Young rescuer finds shoe on the other foot

BAGUIO CITY – Quakelyn Canutab Lisayen  was named for having had to adjust  to nature’s – and life’s – givens quite too early.  She was born inside the family home five days after the July 16,1990 killer quake which had rendered  Baguio’s hospitals in disarray and unfit to deliver births.

True enough, Quakelyn, who turned 24 last July 21,  has had her share of personal tremors and after-shocks – as a sickly child growing up in poverty, losing her father early to kidney disease, and quitting school on her third year in information technology due to fund constraints.

She had weathered all of these like many a child does in a Third World country like this. Instead of falling for a common, dire consequence, however, she turned self-pity inside out. Turning 17 in 1997, she joined the City Disaster Coordinating Council as a volunteer, serving as a telephone operator and first-aid responder to emergencies  for three years.

In-between responding to those in distress, she worked as a teacher for English-as-a-second language school and as cashier in a bar to be able to continue her education. In February, 2011, after three years of volunteer rescue work, she was taken in as a job order employee at the CDCC.

She was, however, never ready for the life-changing upheaval that came late last year. The signs of the earth-shaker began showing up several months before the final diagnosis, when she turned to self-medication for body weakness and discomfort.

October last year, she was confined at the Pines City Doctors Hospital for urinary tract infection and anemia. Laboratory tests showed  high levels of creatinine, a waste product from the normal break down  of muscle tissue which is filtered through the kidneys and excreted in urine.

Like many in her condition now, it took Quakelyn months to accept the final diagnosis that came last October: her kidneys had totally failed,  and that she must submit herself to expensive,  thrice-a-week, life-time  blood-cleansing session called hemodialysis.

The medical diagnosis resulted in her losing her job with the city’s rescue organization now known as the City Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council. With the help of relatives, friends, government institutions and funds at the dispense of government officials, struggled on to maintain her dialysis sessions.

Above the support, Quakelyn has gone this far because of the promise of a kidney transplant that she is now pursuing, almost with blind courage.

The eldest of three orphaned kids who grew up with their grandmother – allowing their mother to work for their support -, the girl recently raised whatever she could for several recent trips to the National Kidney and Transplant Institute in Quezon City. What she got so far is an estimate from the NKTI’s Medical Social Service Division on the cost of a kidney transplant based on her status as a charity patient. The estimate, labeled as “Kidney Transplant without Monoclonal Induction”, places the figure at P430,000.

The sum is needed for the organ recipient work-up, kidney donor work-up, transplant operation and donor nephrectomy. “Without monoclonal induction” means the total figure excludes   the far more prohibitive cost (running to millions of pesos) of post-surgery maintenance  to prevent rejection of the transplanted kidney.

That budgetary problem, however earth-shaking it would be, would still come later. The most immediate are the initial amount needed to set up the transplant, together with the need for a willing, compatible and able donor.

The family is praying Quakelyn ‘s 20-year old brother, Jericson, would be medically qualified as donor and that both would hurdle the tissue compatibility matching to warrant the transplant.    

Notwithstanding the odds, the delicate but life-changing surgical procedure is a promise  a 24-year old girl needing a new lease on life  can – and should-  aspire for.

That’s why Baguio Rep. Nicasio Aliping Jr. has set aside P100,000 of his congressional medical assistance fund, hoping it would snowball a community effort to raise the initial amount needed towards the first step towards Quakelyn’s medical deliverance.

People who would like give substance to the spirit of the yuletide by contributing to the fund may ring up Quakelyn’scellphone number – 09393559927. They may visit the family at 140 Purok 21, San Carlos Hiehgts, Irisan, Baguio City. They may course their support through chief  nurse Carmen Bumatnog of the dialysis center of the Baguio General Hospital and Medical Center. They may call this writer’s number (09167778103).  – Ramon Dacawi