By Ramon Dacawi
BAGUIO CITY -- Forty-year old Joel Gal-od lies on his hospital bed, uncertainty etched on his face covered by a plastic mask connected to a tube attached to the oxygen piping system at the fourth floor of the Baguio General Hospital and Medical Center.
It’s afternoon of Tuesday, August 6, two days before he’d be wheeled
again into the renal center of the other building of the BGHMC for his
hemodialysis treatment for kidney failure set every Thursday, Saturday and
Monday, on the 7:00 a.m.-11 a.m. shift.
He has been on three-times-a-week dialysis since June, 2010, according
to a social case study report prepared by social welfare officer Joy Hilario of
the city social welfare and development office.
A city councilor had been gracious to charge Joel’s dialysis last
Thursday to his local version of the Priority Development Assistance Fund.
Unless Samaritans would come in, Joel would have nowhere else to turn to, or,
to put it more bluntly, beg from for the treatment cost of P2,200 per session
on Saturday, Aug. 10, and then on Aug. 12, 15, 17 and so on.
Even if one has the funds, it’s ordeal enough to sit through the four
hours per session needed to cleanse the blood with the help of a machine
acting like kidneys filtering waste from the bloodstream. It’s multiple whammy
for Joel who has been hospitalized since late July for complications.
Recently, the dialysis fistula inserted in his hand to allow attachment
to the cleansing machine malfunctioned, prompting its temporary transfer to the
neck. Joe was told he’d need some P40,000 for the re-insertion of the same in
either the left or right hand, both of which had been calloused due to previous
implantations.
To sustain his dialysis treatment for life, he has lost his savings and
properties, including the taxi unit he worked on to own driving other people’s
units. Four years back, his wife went ot Canada to work. She never came back
and eventually married a Canadian national.
He later met a nursing student whose schooling he bankrolled.After
passing the licensure examinations, she also left for good.
When she learned he was hospitalized again, Lyka, his 11-year old
adopted daughter, arrived with his widowed mother Josie last week-end
from Nueva Vizcaya. After he was diagnosed for kidney failure, Joel
thought it best to have Lyka stay with her grandmother.
The girl, who’s in the fifth grade at the Sta. Clara Elementary School
in Aritao town, however, also thought it best to skip school and be by
her dad’s hospital bed.
Joel’s biggest worry is Lyka’s future should he be gone, a
relative, Limay Adawi Carrera, said. On Joel’s request, Carrera had brought the
girl to the city social welfare and development office to inquire on
possible adopors or sponsors for Lyka’s upkeep and education.
“He also asked me to try to contact his former wife in Canada, for her
to possibly agree to help provide for the kid’s future,” Limay said.
For now, the most pressing concern is how to sustain Joel’s
thrice-a-week hemodialysis sessions and his other medications, aside from
payment of his hospital bills.
For now, he’s confined at the fourth floor of the Flavier Building of
the BGHMC trying to figure out where to turn to for help, not only for
his treatment but for Lyka’s future.
Readers who can help may ring up his cellphone number (09482305389) or
Limay’s (09484305985).
Over in La Trinidad, Benguet, 19-year kidney patient old Dharren Gawili
had his hemodialysis last Thursday morning, thanks to a businessman who footed
the P2,600 bill at the Benguet Renal Center.
Dharren is the second patient helped from a P3,000-per-week fund that
the businessman said he will try to maintain, initially for residents of La
Trinidad, Benguet where he is based.
The first was Jocelyn Singson, a 40-year old barangay councilwoman of
Bahong, La Trinidad who undergoes dialysis treatment three times a week.–
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