Woman needs dialysis help; Expat kareteka extends help

Despite practically having nothing - unemployed, separated from her husband for years and now staying with a seasonal farm laborer  - 55-year hold Rosela Dalmacio of Camp 3, Tuba, Benguet would not have considered herself fit  as a charity case.

Not until last October, when she was rushed to the hospital and doctors told her she had kidney failure. To survive, the medics said, she has to undergo life-time hemodialysis treatment twice a week, each lasting four hours and costing, at the least, P2,200 per session. 

Kidney failure is one of the most debilitating diseases, not only physically but, on the part of family and kin, emotionally and financially. For thousands of ordinary families in this Third World,  Having to scrounge for funds in time for the next dialysis after you had your latest is  akin to being chained to a treadmill that keeps on turning faster and faster, until you spin  out into oblivion. 

So Rosela mustered  the courage last week to  have her story featured in the local papers. She hopes a Samaritan or two out there would respond and sponsor one or two dialysis treatment.

She’s on the eight p.m. schedule every Tuesday and Friday at the Baguio General hospital and Medical Center, thanks to support for eight to nine sessions from the Philippine charity Sweepstakes Office. 

“Client’s live-in partner works as a farmer, at the same time (as a) seasonal laborer and his minimal earnings (are being stretched for their daily needs,” noted social welfare assistant FeverlynDionesio in a report endorsing the patient’s plea for support. 

She can not turn to her daughter, Rosepeter,  who now has her own family. Her son, Jim, died in 2006.

Her recourse is to appeal to strangers, people she might have or had never met, yet feel the need to reach out to her.  She can be reached through cellphone number 09499491796.

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A Cordillera expatriate has been coming home for  the last 10 years to reach out to the sick and needy here, the latest of whom were patients at the Baguio General Hospital and Medical Center and the Mountain Province General Hospital in Bontoc town.

Sensei Julian Chees, a sixth dan traditional karate master and former world champion,  was home again early this year to prop up nine patients, mostly infants and children he visited at the pedia wards of the two medical institutions. 

The visit was pure relief for young Baguio couple KristianKerwin and TweenyDabucol who were squeezed dry by the medical needs of their baby, Winter Jaycen, who has been in and out of hospitals since last December  for congenital heart ailment and complications. 

From his Shoshin Kinderhilfe, a foundation he established in 2004, Chees handed P20,000 to keep the couple afloat while their baby recuperates towards a possible surgery to mend his heart. 

At a loss on where to turn to for help, Tweeny earlier e-mailed Chees.  In his reply,  the Germany-based Igorot martial artist from Maligcong, Bontoc, Mt., Province ,made no commitment to help and surprised the couple with his hospital visit upon his arrival here. 

Two other babies in the ward  became instant beneficiaries.  Three-month old  Jhon Alfred Santos of Sto. Domingo, Nueva Ecija who was fighting pneumonia and sepsis, got an oxygen tank and suction machine he needed at home once discharged from the hospital.

The benefactor then reimbursed the medical expenses  totaling PP759 for Lord Ashley Palinos Agagen, a month-old baby afflicted with hydrocephaly.

His first stop was in Dontogan Barangay here to deliver P10,000 to widow Ofelia Nalos who had just lost her husband, Leonardo who passed only last Jan,. 4 after surviving for months on hemodialysis treatment for kidney failure.Shoshinearlier  paid P5,000 for the plot where the patient was buried.

He then extended P2,500 support to Jeannie Chomacog Acosta who was diagnosed for P2,500.

In Bontoc, he provided emergency funds for Kendra Franco, JaimeTumatak, Lee Joy Pokis, AhmidOnggao and Clarineth Galap, either for their or their children’s medications. 

In the wake of super-typhoon Yolanda’s wrath, Chees found his way to Capiz province in December, 2013 where he, in coordination with a crew sent by the Benguet Electric Cooperative to restore lines and Fr. Niel Olano of the St. Martin Church, delivered P1 million worth of rice and cash to the howler’s victims in Dumalag and Tapaz towns.  

Back in Baguio, he turned over what remained of his fund – P100,000 – to the fund drive mounted by the Baguio Midland Courier for the typhoon victims. 

“Sensei (Master) Chees (has been collecting donations on his seimnars throughout Germany for the needed in his homeland and it is not easy for him to beg for money (for the sick children and grown-ups in the Philippines again and again,” foundation secretary Renate Doth told this writer early last year.

As of February last year, the foundation had distributed some P4.5 million pesos as support to indigent patients here and in other parts of the Cordillera. – Ramon Dacawi