Three toddlers cry for help from Samaritans

By Ramon Dacawi

BAGUIO CITY -- Between shuttling from home to hospital, parents of three ailing kids make the rounds, hoping to stumble on help to repair the failing hearts of two of them and for another to undergo tests to evaluate the extent of his illness.

Stephanie Cupido Pagnas, who will turn three on April 5, managed to pose with legs akimbo for the camera. She looked like any normal kid who had just dipped her hands into a bowl of black berries and munched them.

She’s a blue baby. Her fingernails and lips are blue, a sign of congenital heart disease that doctors diagnosed as DTGA w/ VSD w/ PAH when she was three months old. It means, medically speaking, Dextro. transposition of great arteries with ventricular septal defect with pulmonary arterial hypertension.

Doctors at the Philippine Heart Center advised surgery as soon as possible, according to Delia, her 32-year old mother. “We were told it’s estimated at P500,000,” Marlon, her 33-year old father, said.

Marlon is a farmer at Lamut, Beckel, La Trinidad, Benguet while Delia takes care of their two kids, including Shanna Mae, now over four years old.

The couple can be reached at cell phone numbers 09205709507 and 09195098811.

The other heart patient, a seven-year old baby girl, was back at the St. Louis University Hospital of the Sacred Heart last week, barely a week after she was released from confinement. Like Stephanie, she was diagnosed for transposition of the great arteries, with ventricular septal defect. The difference is the third defect – patent foremen ovale.
Her grandmother, an overseas worker in Israel, was able to apply the baby’s case for corrective surgery there, but this has to wait until a medical travel grant is arranged and she is fit enough for the trip.

Her mother has just undergone first-aid training as part of the travel requirements, only to be back with her husband on hospital watch and worrying over the mounting medical bills.

The baby’s name will be published as soon as her parents allow that would enable Samaritans to reach them.

Third patient is eight-year old Mark Kevin Clarito, son of a laborer at 48 Paredes St., Middle Quezon Hill. His complicated condition is diagnosed as Langerhan’s cell histiocytosis, central diabetes, insipidus, infected seborrheic dermatitis and malnutrition.

“Our big problem now is how to raise over P10,000 for an MRI (magnetic resonance imaging needed to enable doctors to evaluate his condition),” his father Ferdinand said in a hand-written letter-appeal in Filipino.

Samaritans can call the family in distress at 09106915816, the cellphone number of Nieves, the boy’s mother.

Kind souls who have construction materials to spare may ask for Anabel Lampaz, a mother of eight children, at 005-B Sampaguita, San Luis Barangay.

The family is actually homeless and badly needs support to build an abode. City social welfare and development officer Betty Fangasan said a concerned resident of San Luis has offered a lot where a shanty can be constructed, if only the family could get hold of materials.