Boy supported by Samaritans 8 years ago now in 4th grade

By Ramon Dacawi 

BAGUIO CITY -- This item is for kids who are now in their teens. Specifically, it’s for Ellana and her brother Bryan, children of Joel and Emily Aliping.  It’s for Nikolas, the son of Baguio folksinger Conrad Marzan and his wife Pilar. Children of Cordillerans, they’re now growing up in Northern California. 

It’s also for older Samaritans the likes of Baguio businessman Alfred Go, dentist-couple Eric and Patricia Padeo, former punong barangay Peter Wasing, city councilor Peter Fianza   and several others whose names this writer can’t recall.  Still, they  would be interested to know how Rheyvien Jave Villanueva , the ailing toddler from eight years back, is now.

The boy is now a lanky nine-year old. He wears corrective glasses for astigmatism and is in the fourth grade at the Quezon Elementary School here. Like many other kids his age and younger, he’s accompanied  to school and brought home to Loakan by his mother, Emilia.

Emilia  has to, as the kid has attention deficient  hyperactive disorder that needs to be managed for his safety and development.

“He tends to be misunderstood by other kids because of his condition,”his mother said. “He also needs  occupational therapy to improve his hand grip so he can hold his pencil and be able to write.”

Otherwise, Rheyvien Jave is okay, more than eight years after he pulled off a little miracle at the National Kidney and Transplant Institute in Quezon City.

The kid, youngest of four children of Emilia and jeepeny driver Reynaldo,  was admitted to the NKTI in February, 2006. Tests  showed his ureter was abnormally positioned leading to reflux of urine back to the kidneys, damaging them. It had to be corrected by surgery.

 “Before the operation, the surgeon ordered a re-test and, to his surprise, the damaged kidneys had subsided to normal size,” Emilia recalled. “He then told me he could not explain how it happened  and was cancelling the surgery as my boy’s illness could be healed through medication.”

Samaritans had pooled P55,000 for the operation which Emilia channeled to the kid’s long-term medication. When she heard from Conrad a nurse was suffering from cancer of the uterus, she passed on P5,000 for the patient’s radiation therapy. – Ramon Dacawi.