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
***
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
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