Youngest kidney patient’s parents knocking on doors

By Ramon Dacawi

Forty six-year old Marcela Fontanila, a farmer’s wife and mother of four, was told that Ana, her youngest child, was the youngest among 160 or so patients undergoing twice or thrice-a-week hemodialysis treatment for kidney failure at the Baguio General Hospital and Medical Center.

Ana, who turned 14 last June 16, learned of her life-changing -and life-threatening - predicament early last April.

That was when she experienced dizziness and was admitted to the Rosario District Hospital in La Union where

she was diagnosed for Stage V (end-stage) kidney failure.

That meant life-time treatment through expensive dialysis or blood cleansing sessions twice a week, scheduled four hours at a time. Ana is on the 11 a.m. – 3:00 p.m. shift every Wednesday and Saturday at the BGHMC, which offers the lowest cost hereabouts at P2,200 per session.

Now and then at a loss on where to raise the amount for the next treatment, Marcela and Amado, her 47-year old farmer-husband, can only shrug off any suggestion for them to consider the more costly alternative – a kidney transplant that would require about a million pesos.

Ana is supposed to be in third year high school now. For one so young, schooling is no longer of the moment.

Sustaining treatment and nurturing the will to survive are and will be.

“That’s why I’m signing this,” her mother told this writer, when she came to knock on and open up to Samaritans out there.

She signed an authorization for “the publication of a news item regarding the medical plight of my youngest child who is suffering from end-stage kidney failure, with the hope that readers would respond and extend their help to sustain her life-time hemodialysis treatment”.

She had left Ana at the BGHMC dialysis room where another patient failed to report for treatment, allowing her to be attached to one of  the blood-cleansing machines earlier than her schedule.

Mother and child used to take the bus or jeep from their home at No. 14, Barangay Tanglag, Rosario for Ana’s treatment rounds at the BGHMC. Last August, Helping Hands, a half-way house for young patients at Camp 7 here, took her in so she would be nearer to the medical facility.

Until last week, the family was unsure whether she would be able to make it to her Wednesday treatment schedule.

“The family could hardly make both ends meet with their present predicament because farming is the only source of income,” noted municipal social welfare and development officer Grenaflor Magsakay.

Her mother said Ana had already used up P17,600 in the form of a guarantee letter issued last September  by the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office. She would be eligible for additional support only by next February.

“I wanted to apply my Philhealth benefits for her dialysis support but was told the amount had also been exhausted by her hospitalization before and after her diagnosis,” Marcela explained. “We have stressed the kindness of relatives and friends and had used up guarantee letters of P2,000 from Senator (Antonio) Trillanes, P2,200 from Senator (Allan Peter) Cayetano and P1,500 from Bayan Muna.”

She showed her last card – a guarantee letter for P2,200 (the cost of one treatment session) issued last Monday by two aides of former Rep. Risa Hontiveros of Akbayan.

“She’ll need another P2,200 for her treatment this Saturday, same amount for next Wednesday and so forth and I don’t know where to turn to,” Marcela admitted.

 Gentle souls out there looking for substance to this season of giving may ring up Marcela’s cell phone number: 09479483480.

Also wanted are donors in kind, particularly blood needed by John Mark Tiyad, a 22-year old dialysis patient confined at the BGHMC also for liver and heart ailment.             

The boy, an Ifugao woodcarver’s son, is in need of type A-positive but donors with other blood types can also donate to replace what has been transfused.

Blood donors may ring up John Mark’s sister Gloria (09297661705).