It was in 1972 , while working as faculty at the Beth Israel school of nursing that I first experienced discrimination. It was not against me personally but it affected me tremendously none the less. In the middle of the school year one of the department heads resigned and Mrs. Lopez, another Filipina on the faculty was asked to take her position as acting chair woman . She did well with that job; students loved her and with her masters degree in nursing she was sure the position would be offered to her for the next school year. Instead, the position was filled without being posted, the appointment was announced at a faculty meeting. The majority of the faculty felt it was not fair, and that it went against existing hiring policies. In addition, rumors were flying that Mrs. Lopez was not offered the job because she had an accent and that because she was overweight she could not possibly handle the stress of such a position. I decided to find out what was behind all this so I pushed for all faculty members who were disgruntled about this turn of events to make an appointment along with me to discuss this with the school president. She refused to see us as a group but said she would speak to us individually. In the end all the others backed out, they said it was futile and that she had a way of intimidating people and nothing would come out of this. Mrs. Lopez herself decided not to pursue the issue any further. I was the only one who did not back down and I made that appointment. I was 25 years old and the president was in her 50’s, a very big, loud voiced, intimidating woman. True to my colleague’s prediction, she tried to intimidate me by raising her voice, and saying I was naïve , I had a lot to learn, these matters of job performance were only to be discussed with the person involved and so she tried to brush me off. But I was more prepared than she thought. I said " I happen to know that Mrs. Lopez never got a performance evaluation, neither written nor verbal, I know where she is at the moment and if needed I could get her to be present as well. I have a legitimate question and I need some answers." To make a long story short, I was able to convey to her that my concern was that even though a fourth of the faculty and staff of that hospital were Asians, the leadership and management positions did not reflect that proportion. I said we were educationally well qualified, our clinical performances were commendable and yet those positions were denied us. She promised she would look into this and that she had no specific answers regarding the situation with Mrs.Lopez .

Mrs. Lopez eventually quit her job to take another position at another hospital. I believe that effort on my part made management think twice before they pulled the same trick again. I felt really proud of myself, being so young and inexperienced and yet able to stand my ground and articulate my concerns without backing down. I began to realize that here, in America, it’s a whole different ballgame.

In the Philippines, challenging authority was taboo, and the nun’s advise of suffering in silence with a smile was the prevailing model. The Spanish friars taught us well, that "our reward is in the next life."

Well, I figured that I was smart, hardworking, kind, compassionate, and I was not to be pushed around anymore. So, after a while, I quit crying, learned to speak up and I guess became Americanized.

As a staff nurse in intensive care I also experienced discrimination from other doctors and nurses, snide remarks about foreign nurses who are not up to the caliber of US nurses. The truth of the matter was that Filipina nurses were much appreciated. Our patients loved us because we were kind, humorous, compassionate and we spoke English well. Without family in the United States , many single nurses including myself offered to work on holidays . I did just that on my first Thanksgiving and Christmas in the US. In fact I worked two shifts. Allan a young patient in his 20’s was in the hospital for the long haul with a broken back. I was there at 8 A.M.and still there by 8 P.M. on Thanksgiving day. He asked why I was not with my family. I said, Allan, in America right now, you are my family.

I would like to share some humorous incidents that happened during my first year here, before I caught on with the cultural nuances. One day, I admitted a man from the bowery who had body lice. I ran to the resident on duty and told him the new patient has lice. He said to call Orkin, so thinking he was the doctor specializing in lice I started paging Dr Orkin. ( Orkin is a commercial firm that does extermination of insects)

Another time, a male patient pushed his call button and said he needed a vase. He actually meant the urinal. I was assuming he was looking for a vase for flowers so I asked , how big is your bouquet.

There was also the time when I had this patient with two wives. Most of the time each wife visited at a different time, until one  evening when both wives showed up at the same time. The poor guy literally had a cardiac arrest.

