PEP: Malu Barry wants to bring home her comatose son

Singer and occasional actress Malu Barry wants to bring home her comatose son Charles Louis. Barry, 45, told PEP (Philippine Entertainment portal) over the weekend that she wants to be there for him if he passes on. But this does not mean that she would be pulling the plug on Charles, whom doctors said earlier might be a vegetable if he gets out of his coma. "I don't think any mother would want her child to die," said Barry, speaking mostly in Filipino. "I just want to bring him home so I would be there for him...take care of him. I don't want to receive a phone call from the hospital telling me that my son has died." Barry is based in Manila. Charles, 27, was in Cebu in preparation for his move there with his girlfriend and their nine-month-old daughter. His transfer to Cebu was work-related. COMATOSE. Charles Louis, Barry's eldest child, has been lying comatose at Velez Hospital in Cebu City since February 3 after he was sideswiped by a van while crossing a street. He was in the hospital's intensive care unit, but doctors have finally allowed him to be confined in a regular room, according to Barry. Charles can hear, and he can also squeeze with his right hand, she said. Barry related that when Charles' sister Kiyana and some friends visited him, he squeezed his sibling's hand as if acknowledging her presence. But Charles does not do this for Barry. "When I hold his hand and whistle to him—I have this whistle for him—he does not react," Barry said. "But tears fall from his eyes, as if he is crying." She said that "since day one, the right side of his body has not totally lost all its functions." Recently Charles' doctors have agreed to release him from hospital so Barry could take him home. But transporting him from Cebu to Manila on an airplane might be a problem, the doctors told Barry, because the altitude might make his brain swell further. "I might bring him home in a ship," said Barry, adding that the GMA-7 Network show Wish Ko Lang, which recently had an update on Charles' condition, had offered to foot the bill through Philippine Airlines if he would be flown to Manila. SKY-HIGH BILL. Barry said the hospital bill has risen sky-high—now almost reaching a million pesos—and she has to do shows to raise the money to pay it. So far, Barry has had three fundraising shows at Merck's in Makati City. Before her son's accident, Barry did only one show a year, in September, for her birthday. The Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office had already given P100,000 to cover the cost of antibiotics, which the patient has to be given on a 24-hour basis owing to the swelling of his brain and to prevent infection, Barry explained. Still, she won't beg for help from her friends in showbiz. "Can you imagine me asking anyone for help? I just can't do it," she said. Barry said Charles' father is based in Las Vegas, Nevada, and might still not know that his son is in hospital. She said she has no contact with him, adding that she had raised Charles on her own. She also has other children, the youngest of whom is only three years old. All are living with her. "I have always been single," Barry said. "I have raised my children on my own. I have handled every problem by myself. I was born matapang...palaban." She said she can't afford not to be brave. "Otherwise, my family might collapse," she added. FIGHTING FOR HIS LIFE. The doctors, Barry said, could not tell her if her son would recover. "This is not like a fever which would go away after three days," she said. "My son's doctors told me that his recovery would be up to him. He would be the one to fight for his life." Charles breathes and eats through tubes, and if the time comes that she has to decide to remove his life support, she said she would not know how to deal with it. "I don't know how I would handle the situation," she said. "I don't think any mother could easily make a decision like that. If it were up to me, of course, I want my son to live—vegetable or not." BROCKA PROTEGÉ. Although it is not easy, Barry said she makes a conscious effort not to be defeated by this tragedy. The best thing she could do, she said, was bury herself in her work. Barry also expressed interest in reviving her stalled movie career which was on the verge of taking off after the late director Lino Brocka cast her in Kislap Sa Dilim in the 1990s. It was Brocka who discovered Barry for the movies. She was a regular singer at Spindle, a music lounge in Quezon City, and Brocka was a frequent visitor there. He convinced her to try acting, and when she agreed, he gave her the role of the other woman opposite Christopher de Leon, who played husband to Lorna Tolentino's rape victim in Kislap Sa Dilim. Barry had a development deal with Brocka before he died in a car accident in 1992. Barry had not found another acting mentor after Brocka, and she focused again on her music career. Eventually, that too, fizzled out, except for the occasional show and her yearly birthday concert, when Barry concentrated on raising her children and growing her business. A major comeback for Barry as a singer and actress was in the offing before Charles' accident. "But I am not doing a comeback because I now need the money for Charles," she clarified. She admitted, however, that the money she might make when she revives her showbiz career would be welcome in her current situation. "Of course, I could use whatever money comes my way," Barry said. "This is a drain on me—physically, emotionally, mentally and of course, financially." - Nini Valera, PEP