When the doctor told Robert Alejandro that he had cancer, he thought, “Okay, I don’t need to kill myself because I’m going to die.”

His next thought: “Where will my beautiful collection of books go?”

The artist told Lifestyle in a Zoom interview, “I was a workaholic, I was very busy. I wouldn’t take the time to see the doctor.”

But he knew something was wrong. “I kept getting sick—fever, fatigue.” Then he started having problems with his bowel movement. “Parang I needed to go to the bathroom all the time.” Soon, it was interfering with his active lifestyle.

“Every year, I would go traveling very far with some friends to give school supplies but [this time] I couldn’t do it. That was the only time I said, ‘Okay, I think I need to see a doctor.’”

Grim news

He went to the hospital alone for a colonoscopy. When he woke up, the doctor broke the news to him and then left Alejandro to absorb the grim diagnosis.

“Before that time, I had depression and suicidal thoughts. So when the doctor told me about the cancer, it wasn’t a big deal.”

But on that hospital bed, he kept thinking. “Sabi ko, ayun, hindi ko na kailangan patayin ’yung sarili ko. Mamamatay na ako. Pero sabi ko, I have little time left on this earth . . . Okay, enough of this suicide and depression BS. I told myself, I’m going to love myself. Because I never loved myself before that. I used to look at myself, I really personified myself as the stagnant water in the gutter.”

No one knew that dark side of him, Alejandro said. “I was on TV (he was a “Probe Team” reporter and he hosted the show “Art Is Kool”), I was a children’s book illustrator. But if you don’t love yourself, no matter how good you are in art or whatever, it doesn’t make sense.”

It was his sexuality that he struggled with. “My being gay was always a big problem for me. I wanted to die because of it. My family is very born-again Christian . . . I felt that I wasn’t loved because of my sexuality. But it was only in my head that I wasn’t loved.”

Wake-up call

Cancer became his wake-up call.

“Sabi ko, mamahalin ko na ’yung sarili ko 100 percent. I’m going to live the best years of my life. Nothing is going to stop me.”

It was also on that same day that he made the decision not to undergo chemotherapy and radiation.

Alejandro said that his mother had cancer and had also refused to do chemo. “She had seven years of a good life without it. My brother-in-law had cancer. Nagpa-chemo siya. It was just a small mole on his ankle and in a matter of a month, he passed away. Pakiramdam ko, ’pag ginawa ko ’yun, that’s saying goodbye already.”

And so he refused the treatment. Alejandro stressed, “That’s just my opinion and that’s my choice. I’m not telling other people to do that.”

Different medical professionals tried to convince him otherwise. Even a homeopath told him he had no other recourse—“ibig sabihin, malala na, wala ka nang choice,” Alejandro said.

Traveling the worldBut Alejandro stood his ground. Instead, he traveled the world. He went to Sri Lanka, to South America with his longtime partner Jetro Rafael.

“We went to the salt flats in Bolivia. And whenever I would be going around, I’d be thinking, I’m supposed to be in some hospital spending all of my money but instead I’m on top of a truck looking for rhinoceros in Sri Lanka.”

After Alejandro’s cancer diagnosis, Rafael, also an artist and the chef behind the famed restaurant Van Gogh Is Bipolar, quickly jumped to action. Rafael had long been a believer in the impact nutrition can have on someone’s health—he uses food as a way to manage his own bipolar disorder. And he wanted to do the same for Alejandro. “We have to fix your diet,” Rafael told him.

Alejandro said, “I was a very bad eater. It’s all about flavor, and what’s delicious. And Spam is delicious and hotdog is delicious and spaghetti . . . all things bad are delicious.”

Rafael changed that. Alejandro said, “He created my diet based on my cancer. He and his scientific chemist brain did the research. Until this day, that’s what I’ve been eating. And I’m alive.”

Not that he stuck strictly to the diet—at least not back then. Alejandro admitted, “I could not sustain it.” He would go back to eating food that wasn’t good for him.

Alejandro continued to live his life, creating commissioned works and designing for Papemelroti (it was founded by his parents and named after him and his siblings—Robert is the “Ro” in Papemelroti).

“Art has always been my refuge, my safe place,” he said.

