from the crazy coconuts.” Hahaha.

But this ain’t no laughing matter. Because the Bisaya term for the coconuts that have no meat inside themselves are called “lubing buang.” Hence. that kind of English.

Email: nora.lady@yahoo.com or contact 09073384874 or 09277983167