Grave kidney ailment dashes architecture student’s dream

By Ramon Dacawi

BAGUIO CITY – Jeffer Udani, now 28, had wanted to be an architect. To pursue that dream, he worked as cook for seven years at the Chowking branch in Candon, Ilocos Sur. In 2011, he came up to Baguio and enrolled as a second year student at the University of the Cordilleras.

Life, however, sometimes gives one less than lemons.

The second of five children of a former sampler at the Acupan Mines in Itogon, Benguet, Jeffer was diagnosed for kidney failure in January last year. The diagnosis came after he began throwing up and his vision blurred.

That means three times a week hemodialysis treatment. It’s  a life-time routine, for a machine  to do what his failed kidneys used to do, which is to clean the blood of liquid waste, to prevent blood poisoning.  

A few cleansing misses can prove fatal.

“When we could not raise the cost, he would skip a session or two,” his mother, Evangeline, said last week. “His dad ( Oscar,54),  who was retrenched in the 1990s when Benguet (Corporation) closed its mining operations in Itogon, had no choice but to go home to Cagayan and work as a tricycle driver.”

Jeffer, his mother and sisters Jade Cyril, 10, and Jazlyn, 7, are left in Baguio.

They stay with their eldest brother Jaycar, 30, a jeepney driver who plies the route to Dominican-Mirador. Together with Jaycar’s family, they live in a two-room affair at Malaya St., Dominican-Mirador.

Evangeline, a native of Sta. Cruz, Ilocos Sur, would have done odd jobs if only she’s not occupied working out support to sustain her son’s blood-cleansing sessions at the renal center of the Baguio General Hospital and Medical Center.

A four-hour session costs P2,200, so hard to come by nowadays  for a family who had long experienced donor fatigue.

Last Monday, however, Evangeline found pure relief. The office of Rep. Bernardo Vergara approved a four-session support to Jeffer. It has given her mother respite from the daily grind of knocking on doors and hoping a Samaritan would open and respond.

As in previous cases of people needing people, there are Samaritans out there. They may ring up Jeffer’s cellphone number 09159206220 or visit him during his hemodialysis schedule at the BGHMC from 3:00 or 4:00 p.m. on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday.

Only recently, donors out there gave fresh hopes for Crisly Anayasan, a 21-year old boy have waited for years to undergo surgery at the Philippine Heart Center to mend a congenital heart ailment. 

Responding to the appeal of the boy’s mother, Emilia, an anonymous Samaritan had his secretary hand to her P15,000 while another civil servant added P2,000. The support will enable Crisly to continue his pre-surgery check-up at the Heart Center next week.

Previous travels to the Heart Center were supported by Shoshin Kinderhilfe, a foundation reaching out to sick children established  by former world shotokan karate champion Julian Chees in Southern Germany. Emilia’s follow-up trip to Crisly’s doctor the other week was also supported by a lawyer who ran in the May 13 polls for a seat in the city council.

Crisly’s condition was diagnosed when he was still a toddler as ventral septal defect with complications. Thje signs are on his bluish fingernails and lips, as if he had just helped himself to a bowl of black or mulberries.