Dialysis patients reach out to girl with leukemia

BENCHWARMER

Ramon Dacawi

Dialysis patients here undergoing thrice or twice-a-week hemodialysis treatment to survive have found truth and balm in novelist Richard Paul Evans’ observation that “the antidote for self-pity is to turn it inside out and help somebody else.”

So  September last year, members of the Baguio General Hospital and Medical Center Hemodialysis Patients and Partners Association set aside P20,000 from what they earned in an annual Baguio Charter Anniversary  fun-run and campaign as fund support for people in dire need like them.

Before the Holy Week just passed, they found the right patient to help. Mordayne Gay, a six-year old farmer’s daughter, was here in Baguio to continue her two-year chemotherapy  against acute lymphocytic leukemia or cancer of the blood.

She was with her mother, 37-year old Martes who, in between Mordayne Gay’s check-up and treatment at the Baguio General Hospital and Medical Cener,  began knocking on doors here for help to be able to sustain the girl’s protracted treatment.

Her father  Martes, a native of Nueva Vizcaya, was left  home at the vegetable farm in Sinto, Bauko, Mt. Province with her three-year old sister Micah and one-year old brother Mordacai.

From farming, the family earns P3,000 a monthy. To cope with the costs of saving Mordayne, the couple had borrowed P75,000 from various sources, including a usurious arrangement.

The child’s case was referred to the renal patients’ association headed by Nora Mang-usan by Rosa Moresto  of the public information division of the city mayor’s office.

“Our fund support is a pittance but we hope it would encourage other people and associations to follow suit, especially those whose own pain does not blind them to the suffering of others,” Mang-usan said.

Mang-usan is no stranger to the pain of others, As social worker at the BGHMC, she had heard the stories of woe of patients and their relatives seeking charity status in their confinement at the medical cener. Recently, she lost her husband to kidney failure. To cope with the loss, she turned her suffering inside out by also working as president of the hospital’s organization of dialysis patients and their relatives.

Only last week, she turned over the position to this writer.

People who would like to reach out to Mordayne Gay may ring up her mother’s cellphone number -09204686783. People who would like to help other patients, especially those undergoing dialysis may  ring up 09167778103. – Ramon Dacawi.