And Alejandro—Teacher Robert to so many of his students—had always shared his love of art with kids, giving workshops to children living in poverty and also teaching on TV. On the very first day of the lockdown in March 2020, he started giving free art workshops online. “I really felt for Filipino children. I thought, this can be very scary for kids. I did it every day for a whole month!”

He would teach around 200 kids each session and that’s something he continued throughout the pandemic; he still does it today.

At death’s door

Fast-forward to December 2020. Alejandro received a lot of gifts—many of them sweets—and he enjoyed them. “It really affected the cancer. ’Di ba they say cancer’s food is really sugar? And even before that, I couldn’t poo anymore. I wasn’t pooing and I was wondering, where is all that poo going? Because I’m eating so much but I’m not pooing.”

Alejandro felt pain he hadn’t felt before. He said it was like he had a football in his rectum. “I could not sit anymore. It was so painful. Oh my god. I had no choice but to go to the hospital.”

It was two weeks before Christmas.

At the hospital, more bad news. The surgery that was meant to remove his tumor was not a success. “They took a look inside and they couldn’t do anything. Jetro saw what they saw and he described it as a nest. Kumalat na siya at wala na silang magawa. I was in complete pain. My body was shutting down, I was skin and bones, I wasn’t eating, I wasn’t drinking. I couldn’t pee, they wanted to put a stent, they couldn’t put a stent. I wasn’t lucid anymore.”

On the wall beside his hospital bed were many photos and messages from loved ones and his art students, cheering him on, wishing he would get better.

But he was at death’s door, Alejandro said.

Budwig protocol

Then a priest at the hospital and one of Alejandro’s sisters told Jetro the same thing: Why don’t you try the Budwig protocol?Created in the 1950s by German biochemist Johanna Budwig, the Budwig protocol is a diet plan that supports the treatment of cancer. It involves eating servings of flaxseed oil and cottage cheese along with fruits, vegetables and fiber-rich food while limiting the patient’s intake of refined and processed food. Budwig believes that this diet can reduce the growth of cancer cells and stop it from spreading.

“Jetro asked my sister to send cottage cheese and flaxseed oil [to the hospital]. He made this little concoction and he had me take it,” said Alejandro.

That night, he dreamt of heaven—a happy place that looked like Copenhagen’s Freetown Christiania. There, he saw his friend Gilda Cordero-Fernando, who had recently passed. Alejandro believes he had a near-death experience that night.

Then, when he woke up, the pain was gone. “I was completely pain-free overnight. I was whispering to Jetro, ‘Don’t tell anybody.’ I was whispering because sabi ko baka the pain would come back.” It was two days before Christmas.

Healthy diet

Doctors sent Alejandro home that day—he now had to live with a colostomy bag, a plastic bag that collects fecal matter through an opening in the abdominal wall. “I got it because [otherwise] I was going to die of sepsis. Having a colostomy bag for me is like the worst thing on the face of the planet . . . I’m not used to it yet.”

Since December, Alejandro has stuck with the Budwig protocol and has been eating a healthy diet thanks to Rafael and Lucy, who has been Alejandro’s kasambahay “forever.”

“I love Lucy and Jetro. Jetro has a very unusual talent, marunong talaga siya mag-blend ng flavors and he’s very strict when it comes to ingredients. Everything that Lucy does now, Jetro taught her. She has learned very, very well. I’m very spoiled,” Alejandro said, describing each meal they make for him as a masterpiece.

Alejandro gained 10 kg in six weeks after leaving the hospital. Initially, Jetro used commercial cottage cheese and flaxseed oil extracted from soft gels for the Budwig protocol. Eventually, he started making his own cheese.

Unfortunately, not everyone going through Alejandro’s battle has a Jetro and Lucy.

But recently, Jetro finally made the Budwig protocol available for people to order (tel. 0956-7980184). “All this time, I’ve been telling him, because his restaurant closed down, ‘Baka naman you want to make it available to people.’ If it helped me, it could help so many people who are really in dire need.

“But he would always say, ’In the right time.’ He had conflicting thoughts. He didn’t want to make a business out of it, he wants to help. But recently, he did make it available and I’m really, really grateful for that. I hope it can help people the way it has helped me.”

