Nanay Hospitalization and Chemo

Please help us. My mom has multiple myeloma, a type of blood cancer and has been in and out of the hospital for pneumonia and blood transfusion. This year we have been getting in the hospital every month. And I have used up all my funds for her hospitalization as we have been in the hospital 3 times this year. We really need help. Please help us with her treatment. She is a fighter and wants to fight this disease. But we can only do so much because of financial difficulties.

My mother currently is taking oral chemo drugs which costs about 12,000 pesos per month. She has maintenance drugs for her hypertension and heart. We have stand by oxygen tank at home just in case she has difficulty breathing.

We have been in and out of the hospital since January this year, and most of the time it involves blood transfusions and treatment of pneumonia. Most of the time, even before she gets treated for pneumonia, we take her out of the hospital and just ask for oral medications that she can take at home. Last March, we stayed at the hospital again for 2 weeks for blood transfusion and for her pneumonia that never seems to go away. We had to discharge her even though the doctor advised we continue with the treatment. But we can no longer pay the bills if we stayed longer. We already out and my savings for her emegency funds and medicines have also gone. I never expected we will have hospital runs this frequent. She gets better after every transfusion, but if we continue this treatment we may need to have a few more hospital runs again.

Also, I really wanted her to be treated with this pneumonia. She doesn't cough but there seems ti be water in her lungs that can't be taken by antibiotics. We really wish to get her treated but because medical bills are sky high, we cannot afford it. Even though we wish to admit her to a charity ward, it would not be possible because she is immuno-compromised, which means that she needs to be in an isolated room so that she doesn't acquire any other more diseases at the hospital.

If her pneumonia gets fully treated, we can continue with her chemo meds and hopefully she will have a better chance in getting back on her feet again. We need the funds to cover her treatment for pneumonia as I know that it will take a long time for her at the hospital to get it treated. Aside from that, she may be needing blood transfusion every time her blood levels get low.

I seek everyone's good heart to please help us and give my mother a chance in life. She is a loving, kind and cheerful mother who loves to server God in our local church. She puts a smile to everyone and is friends with everyone. She doesn't have enemies and all she wanted to do once she gets back on her feet is to go to church and pray and give thanks to God. With your help, she can get better.

Thanks you and God bless!

- Leizl

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"You can't have everything", a good friend once told me. And that made me feel a bit relieved about what I have in life. I would usually think how great it would be to have someone else's life, but then think about what they are missing in life. And for a long time, that made me feel contented. Until now.

Here I am writing this, in a private little room in the hospital, while I'm looking after my 75 year-old mother. We have been here for 5 days. She's peacefully sleeping, snoring a bit, with IVs of antibiotics flowing down her blood stream.

This seem to have become a monthly thing really - being in and out of the hospital. And as much as I would like to think that as soon as we get out of here, we will never go back, I call it more of a wishful thinking.

Everything was going so well in my life. With hard work and dedication, I have built myself a good career, good enough that I was able to fend for myself, lived independently, travelled to places, bought things with my own money, but never forgot to lend a hand to family and friends. I thought, I was winning in life, I had huge faith in God, because I was getting blessings after blessings, and I was afraid that someday there would be a huge payoff that I could never handle. I always thanked Him otherwise. You see, I am a daughter of a low-income family driver and an all around house maid. My other relatives would not have imagined that our family can produce a college graduate, let alone work in big companies. I was the only college graduate, and I am the youngest. And I am lucky enought to have everyone in the family to support me to be able to get that diploma.

I was really proud of what I have achieved in life, because what I have achieved, I got it with determination and hard work, making sure I didn't step on anyone. I thought I had everything. I was happy and contented.

But then life has to come up with something to ruin things up.

September 2016. I thought I was going to lose my mother. One moment she was this very active 73 year-old senior citizen who loved to go to out with her friends to do zumba, and served almost every single day at church, then the next day, she has become very weak, refused to eat anything and has become completely immobile. She had pain in her back, and in her tummy and she consistently felt like throwing up.

You know the most difficult thing was? My mother was sick and she was in a lot pain but we couldn't figure out how to help her and what it was and how to ease her pain. We took her to numerous doctors, and I even succumbed to acupuncture, and they just gave us pain relievers. With pain relievers, she would always just go to sleep, but never took the pain away. Imagine hearing her cry in pain and calling all her dead parents to take her? It was the worst days of my life.

The day we took her to the hospital because of stomach pain was the day 4 doctors checked on her at the same time and the day that I was told that she could have "Mutiple Myeloma", a type of blood cancer. It is what is causing her bone pain and all the other shitload of complications in her body. I couldn't believe it. I was furious. How can someone tell you straight up that your mother has cancer? It's something that you don't spit out so carelessly. At one point I even questioned the doctor condescendingly, forgetting I was talking to someone who has years and years of experience in the medical field.

I prayed so hard for my mother to recover. To get through this, and get back on her feet again. During her recovery, we used to carry her in a blanket, with four to five people carrying her because she couldn't stand on her own. But she was a fighter, and 2 months later she can walk, not as strong as she once was, but fighting for life, slowly but surely. We celebrated her 74th birthday last December 2016 like it was her first birthday. We never threw a party that fancy in our lives. You know what? It was one of the happiest birthdays she had ever had. We just had to make everything extra. It was like celebrating a new life. But I still feel like it was not enough.

I thanked God so much when Mom was able to recover and got up in bed and walked without anyone carrying her out. I have never been faithful in my life. But I have always questioned God, why her? She doesn't deserve all of this.

