A 62-year-old inmate of the city jail turned over P2,200 last Thursday to help an ailing 12-year old girl cope with the prohibitive and continuing costs of her life-time hemodialysis treatment for kidney failure.
“I guess this will be good for one dialysis session for Mary Joy Ligudon,” the prisoner said as he turned over the amount through this writer, in response to the appeal for help aired by the kid’s mother.
Brushing aside his own need for cash, especially when he will be transferred to the National Bilibid Prison to serve out a six-year sentence, the donor, a native of Mtn. Province, requested anonymity.
“Some people will surely think it’s foolhardy for one like me to reach out, but it’s fulfilling to be of help,” he said, adding the amount came from savings on allowances coming from his children.
The donor had been on the run for 10 years before deciding to turn himself in to serve the four-year sentence for a crime he swore he did not commit.
His gesture is the latest response from Samaritans to the appeal for help aired by the ailing kid’s adoptive mother, Gina Epe, of Bokod, Benguet.
It is the latest response from inmates of the city jail who had reached out to people in need. Several years back, city jail detainees passed the hat and turned over the collection to the father of a young boy who needed to undergo surgery to close a congenital hole in the heart.
In the wake of the tsunami devastation in Japan in 2011, the prisoners raised a P2,000 donation and then had a female detainee escorted out to deposit the amount to the bank account of the Philippine National Red Cross.
The other week, a retired lady professor of the University of the Philippines visited Mary Joy, at 12 the youngest dialysis patient of the BGHMC, in response to an appeal for help from the kid’s adoptive mother.
The donor, who requested anonymity, handed P5,000 for the girl, as she did last year for two other patients also undergoing dialysis treatment at the center.
Earlier donors were led by former world karate champion Julian Chees who, from his base in West Germany, sent P16,452.25 which covered more than half of the kid’s bills incurred during several confinements.
Last week, a former lady journalist handed over P5,000 which was used in whittling down the kid’s bills for her twice-a-week hemodialysis treatment.
Mary Joy, a daughter of a marginal farming couple from Ifugao, has been living with her adoptive mother, Gina, since 2003.
“My twin daughters and I came to know of Mary Joy when we visited a sick relative in the hospital that year,” Gina recalled. “My daughters asked me for some cash after they overheard her father telling the nurse he had no money to buy medicines for her urinary tract infection.”
When the kid was about to be released from the hospital, her father asked if she could be under the care of Epe, given the prohibitive cost of bringing her back now and then to the hospital for check-ups.
“By then, my twins had grown fond of Mary Joy, for whom they were delivering meals on their way to school,” Gina said.
She recalled that after delivering her twins – Jordynne and Lordynne – she could not breast-feed both of them, but the hospital then and now discouraged use of commercial infant formula.
“A woman from Ifugao who also had just delivered her baby, offered to and did breast-feed my twins alternately with her infant,” Epe said. ** Ramon Dacawi
