Delia’s Journey to Recovery

Hello and good day to everyone. My name is Nina Navarro from Paranaque City. I'm 26 years old, single, employed and an only child. My father passed away to diabetic complications in 2003. Since then, my mother, Delia, struggled to support our needs and all her efforts were rewarded when I graduated from college in 2011 and was able to get a job immediately.

But in June 25, 2016 she suffered a massive hemorrhage secondary to aneurysm in the brain. Mom was in a coma for roughly two weeks; a tube inserted in her skull to drain the blood and water, on life support and riddled with infection.

The neurosurgeon who took her case told me he needed to perform a clipping of aneurysm via craniotomy but also informed me that the procedure costs a whopping 1 million pesos, excluding his professional fee. When I asked about the odds of survival, he said my mom only has 15-20% of making it through the surgery. Being the sole earner for both of us, I don't have that amount of money. I have no properties or investments to my name that I can sell, being a rank-and-file employee only, so I declined to have the operation done. Knowing my mom's practical mind, I remembered her telling me months before, "If anything happens to me, wag ka na gumastos para ipaospital ako. Ayoko mahirapan ka, and besides, hindi ako takot mamatay." But as her daughter, I just can't stand here doing nothing. The months dragged on, hospital and medicine bills cropped up to around 700K. I availed of the loans being offered at my work and from family friends just to come up with the amount needed for us to be released from the hospital. A friend suggested we get a second opinion at Philippine General Hospital. For brevity, the brain surgeon there was more agreeable to deal with and did the procedure for a lesser, though still expensive amount of 3 hundred thousand pesos. This is her a week after the operation:

Contrary to what the surgeon told me, she was able to walk and speak, though still in a slurry manner, in a few days after the operation. All in all, I was beyond thankful that she was able to pull through such a risky procedure, by the grace of God.

But we, or rather I, am not out of the woods yet. The financial aftermath of all the hospitalization costs (Pque. Doctors Hosp.: June-Aug.2016 and Phil. Gen. Hosp.: Aug.-Oct.2016) took a very huge toll on me. As much as I hated to admit it but I am waist-deep in debt to various institutions and individuals. My relatives are not able to help me financially as they are struggling themselves. There's also the costs of my mother's continuous therapy out of the hospital and maintenance medicines for her to recovery though slowly yet surely. The salary I am receiving at my work is not enough to cover everything due to chunky loan deductions.

This is the reason why, as a last resort, I made this account for us both. Any amount from you will be greatly beneficial for us to recover from these hurdles. I may never know each and every one of you but we thank you from the bottom of our hearts. May the Lord bless you for your generosity and kindness. :)