Former Provincial Board Member Gamaliel Lumapas, who has been battling lung cancer this year, has passed on. He was 73.
Concepcion Lumapas, the wife of the late PB Member Gamaliel Lumapas, said that her husband was declared dead at 11 p.m. on Wednesday by doctors of the Juan Dosado Memorial Hospital in Sogod, a northern town 61 km from Cebu City.
Concepcion told Cebu Daily News in an phone interview that on early Wednesday evening the former PB Member had coughing attacks and had difficulty breathing.
His family rushed him to the town hospital, but he did not reach the hospital alive.
Concepcion said it took them a while to get a vehicle to bring her husband to the hospital.
“Kadtong wala gyud mi kakita og sakyanan, nitawag na gyud mig ambulansya kay iadto namo siya sa hospital pero wala na gyud siya kaabot.” said Concepcion.
(We could not find any vehicle to get us to the hospital so we called an ambulance but my husband did not reach the hospital alive.)
Concepcion said that her husband had been initially diagnosed as having suffered from tuberculosis (TB) last May, but doctors found a tumor in the lower right lobe of his lung.
Doctors later confirmed that former PB Member Lumapas was suffering from lung cancer.
“Nakurat lang jud mi. Abi namo nga ang sakit sa iyang tuhod dala ra sa TB pero lung cancer naman diay to,” said Concepcion.
(We were surprised with this finding. We thought that the pain in the knee was caused by TB, but it turned out to be caused by lung cancer.)
After being diagnosed with lung cancer, she said, her husband was then confined at the Chong Hua Hospital in Mandaue City from October 20 to November 14.
He then requested that he be allowed to leave the hospital and return to his home in Sogod — a request that the doctors granted.
The late former PB Member Lumapas’ wake will be held in the family’s residence in Sogod town.
Former PB Member Lumapas was once the chairman of the PB’s Dangerous Drugs committee.
He served as ex-officio PB Member in 2016 when then president of the Philippine Councilor’s League Ivy Meca, did not run as councilor and the PCL top post was deemed vacated, said Oscar Pineda, public information officer of the Cebu Provincial government.
Lumapas, who was then councilor of Sogod, town, was next in line and took over as the ex-officio PB Member while the PCL had their elections for president.
Pineda said that Lumapas stint at the PB lasted 11 months or from May 2016 to March 2017 when Earl Tidy Oyas, the new PCL president, took over the position.