HOW GOD HEALED ME AND GAVE ME BACK MY LIFE

For most of my life, I was running. Running between hospitals and clninics, meetings and lectures. Until 2023, when my body finally said ‘enough.’

- 

This is my personal testimony — an offering of gratitude, and a prayer that anyone facing a similar battle will also experience the same divine healing I received.

For most of my life, I was running. Running between hospitals and clinics... meetings and lectures... advocacy work, charity missions, editorial deadlines, mentoring, and corporate work. I was the kind of person who could fit in a 12-hour workday before lunch. I rarely said no. I felt responsible for everything because somewhere along the way, I tied my worth to my work.

Looking back, I realize I wasn't simply busy — I was addicted to work. Productivity became my oxygen; achievement, my adrenaline. Rest seemed wasteful. Silence felt suspicious. I wore many hats because I believed I could carry them all.

And for a while, I did.

Until 2023, when my body finally said, “Enough.”

THE CRISIS THAT STOPPED ME

A small lump on my abdominal wall— what I assumed was benign — turned into a frightening diagnosis: a very rare tumor, so rare that even my oncologist and dear friend, Dr. Tony Villalon, said, “Raffy, this is extremely rare. There’s hardly any data. No proven chemotherapy. No predictable radiotherapy response. Only wide resection.”

A whole-body PET scan then revealed additional suspicious lesions on my right parotid gland. Fine-needle biopsy suggested malignancy.

Within six months, I underwent three surgeries, two of them major, with one involving a “reconstruction” of the muscles of my abdominal wall after a wide resection of tumor, and the other one a thorough dissection of my parotid and neck area to remove two suspicious nodules — accumulating more than 10 hours of general anesthesia.