Print shop worker, mango vendor sidelined by kidney failure

BAGUIO CITY -- Early into his thrice-a-week hemodialysis, Godofredo Delmas, a  former printing press manager, was expressing  doubts whether the expensive treatment he now has to undergo life-time was the right thing to do.

“I’m still doubtful whether hooking myself to this machine was the right thing to do,”  he told a friend and fellow patient  attached to another blood-cleansing gadget at the Baguio General Hospital and Medical Center.

The turn of events had been too fast he had no luxury of time to figure out other options – if there were any - to save himself from blood poisoning due to kidney failure, the symptoms of which came just before he turned 59 last October: chest pain difficulty breathing, body weakness and his blood pressure shooting to 150/90.

His doctors told him the only option for the present  was hemodialysis. So on the third day of confinement, he had a surgeon insert a catheter into his jugular as temporary access for blood to flow into a machine that filters liquid waste that, for all his 59 years, were being filtered out as urine by his kidneys.

On the fifth day, the surgeon installed a more permanent fistula in his wrist. On the sixth day, he was discharged and advised to go on regular hemodialysis, now scheduled first hour Wednesday and first hour Sunday, or earlier when another patient skips his own treatment, making a machine available.

One gets used to sitting or lying on the hemodialysis chair for four hours in the wee hours each time. The stress lies on the financial cost of maintaining the treatment, pegged at P2,200 per session that translates into P4,400 a week or P17,600 a month, excluding the maintenance medicines, occasional blood transfusion and twice-a-week injection of epoetin, a drug that induces the bone marrow to produce red blood cells to prevent anemia.

That’s why Fred asked his sister last week to line him up for this series of publications on the plight of hemodialysis patients, for Samaritans out there to know and respond to enable those with end=stage renal failure to maintain their life-time treatment.

Making the same appeal for help this week is Avelino Ocampo, a 53-year old who also began his dialysis treatment last Sept. 5. Originally from Dagupan City, he and his wife, Jane, had to transfer to Baguio to be near the dialysis machines at the Baguio General Hospital and Medical Center.

“My husband and I were able to make ends meet by peddling green and ripe mangoes,  even enabling us to send our son, Janvel, to high school,” Jane said while waiting for Avelino’s turn to be attached to the blood-cleansing machine.

The couple were accommodated in the house of Avelino’s brother at 14-A U.P. Village at Irisan barangay here in Baguio. Whatever they could earn from Jane’s peddling mangoes would not be enough to maintain Avelino’s thrice-a-week dialysis.

“Their last recourse is to seek assistance from welfare agencies for him to be able to sustain his medical needs,” wrote social welfare officer in a social case study report she prepared to serve as a supporting document in the couple’s application for financial support.

Samaritans out there can get in touch with Fred through cellphone number  09166599669. They can ring up Avelino’s number – 09465330134.  – Ramon Dacawi