Tuesday, May 20, 2008 Dacawi: A miracle called Niño Joshua By Ramon Dacawi Benchwarmer
SOME people texted last week, saying a Mother's Day feature I wrote which the Midland Courier used was "bitin" I see the messages more of a compliment than a complaint, not for the writing style, but for the facts of a story about an orphaned family that inspires.
The feature is a two-part series, with the second part coming out today, even as some other weeklies decided to run the whole story in their issues last Sunday. The Courier, being THE Weekly hereabouts, hardly has space for lengthy stories, hence its straight news format to accommodate as many stories items from all over the Cordillera.
It's about Maria Paz "Datsu" Infante, a sugar baron's daughter in Bacolod who, in her teens, fell in love with Mike Molintas, an Ibaloi pony boy at the Wright Park bridle path. It's about her graceful transition from a senorita of the hacienda to become a pony boy's wife.
Mike was a scion of the gentle, landed clan of Gibraltar and Pacdal, one of the best horse tenders I grew up with at the bridle path. I was drawn to him for his voice for country music, his skills in horse-breaking and tending and in leather craft which he generously taught to whoever was interested among us younger pony boys. He gave me his jacket when he saw me walking home from high school class without one. A shield from the rains, he said.
It's about a widow's fortitude. When Mike suddenly succumbed to a heart attack in 1994, Datsu considered raising their four sons in Bacolod. Yet, after Mike's burial, she had the four boys decide where they would like to grow up in. Mike Jr., Mark, Jules Byron and Nino Joshua chose Baguio.
It's about a pact Datsu made with her four boys: they'll never give up on each other. Not on Nino, the youngest sibling. He was born with a heart defect doctors agreed then was quite serious but medical technology then couldn't mend, aside from weak lungs and a cleft palate that affected his speech.
That's why they gave up their horses the way Mike sold his cowboy boots so he could bring home Nino's maintenance medications. That's why Datsu had to raise cactuses and anthuriums to keep food on the table, keep Nino alive and to be able to buy JB a horse. That's why Jules Byron had to learn early rent out the pony so his two elder brothers could be in school.
It's about doctors and Samaritans of all sizes and colors who combined to bring about Nino's deliverance from the congenital and life-threatening heart defect and serious kidney ailment.
It's, in the words of Datsu, about a series of miracles working on a series of seemingly insurmountable odds. The first the frail boy's growing up, despite medical advice that he might not make it to the age when the heart operation could be done. The second was the successful heart surgery, followed by Nino's fast recovery.
Last week, Datsu remembered that time Nino was due for surgery at the National Kidney Institute in Quezon City. As she could not pay the costs then, she admitted harboring thoughts of escaping with her son the moment it was over and Nino was due for release.
The specialists were sure the boy had to be operated on. Before the procedure, however, they did a final work-out and then told her maintenance medication, not surgery, was their final option.
A couple of weeks back, Nino was again wheeled into the operating room. Tests showed he was fit for hernia surgery. Doctors did the procedure, "according to the book', Datsu was later told.
But it was taking the medical team a long time. Suddenly, the pager called the names of some specialists, saying they were needed at the operating room.
Datsu collapsed when told there was a sudden, unexpected complication. Nino was going. Datsu couldn't believe, yelling "my son's a fighter".
A few days after, Nino walked to the clinic of one of the specialists. The doctor admitted he thought the boy was still in bed at the surgical intensive care unit.
Nino recovered overnight at the intensive care unit. At dawn, he pulled off his breathing apparatus and asked his mother for a bottle of coke. "Coke, okay na ako, ma," he tried to utter.
He raised his thumb up the moment his mother asked him again and again if he was all right.
"A doctor told me during those critical moments to accept the inevitable," Datsu said. "The inevitable is that my son will live."
As she did survive heart ailment and surgery for a deteriorating spinal column that limited her to bed rest for months.
Soon, it will be about Nino's treatment for scoliosis, as the bone malformation is compressing his lungs.
Meanwhile, Nino will turn 21 on May 25. Reason enough to bring him a bottle of coke. (email: rdacawi@yahoo.com for comments).