Rafael offers raw honey and kombucha, too, both of which Alejandro consumes regularly.

Facebook page

Alejandro and Rafael have been chronicling his battle on the Facebook page “Kuya Robert’s Healing Journey.” There they share updates, information about the Budwig diet, recipes, sample menus and other tips for staying healthy.

“There are so many people messaging, that’s why we did the Facebook page . . . It is obviously a responsibility of mine to be able to share what we have done and what we’re doing in the hopes that it might be able to help other people.”

Alejandro has become an advocate of eating healthy—he is passionate about living food. His essentials? “Sunlight, breathing, water, nutrition, gulay at prutas. Mindset, huwag magpa-stress. Tulog, rest. I sing in the shower. I kind of dance when I work out.”

Mindset is a huge part of it, he said. But, he makes it clear: “I’m not positive all the time. That’s one thing also you have to admit to yourself—that you can’t be positive all the time, there are ups and downs. So you accept that and know that it will pass. Go to sleep, take a nice bath. For me, the mortality really says, ‘O ano, magmumukmok ka pa ba?’”

Unconditional love

Another crucial part of Alejandro’s healing journey? Unconditional love. “The fact that I was able to live through this cancer, that I was able to show my unconditional love to my sisters . . . I feel their unconditional love for me and even Jetro. So I really feel that that’s even a greater healing for me, even bigger than this physical healing of cancer. For me that’s the reason I’m alive— to be able to show and feel that unconditional love that I never felt before.”

The day before our interview, Alejandro got the results of his blood work. “It was not good, which made me very sad. But then, I look at myself and how I feel. How can I not be happy? Kebs sa blood work. I’m alive, I’m pain-free. I don’t need the numbers to tell me otherwise.”

Alejandro, now 57, looks really good. He’s a healthy 150 pounds, he looks (and feels) much younger than his age and his skin is glowing. The people watching him on a recent Facebook Live session kept telling him how good he looks, with one even declaring him as the eigth BTS member.

There he shared updates about his health and even showed the people some of the food he had been enjoying. “Look at this beautiful, beautiful salad,” he said. He also reminded everyone, “Please value the life that is given to you. Enjoy life to the fullest.”

During the session, Alejandro had to keep stopping to say hi to friends who were watching and posting messages of love for him. “I love you!” Alejandro would say, blowing them kisses through the screen.

And it’s not just on Facebook Live. He is constantly flooded with messages of love and encouragement both from strangers and people he knows. “My friend Gilda Cordero-Fernando, before she passed, gumawa na siya ng kanyang wake. So sabi ko, ito na ’yun, ito na ’yung wake ko. I can read all of these messages of love and kindness. I am so grateful to everybody.”

“Thank you for healing us through your healing. Mabuhay ka, Robert!” a friend posted.

“I’m so blessed to be painfree so that I’m able to do all these things that are important to me. The way I’m thinking now is, ‘Okay, I’m going to do this, this is what I’m going to leave behind.’ ‘Okay, I’m going na, what will I put my energy into? With the little time, with the little energy, what will you do?’ So I’m working with the Commission on Human Rights, I’m doing something for breast cancer, things like that.”

He’s also preparing for another exhibit in December. “It’s on my bucket list. I’d never really done the artist gallery thing . . . I said, I’ll do it online. I did it last year and it was so successful. I’ll do it again this Christmas.”

He posted about it on Facebook, even joking, “Bili kayo. Art usually appreciates in value when the artist passes away.”

Beautiful energy

Alejandro has a beautiful energy— he’s full of joy and gratitude. While he was on Facebook Live, someone watching asked if it was raining in Quezon City where Alejandro was. He said, “Yes, and it’s wonderful. You know, every moment now, I am so grateful to be alive.”

During our hourlong conversation on Zoom, we kept marveling about the thunder and lightning. “I love it!” he kept saying. His zest for life is contagious.

At one point during the interview, Alejandro got emotional. “I am so blessed. I know I’m supposed to be dead or in such great pain, but I’m not. So, I’m humbled, and I’m so grateful to be in this state, to be alive, to be talking to you now. To hear the thunder and lightning. To be able to tell my sisters that I love them so much, to tell my friends that I love them so much. I’m just so grateful.” INQ