Dr. José Francisco Peña Gómez shares with Dominicans his hopes of recovery from his pancreatic cancer and his new vision of life, in an interview in the Listín Diario today. The former presidential candidate of the Partido Revolucionario Dominicano has spent the past year and a half fighting his illness, diagnosed three years ago. While his illness was known during the presidential election campaign of 1996, it did not become a campaign issue because, in the words of a political tactician for the PLD, "Dominicans would have felt sorry for him and instead of being a negative, it could have contributed to his win." Peña Gómez explained in the interview that he has lost 50 pounds, a good part of his vigor, but not his desire to live and overcome the sickness. In his quest for a cure, he has traveled the world around, resorting to traditional and alternative medicine. He has been treated in the United States, China, Venezuela, India, Cuba. Along his list of physicians he mentions doctors Milo de la Roca (Venezuela), Norma Destano (Cuba), Murray Brennan and Moises Shike, Francisco Benoit, Rafael Lantigua, Joseph Thomen (U.S.-Texas, Ohio, New York, California). "Look, when I was at the Memorial Hospital (Sloan Kettering Memorial Hospital of New York City) last year, on the verge of death, without being able to eat of piece of yucca, I imagined being back in my home town, Mao, Valverde. Retrospectively, I would see workers sitting down in their break hour to eat a plantain with chicken or yucca, and I would say: If only I could be one of those workers. Everything about human life becomes relative, we realize how little we are, all of a sudden the highest summits become planes, the most exalted or more powerful men, when you look again they are reduced to ragamuffins. Thomas Kempis said: "And so passes the glory of the world." I became convinced that the most important things in life are the good works one does, the satisfaction of duty fulfilled, because the glory, the political power, the wealth, all that passes."
