This touching story inspired by patients who had been healed is a Holy Week offering.

When the seven doctors of Carla, the youngest of five VPs at Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP), unanimously said she had three months to live due to cancer of the pancreas, she had no tears.

She was too embarrassed to cry and say goodbye at the bank. She just tiptoed out without a word, and word spread like wildfire only after she had left. It was better this way. She wanted no sympathy or comfort. She just wanted to sit in the dark.

The doctors said there was no cure for her type of pancreatic cancer. The only thing they could give her was a powerful pain killer when extreme pain set in, normally by the third week.

At home, from her bed, she stared tearless and wordless at the ceiling. Her fiancé, Regis, could not talk to her.

REGIS: You have to let your feelings out. Come on, talk to me.

CARLA: You better go, Reg. I’m sorry. It's all bottled up inside. I want to be left alone for now. Maybe later on.

And so Carla sat in total darkness. Not even her mom and dad could talk to her. When her mom insisted, Carla screamed at her. It was like this for a whole month. She was in total depression, waiting to die, until her best friend Daisy, a doctor at the Philippine General Hospital (PGH), came over to visit.

DAISY: Your mom tells me no one can talk to you. You don’t have to talk to me. Just listen for three minutes. Okay?

CARLA: Okay, but make it quick.

DAISY: Johns Hopkins in Baltimore has discovered a powerful anti-depressant called psilocybin, derived from a hallucinogenic mushroom.

CARLA: Magic mushroom. I have read about it.

DAISY: There is a Filipino nurse there, my cousin, who can get some for you.

For the first time, Carla smiled, looked at Daisy and embraced her. And for the first time, healing tears fell.

Following a strict dosage, after the first take Carla was different. Daisy saw a dramatic change in her personality.

CARLA: My depression is instantly gone. It is as if I have gained some mysterious kind of power. No, not physical, like Superman. Just a fantastic sense of well-being, an inexplicable confidence in myself. And a super sensitive awareness of everything around me. Come on, walk with me in the garden. (They walk outside.) I have a keen sense of all the plants around. Hey there, bayabas (guava tree). Keep growing. We need you. You healed my infected leg wound once, remember?

Carla talked to many trees, the kaimito (star apple), guyabano (soursop), aratilis (muntingia), and the niyog (coconut).

CARLA: We have many trees because my Ilocano uncle from Pangasinan planted trees whenever he visited. You know what, Daisy, I know I will get well. Part of my problem was my depression, which can kill more than the cancer itself, if you are unable to control deep depression, you can get suicidal. The magic mushroom heals the depression but not the cancer. Or it does eventually, because your happiness restores your immunity system.

DAISY: My cousin told me some of the dramatic healings at Johns Hopkins. There was this rich guy who had protracted depression for 15 years. He did not believe the mushroom could cure him but when it did, he donated a hospital building to Johns Hopkins, exclusively for poor patients, and gave scholarships to their children.

CARLA: There is a powerful pressure to help others when you know you are healed. That’s what I feel now. Healing is contagious. It’s a form of cosmic consciousness, whatever that means, a feeling of being one with the entire Universe, the stars, the galaxies, all of Mankind. You are compelled to pass your healing around. So, I am going to put up a small magic mushroom clinic here with the little savings I have. Daisy, I’m on top of the world, thanks to you.

DAISY: May I join you.

CARLA: Of course, we are together in this.