Distraught parents seek support for sick children

REACHING OUT 

BAGUIO CITY -- Marissa Pasyalen is a 38-year old  former overseas worker with six children, one of whom is bed-ridden and racking up bills in a hospital for pneumonia while another is at home, confined to a wheelchair for bladder, kidney and heart problems.

               Marissa, who worked as a domestic  help for three years in Malaysia who had to come home to take care of them, admitted she doesn’t know who and where to turn to for help. A public appeal coursed through the Baguio media might help, she said last week.

               Her daughter, Desiree, 14, has been confined at the Baguio General Hospital since last Feb. 14, the left side of her body paralyzed due to pneumonia and complications. Her family had used up P30,000 for medicines and her hospital bills had shot up to P134,000.

              “Doctors said she would need an oxygen tank to help her breathe and  be able to recuperate at home when she would be released from the hospital,” Marissa said.

            The gadget would cost about P11,000. It’s  a pittance compared to the hospital charges and to the cost of an MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) procedure, estimated at P25,000, her other child, Ralph Benedict, 19, needs to undergo.

           

            Ralph, third in a brood of six, underwent  surgery for multiple angiolipoma  when he was 10 months old, again when he was two years old.

            In 2011, the kid became bed-ridden. Last September, he was rushed to the BGHMC for abdominal pain. That’s when doctors diagnosed him for bladder stones, kidney and heart problems.

          The others in the brood are Aldrin, 23, who works as a construction laborer after finishing high school Jemar, 21,.also a laborer;  Mark, 17, out-of-school; and Anjay, 11 and in the fourth grade.

           The children depend on the laborer’s income of their father, Jerry, a 42-year old construction worker from La Trinidad, Benguet. He and Marissa met when both were working at the Philex Mines in Padcal, Tuba, Benguet.

           Samaritans can contact Marissa’s cellphone number – 09485378418. They may visit the family at JD-147 Bayabas, Pico, La Trinidad, Benguet. – Ramon Dacawi

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Acute lymphocytic leukemia or ALL, like other types of cancer, does not pick on victims its size, with peak incidence among children aged two to five years.

Those facts may help answer some of the questions young couple Ramon and Ginalyn Pa-ay have been throwing  up the blue yonder since last year, when  their now 18-month old daughter, Raciala Chloe, was diagnosed for the disease that will take now take  her years to fight.

Yet no one can provide clear answers to related questions any other couple in the same predicament have all the right to ask, like “Why should the affliction hit our child, not those of the wealthy who can afford to bankroll the protracted and costly process of healing?.”

The hope is pinned on a bit  of statistic: ALL is curable, at 80 percent among afflicted children, compared to 20-40 percent among adults.

The  urgency of the toddler’s case is underscored by the qualifier  “acute”, which means the disease has a relatively short time course, compared to chronic lymphocytic leukemia which has a potential time course of many years.

Last February 14,  pediatrician Edith Cyril Caysido of the Baguio General Hospital and Medical Center prepared a 36-month intravenous, oral and intrathecal chemotherapy treatment protocol costing thousands of pesos that the family, who relies on Ramon’s income as a marginal farmer, will mostly likely never see or produce in a lifetime.

“The family is now worried where to borrow and get money to sustain the medical expense of Raciala,” noted social welfare aide Lily Anne France Barrientos of the social welfare office of Itogon, Benguet.

Since the diagnosis, Ramon, a native of Bokod, Benguet,  had to abandon farming in Bambang, Nueva Vizcaya and move his family to his brother-in-law’s place in Ampucao, Itogon, Benguet  to be near the BGHMC where Raciala’s scheduled three-year treatment.

With no source from which to sustain the kid’s treatment, the couple asked the Baguio media to publish and air  the toddler’s case, hoping Samaritans out their would know and reach out to them.

Generous souls can ring up Ginalyn’s cellphone – 09361265279.

Meanwhile, Marivic Baicy of Webster, Texas, through former assistant Baguio city prosecutor Evelyn Tagudar, has added 100 dollars to a trust fund opened here to raise support for Quakelyn Lisayen, a 24=year old former rescuer who is working out her kidney transplant.

The girl, who is undergoing twice-a-week hemodialysis for kidney failure, earlier got 41,300 support from retired U.S. Navy officer Bob Aliping who  tapped fellow Igorot expatriates in the United States by distributing copies of his latest folk music composition (“Boba”).

Local folksingers led by expatriates Conrad Marzan and MhiaTibunsay earlier raised P40,000 for the girl and an equal amount for four other dialysis patients in a concert at Irisan Barangay here last March 1.

Even local cockfighting aficionados are fortifying their support programs for the sick. Cock breeders led by Gilbert Tanding and others based in Itogon, Benguet are staging a three-cock derby for a cause on May 8 at the Shilan cockpit in La Trinidad, Benguet, with the proceeds going to a fund for dialysis patients.

At the Tabora cockpit in Tuba, Benguet, Engr. Tony Boy Tabora announced that the share of the United Baguio-Benguet Breeders Association from the “Bakbakan” national derby series will also be used for dialysis patients. - Ramon Dacawi