You see my mother never had an easy life. Her mother died when she was just a baby. She has no memory of her mother. Her father married soon after and she had to take care of all her younger siblings from the second family. Her life was really tough. And tough was an understatement. She has worked in a farm, planted rice and farmed copra where she lost her left pointy finger, and worked as a housemaid to different families. I wasn't born then when my father almost left her with my 2 older brothers and my sister in Leyte for another woman. My father was difficult then, a drunkard and a playboy. Even dealing with my father was tough, until one day my father decided to sober up and deceided they move to Laguna, and start over again. For the record, I don't hate my father. None of us did, because all has been forgiven and has moved on from whatever happened in the past. I never knew anything about his mishaps until I was old enough to understand. My father also had a bad habit of smoking and drinking which he was never able to change when they moved here. It took a toll on him and he had an operation that caused him to not be able to work ever again. Imagine that with 4 kids to raise, me still a baby then. My mother had to work for all of us, and take care of my father who was bedridden. My brother told me a story that, one time, when they were at the hospital looking after my father, they would go to a canteen and order rice and just ask for free soup just to get through a meal. He and my mother would share a small chicken leg and rice because, really, they had nothing. Only my lola would look after me and my brother, and we probably were just having salt water and rice for meals.

My mother had to be a mother and a father for all of us. She worked as a housemaid and a nanny during the day, got home to us in the evening and took care of everyone. On weekends she would do the laundry. And her side jobs? She knows how to to traditional massage or hilot, and bathes newborn babies and pregnant women. She's a superwoman.

She did all these things until I was able to finish college. When I was studying, and I needed the money for school, all her hard earned money would literally just slip through her hands and go straight to paying all my school expenses. She would loan for me, pawn her jewelries and never get them back just so I could finish college. I was so stubborn then that when I wasn't able to take the exam because I had to pay for school fees, and she had no money, I cried so hard and kicked the mirror in the cabinet she bought and paid in installment. It was important to her and I broke it. I knew it was difficult for her that she couldn't give me anything then even though she wanted to. That moment was stuck in my head. That always reminded me how difficult it was for her and how stubborn of me to not understand the situation. But that memory always reminds me how very forgiving and selfless she was. Until now, I still can't imagine how she was able to do it. And you know what? She had never ever shown anyone of us weakness. She would always try to find a way. But you would never see her depressed. I dont' remember her ever looking like she had the whole world on her shoulders. Never. Even in the hardest

times, she stayed strong, and chill. She was always the cheerful and caring mother that she is.

She never had any enemies. Only good friends.

She has 8 grandchildren. All of them she had taken cared of. She loved every single one of them.

When my father died, was the very first time I saw her heartbroken. You see, despite of everything that happened my mother's love for my father is still there. It was unconditional, even if for years he was not able to provide for us, my mother's love towards my father had never changed.

Which is why I have come to think, my mother doesn't deserve to have this condition. My mother does not deserve to be going through all this pai and suffering. Multiple myeloma is a painful and dreadful disease, and a good person who knows nothing else but to love everybody around her do not deserve this. She only deserves happines. She deserves to be healthy and living her life to the fullest, because all her life she had suffered a lot.

I am at a point in my life where I should be able to let her see the world, let her enjoy all the good things in life, take her to amazing mother and daughter dates, but life as I mentioned always finds a reason to fuck with you.

I always ask God, why her? There are a lot of bad people out there who makes other people suffer and do evil things and enjoying all the riches and the world and they continue to do bad things, why not give this dreadful disease to them?

My mother? She just wants to live. She wants to see her sister who she has never seen in years and go home to her hometown which she had never gone home to for about 15 years. She wants to go visit another country and do the things she had never had the privilege of doind when she was young. She just wants to go to church every Sunday and serve God and be a Marian devotee. She just wants to see her old friends in the senior citizen community and share a laugh or two with them. She just wants to visit me every once in a while to my apartment in Mandaluyong so that I could take her to the big malls and treat her to a wonderful lunch or dinner. She just wants to be healthy and live.

But here we are in a little private room in the hospital, wishing and praying that she will have complete healing after we check out. That she will get better and she won't have any bone lesions and fractures. That she won't need another blood transfusion anytime soon. That all her meds will work for her and make her all well again. That her immune-system will become stronger and can combat any sickness.

Being in the hospital every month is tough. You get to realize the people who are there for you through good or bad. In many cases, I've come to know who are the ones who genuinely care. Hospital bills are piling up. The meds that could treat her are way too expensive. Trying to figure out a way that I could just take care of her myself and work and support her at the same time is tough. I have thought about giving up my job so I could look after her, but how can I pay the bills if I do that. Cancer is an expensive diseases to treat and in this country it is a death sentence.

I work a 9-5 job and always take the time off to take care of my mother. This month I have been out for a week. Last month was the same. I am almost out of paid leaves.If this happens every month, I may lose my job, and I have nothing to pay for my mother's hospitalization the next time we need to send her back for treatment. So what do I do? It is difficult enough that there are no facilities available here for her to have clinical trials and get the extremely expensive medicines whe needs, and if there were, it would not be enough.

You have to depend on prayers. I have to admit, I stopped praying. It exhausts me. I lost faith. Because I prayed and prayed and she still suffers. It's like it's sometime goes away but it's still there to give her pain whe it feels like it. It is just not fair. She should reap what she had sown. All she did was good all her life, and in this late stage in her life she should be getting nothing but the good life. I really want her to live longer. There are just so many things I wanna show her and take her but this disease had been ruining it for us. I just want her to be well and healthy. I just want her to live. Not just to be alive but to live a life that's full of only happiness and love. I still want all her dreams to come true, and I hope it's not too late.

I love you Nanay. I will take care of you. Keep fighting. I promise I will do everything to make all your wishes come through bit by bit. Just be well.

I know I can't have everything, but this is is the only thing I want. I just want you to be OK. I just want you to be treated and I just want you healed. I promise when you are healthy enough, I will do what I can to make your wishes come true.