Dacawi: Fragile relief and hope

Saturday, December 3, 2011

SAMARITANS delivered relief and hope to a family beset with medical woes and condoled with another whose four-year old boy just lost his brave and protracted battle against cancer.

Construction worker Famorca Bannog last Wednesday brought home to Banaue, Ifugao his 14-year old son Frederick, a week after specialists at the Baguio General Hospital and Medical Center led by Dr. Rommel Palaganas tied up three bleeding veins on the boy’s esophagus to prevent further hemorrhage.

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Back here in Baguio, Franz Asher Flores, who turned four last February, ended his over two years fight against leukemia before dawn last Sunday.

“Franz is no longer in pain,” his father Ferdinand, a retreat coordinator on leave from Assumption Sabbath Place at Crystal Cave, texted relatives and Samaritans who stood by the family.

He was diagnosed of the cancer of the blood when he was barely two. Since then, he had been in and out of the hospital where he underwent over 20 chemotherapy cycles. He bravely fought on despite four relapses that saw his treatment raised from Standard to Salvage protocol.

His parents never gave up. Ferdinand took a leave from his religious work to borrow, knock on doors for fund and blood donations, monitor the treatment. His wife Juvy gave up her work in a hardware store to be at her boy’s hospital bedside.

“We had long been drained financially but we’re not giving up on Franz,” Ferdinand said in a letter-appeal addressed to would-be Samaritans last August. “With your prayers and support, there is a big chance that he will be cured.”

It wasn’t to be. After the five-day wake, his family retrieved his photo lying on top of his coffin glass and his toys lined up on the side of the casket for the funeral this Saturday morning at the Heaven’s Garden in Loakan.

Frederick, who was diagnosed for cerebral palsy shortly after birth, is also hardly out of the woods. He was recently confined for esophageal varices or dilated veins in the lower esophagus that triggered bleeding and duodenitis of inflammation of the first section of the first intestine.

At the BGHMC, the special kid was also diagnosed for “portal hypertension, glycogen storage disease versus mitochondrial disease”. Also for liver cirrhosis that renders fragile his family’s relief and hope.

Second of five kids, Frederick was rushed to the Ifugao provincial hospital last October, three days after Emma, his 59-year-old grandmother, was brought home from 26 days hospital confinement due to a stroke.

After his transfer to the BGHMC, Samaritans pooled resources for the purchase of the not-locally-available elastic band needed to plug the esophageal hemorrhage.

An appeal from the boy’s dad triggered a hefty, P55,000 support from a woman who said she was bothered no end when she read of Frederick’s plight in the local papers. She requested anonymity. So did a government official who contributed P7,000. A nursing intern added P1,500. In front of the Baguio Cathedral, a man handed over P1,000, and, along Session Rd., a sportsman gave P1,000.

Toddlers at the city hall day care center and their parents pooled P3,125 through teacher Lita Tomeldan after undergoing the city’s “Eco-walk” children’s environmental program at the Busol watershed.

The BGHMC under medical center chief, Dr. Manuel Factora, maximized the medical care benefits of the kid’s father. That now allows Famorca to use the remaining donation for the boy’s medication for cirrhosis, continuing medical attention for his grandmother and recovery of his aunt.

As soon as he brought the kid home last week, Famorca had to rush his 10-year-old daughter Lovely and his 17-year-old sister Julie Ann to the hospital, as both were feverish. Lovely was given medication and sent home while Julie Ann was confined for dengue fever.

From Germany, former world traditional karate champion Julian Chees and Shoshin Kinderhelfe, a foundation he and his martial students established there, sent over P51,000 for the medical procedure to plug the kid’s bleeding.

“Thanks to local Samaritans who acted swiftly, you can use what Shoshin sent for other indigent patients,” Chees told a local representative of the foundation on his visit home last week to conduct a karate seminar-for-a-cause.

Last August, Shoshin sent P10,000 to prop up Franz’s fight against acute lymphoblastic leukemia or ALS.

Chees established the foundation in 2004, at the end of which he travelled to Banaue with the late Baguio newsman Willy Cacdac. With the help of then town mayor Jerry Dalipog, they handed over P70,000 to two mothers who lost two kids in a landslide that buried their house at Christmastime.

Back as mayor, Dalipog renewed Famorca’s membership with Philhealth, enabling the latter to apply medical care benefits for Frederick.

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P.S. I borrow fellow columnist Baboo Mondonedo’s line after she recovered from a heart ailment. Baboo wrote that she learned from her doctor that she has a heart and it was not working well. My own physician, Dr. Brigida Claro, recently told me I, too, have a heart and it needed freedom from stress – and presswork. Told to take it easy, I asked youthful journalist Harley Palangchao, the boy from Guinaang, to do a lecture on sports writing at Abra’s Division Schools Press Conference. He returned and handed me a P4,000-check in my name. “Please give this to whoever needs it most,” he asked. At the BGHMC CCU, a bank manager sneaked in with an envelope containing P4,000. “To whoever needs it most,” he whispered and was gone.

(e-mail: mondaxbench@yahoo.com for comments)