Family of boxer-carver suffers blows

By Ramon Dacawi

BAGUIO CITY -- It’s a double whammy  Jerry Uy-yan (Uyan in the ring) never encountered  or absorbed, be it  in or out of the ring, over the years he fought in the bantamweight class.

Now 49, the pro boxer-turned woodcarver lies in his bed at the orthopedic ward of the Baguio General Hospital and Medical Center.  

Father to two young girls, he’s slowly trying to recover from a bad fall last Feb. 27. The accident rendered him paralyzed, a predicament  the fighter inside tells him shouldn’t be permanent. 

His younger brother Bert arrived last week for the watch relieving Jessa, Jerry’s nine-year old daughter. The kid had to repair back to the house they’re renting at Km. 4, Asin Road Barangay, to rest and be around for her  seriously ill mother.

Both ways, it would be too much to bear for April, Jerry’s 50-year old wife,  to be by his hospital bed these days.

She herself can now hardly stand, her mobility impaired by breast cancer, and by the irregular series of chemotherapy treatment sessions she underwent since the diagnosis came two years ago.  To be able to stand and to walk, she props herself up first with a wooden crutch her brother-in-law recently fashioned out.

She was alone in their rented home, sitting on a monobloc chair, her arms resting on the dinner table, her head capped by a knitted bonnet covering the balding effect of chemotherapy.

“Jerra left before dawn,” she  said of her elder daughter. At  11, the kid was trying to be of use this summer break by helping  an aunt peddle carrots and upland vegetables at the Hilltop Area of the city market.

“She’ll be in the sixth grade this June, Jessa in grade IV,” April said. “We came from Urdaneta where the kids were enrolled, as it was where my husband could find wood he needed to make tables and chairs.”

She remembers that Jerry, an Ifugao wood artisan,  was carving dog figurines when  they met for the first time, in Dinalupihan, Bataan. April, a native of San Gabriel, La Union  was assigned in Bataan  from 1995 to 2000, to teach the Bible to children as a missionary of the Free Believers in Christ Fellowship.

“Before Bataan,  I was in Aguinaldo, Ifugao for two years also sharing the Word  of God with children,” she added. “ I remember even adults came to class, initially to learn how to read so they would be able to read the Bible.”

Her life-changing illness came in 2011, “Bimtak (it burst),” she said of the lesion on her right breast that emitted pus and blood.  Since then, she had undergone eight chemotherapy sessions at irregular intervals, the frequency of which depended on sales of Jerry’s antique-type chairs and tables.

Jerry had just raised and  paid P20,000 for her medicines when he figured in the accident. From Urbaneta, he was rushed to the Region I Medical Center in Dagupan City. From there, his brother Bert transferred him to the BGHMC.

“By now, her medicines had run through and her check-up’s overdue,” Jerry recalled.

           

His left palm was gripping the overhead hand assist strap, a sure sign his upper limbs were not affected by the damage on the lower spinal. “I can’t move my feet but I hope therapy would later work.”

His tailbone (the end segment of the spinal column) had been shattered by the fall, Bert explained.

With the family’s, and relatives’ finances drained and with no one else to turn to, Jerry and April consented to have their predicament narrated  through the Baguio media, hoping Samaritans among news readers and listeners would reach out to the family in crisis.

Often, it takes one to know one. That’s why Adonis Togana, a public school teacher now also into his fifth year fighting cancer, took pains to bring the couple’s plight to the attention of the Baguio media.

“Jerry and April need all the help they can get, perhaps more than anybody else in our neighborhood,” Togana said.

Although still in the thick of his bout with the big C, Togana feels luckier than the couple. After he was diagnosed for skin and tissue cancer in 2008, he took a leave from the Pines City National High School and started knocking on doors. He keeps a list of people of various walks who contributed to his continuing therapy.

Togana’s  fight is for his 15-year old son Trojan and 12-year old daughter Jizrelle. He lost his wife and third child at child birth in 2005.

Unlike him, neither Jerry nor April can walk to knock on doors. Their daughters Jessa and Jerra are too young to be making the rounds for Samaritans. 

April can be reached through  Globe cellphone number  09176946873 while Jerry can be contacted through Sun Cell number 09322996865. They can visit Jerry at the ortho department of the BGHMC. His bed is first on the right row  of the male ward which is on the right wing of the department located on the second floor of the main building.  .