Another life transforming experience happened in 1973, the year I moved to Orlando, Florida to join my fiancé, Bob Jensen. Bob was from St. Paul, Minnesota . We met in New York City. He was working as design engineer for 3M Co.  Shortly after we were engaged he was drafted. He worked in the warfare training program in Ocala, Florida where they did simulation training for B- 52 pilots before they got sent to Vietnam. This is a topic we seldom discussed. Shortly after my arrival in Orlando, Bob and his friend Bruce and myself went for a picnic in Blue Springs, a beautiful river with a rather strong current. While Bob and Bruce were snorkeling I went for a swim. I did not realize how deep it got and  how strong the current was until too late. I soon got tired , then panicked and eventually lost consciousness. Bob’s 6^th sense moved him just at that instant to start looking for me and found me at some distance already unconscious, thrashing under the water surface. His 9^th grade CPR training came in handy and he was able to revive me. Before I was revived I went through classic the Near Death Experience( NDE) as described by Raymond Moody in his book "Life After Life". After I lost consciousness, I was aware of being surrounded by a soft white light as if I was floating on a raft towards the white light. It felt very peaceful and relieved that I was no longer struggling. In fact I thought " had I known it was this beautiful I would not have struggled so hard".  Soon I heard the sound of very labored, moist breathing. My nurse mind told me someone needed suctioning because they had water in their lungs. It took a few moments for me to realize that the noisy breathing was my own. I survived!  I did not die ! I had mixed feelings, I was happy to be alive but sad that I had to leave such a peaceful place.

That event changed my attitude toward life. I was 27 years old and the rest of my life would be on borrowed time. I knew deep inside that I was back because I had things to accomplish. I did not know what my life’s mission was but I was open to finding out.  I appreciated life more, friendships, relationships, the beauty in nature and all living things were things I was seeing with a fresh look, always thinking... but for the grace of God I would not be here right now experiencing everything.

Bob and I got married a few months later and within three months I was pregnant. Pregnancy and childbirth were miracles, mysteries of life I savored with relish. I was thrilled with my life as wife and mother. My career in nursing had also taken off. I pioneered the teaching of a new specialty in nursing:Trauma Nursing. With grant monies I developed a teaching curriculum to train Emergency Room nurses to manage the first 30 minutes of a true emergency, ( i.e. cardiac arrests, gun shot wounds, hemorrhage, massive chest injuries, poisoning, snake bites, anaphylactic reactions etc.) You see, in many small community hospitals, especially on the late night shifts, emergency doctors were not immediately available, and it was the nurse that took care of the first valuable few minutes that meant life or death for many patients. The course I developed became a prototype for other courses and was adopted nationwide. I also taught the first EMT ( Emergency Management Training for ambulance personnel) course in Orange County, Florida.

That year I signed up for my first Yoga class. My teacher was a woman in her 40’s who exuded serenity, beauty and youthfulness. I remember saying " I want to look like her when I am 40." Our required reading for the course was the book by Jess Stearn " Yoga Youth and Reincarnation" The concept of reincarnation grabbed my attention. It seemed a more plausible concept than that of one lifetime followed by an eternity of either heaven or hell, as taught in my Catholic catechism classes. This course opened my mind to other possibilities and it started my quest for more understanding of my spiritual nature. I admired spirituality as practiced by the native peoples of the Americas and of the indigenous people of the Philippines.  Oneness with God and with all living things is such a beautiful concept.  I  believe that everyone shares the same God energy, We are one  with  all creation, humans, animals, plants so it behooves all of us to take care of one another, even our enemies.

My renewed sense of closeness with God and my  wonderful experience as a young wife and mother were marred only by the turn of events in my homeland. The Marcos dictatorship was now on it’s third year and Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos were exerting their tyranny to the max, supported fully by the US government, my own tax dollars went to support the military that protected the dictator and his cronies. In 1974, my brother Manny who was then a catholic priest became a political prisoner along with many other nuns, priests, students, professors and  newspaper reporters. People who helped the poor, or voiced their opposition to the regime had to be silenced, either by detention or in many cases by murder. The poor became ready recruits for the underground armed opposition and any doctor, teacher or social worker serving the poor became suspect for alliance to the New Peoples Army. Disappearance of activists became a rampant phenomenon.  It was a very difficult time for the whole country and especially for families like mine with loved ones in jail, possibly being tortured or executed without trial. It was very stressful for me, I was the only one in my family here in the US and with censorship, it was not possible for my family to relay information to me. I got most of the information from  Philippine newspapers published  in California.( Ang Katipunan) Manny and his cell mate, Fr. Ed De La Torre made headlines when they went on a hunger strike to call attention to the excessive use of torture in detention camps.

This very personal event politicized  me , and I became determined to  oppose the Marcos dictatorship and educate the American public about the US government’s support of this cruel regime. With my family’s efforts  my brother was released from detention in 1975 and we went home to visit to celebrate the occasion.

That same year Bob and I moved to Minnesota and settled in White Bear Lake. I taught Trauma Nursing at the University of Minnesota while completing my masters in nursing and later I took a job as director of education at St. Paul Children’s Hospital. In 1980 I went back to the Philippines to study TCM. (Traditional Chinese Medicine.) .

