Couple gives fund; provides relief to two more patients

By Ramon Dacawi

BAGUIO CITY -- Two patients coping with stress found relief here last week, thanks to a P10,000 humanitarian fund a Baguio couple released recently, specifically for indigents.

The donors, Rodolfo Catu, an engineer and member of Class ’76 of the St. Louis Boys high here, and his wife Susana, also handed an equal amount to Baguio’s ultra-marathon champion Marcelo Bautista to enable him to compete in the third Vibram Hongkong 100-Kilometer Ultra Marathon on Jan. 19-20.

 One of the recipients of the couple’s kindness,  a 37-year old man afflicted with schizoaffective disorder, came up to the city from his native town in La Union last week in search of Samaritans to purchase his maintenance medicines.

“Ammok no kasano karigat ti han nga makatumar iti pang-maintenance ngaagas (I know how difficult it is to miss on my maintenance doses),” he admitted, adding he recently ran out of supply.

From the couple’s fund, P956 paid for his three maintenance drugs  (Akineton, Thorazine and lithium carbonate), good for 16 days.

The patient was told to use some five hundred pesos he had solicited that morning for his bus fare going back to his town and for his other needs.

The other patient , a 31-year old woman and mother of three who is suffering from bipolar disorder, was given P1,000 to pay for the school miscellaneous fees of  her eldest, a 13-year old girl enrolled in first year high school.

She assured that the official receipt covering the fees to be issued by the school’s Parents and Teachers Association, shall be submitted for  the liquidation report  to the donor couple.

She explained her husband’s daily take  as a taxi driver is hardly enough for their basic needs and her own daily maintenance dose for her affliction.

First to avail of the fund were kidney patients John Mark Tiyad and Sharon Dalida whose families were at a loss on how to pay for their next of their thrice-a-week hemodialysis treatment pegged at P2,200 per session at the Baguio General Hospital and Medical Center.

John Mark, a22-year old son of an Ifugao woodcarver along Asin Rd., has been in and out of the hospital due to ulcer, chronic cardiomyopathy, pulmonary congestion, hypertension and liver ailment.

Sharon, 27, was about to skip her dialysis last Jan. 4 as her parents were cash-strapped, when her mother Jimena got a call that the cost of the  treatment  session would be paid from the fund.

Other people who would like to help the two kidney patients sustain their  life-time treatment may ring up John Mark’s  sister Gloria (09297661705) and Sharon’s mother Jimena (09159932753).