Deadly diseases; good hearted people

BEHIND THE SCENES

Alfred P. Dizon

BAGUIO CITY – It is a wonder how people, despite being on the verge of death  fighting for dear life, still find time to help others.

Take my neighbor Ramon Dacawi in this paper. If you read his columns and articles, you might think he is in the pink of health with his advocacies on health, environment, sports and helping needy and sick people.

Actually Ramon is in and out of hospitals most days since he has to be subjected to three dialysis sessions on a weekly basis. A dialysis session costs around P2.500. I saw him in his office last week with a tube stuck in his neck like an antenna. His staff (Ramon is the head of the city information office) told me the tube was where the blood would be drained out and replaced during dialysis.

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That time, an old woman entered his office asking for money so she could have her dialysis session. Ramon gladly obliged. With his salary, I wondered how he could maintain his dialysis sessions and still give money to others suffering the same malady.

His office has become some sort of a welfare extension although it is in no way connected to the DSWD. Almost every day, people suffering from kidney, liver or heart ailments would see him for financial assistance. Some know his condition and when I talked to them, they told me they were desperate for medicines or dialysis but had no one to turn to. At times when he didn’t have money, the ones asking would leave with an angry face like he was an errant government conditional cash transfer or PCSO official.

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Anyhow, friends like former world karate champ Julian Chees would often pitch in and send funds through Ramon for ill patients and Ramon would dutifully account the money with all the receipts and send it back to Julian or other donors.

Julian, a native of Maligcong, Bontoc, Mountain Province, knowing about the sad travails of sick people here, along with his students, formed a foundation in Germany where he is based now and would send money every now and then to patients.

I know also the goodness of heart of Julian because when he came to know (I guess through Ramon) I had to undergo a delicate eye operationor I would go blind last year, he immediately sent a sizable amount.

There are a lot of people who love to help people like this friend of ours from the BIR who would always donate money, but always telling his confidantes he would rather remain anonymous. The least his musician friends could do was to join or organize concerts-for-a-cause for patients to pitch in when some would ask. 

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Anyway, during his younger days, Ramon had been some sort of an older brother to me and we would drink to our heart’s content with others in media watering holes in Baguio like the now defunct Dainty Restaurant and Luisa’s Café of Chong Loy which I think is the only surviving Chinese restaurant along Session Road.

A few years back, I told him I stopped eating pork and cut on sugar and salt intake due to fatty liver which has since subsided. When I told him about this, he said I was fortunate I had a head start unlike him who only stopped drinking and smoking too late when he was diagnosed with failing kidneys.

Some days, I still do drink due to pressure of the newspaper trade but I don’t take in the hard ones anymore like gin bulag, brandy, whisky or any of those poisons which could slowly shrink your insides.I usually drink nowadays Kung Fu, a brand of siok tong, a Chinese drink which is a tamer version of brandy.

(The drink was introduced to me by long-time musician friend Arsen    Marzan, jay kabsat ni Conrad idi pay laeng. Conrad by the way had also been one of the folk country pioneers of Baguio in the 70’s and 80’s and helped in many concerts for ill patients. He is now living the American Dream in California along with other Baguio musicians who migrated there like Richard Arandia and Bryan Aliping.)

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Lest we digress, those days, one wouldn’t think Ramon’s kidneys were slowly being eaten up by the hard stuff later compounded by diabetes and hypertension. 

One time, I asked him during a journalism seminar organized by the regional office of the Dept. of Education what drink he would like to have after lunch. I added sugar to the drink since one time at the city hall canteen, he ordered coke. 

When I asked him why, he told me in his usual deadpan demeanor it would be flushed anyway during his dialysis session.

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Anyway, these thoughts came to mind following a recent press conference of the regional Cordillera’s Health department wherein doctors advised people with hypertension and diabetes to manage their illnesses so their kidneys will not be damaged.

Baguio General Hospital and Medical Center dialysis unit head, Dr. Virginia Mangati, said hypertension and diabetes remain top causes (risk factors) of kidney failure in the region.

Mangati said there was increasing number of patients undergoing dialysis. At the BGHMC, she said there are around 250 patients on dialysis. Hospital records showed about 13 to 15 new cases per month.

She explained there were five stages of kidney disease. In stages one to three, kidneys can still be treated considerably. But at stage four and five, kidney transplants or continuous dialysis are the only ways to keep the patient alive.

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As the health department advocated early detection and treatment, Mangati said their primary advocacy of prevention of any illness was through healthy lifestyle.She advised people with medical history of hypertension and diabetes to regularly take their maintenance medicine and monitor status of their kidneys.

Other kidney disease prevention tips Mangati shared:  overweight persons should start reducing weight so they can maintain ideal blood pressure and avoid hypertension; avoid too much consumption of pain relievers because these cause destruction of blood vessels and for people to have a healthy and balanced diet and do regular physical activities or exercise.

“To have healthy kidneys, one should monitor healthy diet and have a healthy lifestyle,” Mangati said.

June was declared National Kidney Month by virtue of Presidential Proclamation No. 184. For this year, DOH leads the observance with the theme "Batong inaalagaan, habangbuhay nating kayamanan," which aims to improve public awareness on health and prevention of kidney diseases.  (With a report from Wina Rosario, University of the Philippines Baguio student and intern of Philippine Information Agency)