This Baguio girl – and nurse - needs a miracle

By Ramon Dacawi

BAGUIO CITY -- Nurse Shirley Concepcion is no stranger to miracles. She has seen them happen to terminally ill patients she has handled, cases that even best in the medical field agreed only a miracle could heal.

Beyond the medical care she had trained for years to provide, Shirley readily learned to pray for these miracles from the moment she entered the actual field and encountered her first seriously ill patient.

She never thought she herself would need a miracle. Until late last November, when, while on duty at the Baguio General Hospital and Medical Center, she ended up at the cardiac care unit- with hardly any blood pressure at all.

The 40-year old nurse recovered and decided to appear at the Philippine Heart Center last Dec. 9 to hear alternatives from the experts. She was told her rheumatic heart, diagnosed in 1996, could no longer be maintained through medication and regular check-ups.

The latest diagnosis was rheumatic heart disease, severe; mitral stenosis; aortic stenosis; cardiac dysrrhythmia (supaventricular tachycardia).

At the Heart Center, she was told she had to be operated on, as soon as possible. For “two-valve replacement and one valve repair”, she was told.

Asked if she could be admitted this Jan. 22 and go under the knife two days later, she answered ‘yes’ without question. The reply came from a mother whose mind was suddenly occupied by the image of Sean Aldridge, her 18-month old son.

On the way back to Baguio, she and her common-law husband, jeepney driver Marcelino Lopez, pondered the cost of the surgery – P750,000.

The shoe is now on the other foot.

“ I’d encourage patients, however serious their conditions were, never to give up, for the sake of their loved ones,” she recalled last Thursday.

From her work last Thursday December 29, she obtained a document from the city social welfare and development office validating her plight and her family’s inability to raise, much less shoulder, the cost of surgery.

Told people out there won’t be able to help unless they know the difficulty she’s in, Shirley agreed to have her case written.

After all, she was told, some people out there may have as their New Year’s Resolution a commitment to be more generous and help the needy more often, as Shirley does as nurse of the BGHMC where she was born on April 28, 1971.

The youngest of five children, she finished sixth grade at the St. Louis University Center (1982) high school at SLU Girls High (1988) and nursing at the Pines City Educational Center (1992).

She passed the nursing board in 1994 and served for eight years as private nurse of her father, Edilberto, who was afflicted with and later died of emphysema and heart ailment. Perlita, her eldest sister, works as telephone operator. Her brother Joseph died of heart ailment in 1994.Her sister Soledad is a factory worker in China while sister Julie serves as baby-sitter.

“My sisters will help but only as much as they can,” she said.

As will people out there who feel the culture of caring that, for years, has been the mark of a boy or girl, who, like Shirley, hails from Baguio or the Cordillera. Or studied in the same schools she went to. Or also worked at the BGHMC.

Or anybody who, like the celebrities, finds inspiration in heroes from the ranks of ordinary mortals that CNN features before the end of the year, making people from all over closer to each other.

Shirley will be at the gynecology ward of the BGHMC until the 14th. She’ll then take a leave to rest, pray and hope for a miracle that would raise P750,000 for the surgery.
It’s a tall order of a New Year’s Resolution imposed on a hardworking nurse who had witnessed miracles happen to her patients.

Those who want to make it happen for Shirley may ring her cell phone number (09175069431) or course their support through her Development Bank of the Philippines account number 05 10145859 560. They may drop by her address at 190 Armenia St., Quezon Hill.