There were 20 students in my class mostly doctors who practiced in remote, rural communities. Medical training in the Philippines is patterned after the United States medical curriculums, reliant on drugs, surgery and high technology for diagnosis of illness. These young doctors found their training useless when faced with patients too poor to afford prescription drugs, X-rays and other expensive scans.  Besides, many of these laboratory technologies were seldom available. They needed to learn a health care system that was more applicable to the situation in the third world. Chinese Medicine was the answer, with its use of inexpensive acupuncture needles, utilizing the abundance of herbal remedies and using pulse, tongue , and auricles for diagnosis, it is the best medicine for this part of the world. Our group was the first to get this training the Philippines.  Dr. Bobby de la Paz was my classmate and we became good friends. He used to take me home after classes in his motorcycle, which really worried my dad because Manila traffic is unforgiving. Bobby and all the other doctors in my class were very dedicated to serving and healing the poorest of the poor, many of them went to small barrios on motorcycles because their homes were inaccessible by car. They had many wonderful stories about life under martial law and how dangerous it had become to serve the needs of the poor.

A year after I came back to the United States, Bobby de la Paz was shot and killed while working in his clinic in Samar. He was shot by the military, they claimed Bobby was an "NPA sympathizer". He was 29 years old. My heart broke for my dear friend and now my hero. He left a wife and a 4 year old boy.  His death spurred me to form an organization in Minnesota that would coordinate with other organizations nationwide to expose the atrocities of the Marcos regime and lobby for withdrawal of military aid to his government. My friend Nadine Cruz and myself organized a "Night of Tribute to Bobby de la Paz". This was held at the Newman Center in Minneapolis. Three hundred people attended the event and that night we launched the formation of the Philippine Study Group Of MN.  (PSGM). This organization exists to this date. Marcos was ousted in 1986 but the PSGM continues it’s work to support human rights, and educate the public on socio- political issues concerning the Philippines. I am very proud of my friends in the PSGM for their dedication and passion for the oppressed in our home country.

The year 1985 was a turning point for me I went through a divorce and as a single mother raised my 10 year old son Mark on my own. I switched careers and established the East West Clinic for Acupuncture and Holistic Medicine, one of the first Holistic clinics in Minnesota and in the United States. Today between the two settings, one in White Bear Lake and one in Roseville, the clinic sees about 500 people a month. We specialize in the treatment of pain syndromes, infectious diseases, allergies, depression, addictions and gastro intestinal disorders. I also wrote a book titled Conquering Yeast Infections, The Non Drug Solution. First published in 1996 it has been re printed 5 times and sold over 10,000 copies. I wrote the book because candidiasis is a very prevalent disease and yet the medical establishment do not recognize it and most cases go undiagnosed and untreated. I did not realize how common it was and how miserable people with this illness have become. The more severe cases suffer a myriad of symptoms, they looked normal but they wished they were dead. The few books that were written about this illness like the Yeast Syndrome and The Yeast Connection were written by allopathic doctors and the method of treatment they recommend consist of pharmaceutical antifungals. These drugs cannot be used for a prolonged period of time because they cause liver toxicity. What was needed was a regimen that used natural anti fungals that can be used long term. They also needed a special diet to re establish a normal gastro- intestinal tract ecology. Since no such book existed I decided to start the research and write about my findings. My high volume of patients with Candida related problems was the perfect setting for such an endeavor. It took me 4 years to arrive to my conclusions.

I am very proud of the research and treatment protocols I have formulated for systemic fungal infections. It is a disease that is the underlying cause of many chronic illnesses such as chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, chemical and environmental sensitivities, allergies , colitis , migraines, depression etc. My success with this program has been very encouraging, I was able to reverse Multi System Atrophy, a form of Parkinson’s disease and Multiple Sclerosis . Both case studies have been published in the Townsend Letter for Doctors, a renowned journal for complimentary and alternative medicine.

My life would not be as full however without the love and inspiration of my husband Tom Fiutak. Tom and I met in 1985 and married in 1990. At that time his two children, Pete and Melissa had left for college and Mark was a sophomore in high school. We are now empty nesters, and not only that, we’re done supporting kids through college. We are now living out our dream of traveling to exotic places, venturing on activities I would never have dreamed doing: canyoning, para sailing, even did the Minnesota quintessential outdoor experience, camping, canoeing, and portaging the boundary waters canoe area. I also learned tennis 6 years ago and it has become my favorite sport.

In this second half of my life, I continue to envision a perfect world, a world that is peaceful, free from terrorist attacks, with a society concerned for the welfare of the poor and oppressed, concerned about the environment, a society where disease is controlled with safer, less expensive methods. In this particular endeavor, I will dedicate the remaining years of my life and hope to see the changes I dream about still in this lifetime.