Support Jherica’s fight against Chronic Kidney Disease Stage 5

Blessed day!

We are a family of 4 who dreamt to get out of a saturated Manila and live a mindful and peaceful life in Liliw, a small town located at the foot of Mt. Banahaw in Laguna, Philippines.

Me and my wife, Jherica, are both working from home. Our daughter, Arwen (15) and our son, Arkin (9), are both homeschooling/life schooling even before the pandemic started. With nothing to hold us back, we left Metro Manila last May of 2022 to make this dream a reality.

However, 2 months after settling in, our queen was diagnosed with CKD Stage 5 possibly caused by hypertension. Her dad's side of the family has history of hypertension but she was never diagnosed to have issues and never took any maintenance medicine. Based off our last APEs, she has normal and functioning kidneys and all blood work are doing great. She's conscious of her diet and has abstained from pork and beef since 2019, eating only, veggies, fruits, fish, and white meat.

We are thinking that the abundance of avocado right before Jherica was diagnosed, with her very high pain tolerance may have played a big role in not foreseeing her blood pressure going up and knocking down her kidneys. It was like from zero to life and death scenario. It could also be caused by her working on the night shifts for almost 12 years, where sleep is compromised and her body just started to weaken.

Her creatinine level (blood toxins) was initially measured at 25 mg/dl where the normal values should lie between 0.7 to 1.3 mg/dl. With the help of good samaritans in our town, we're able to bring her back to Manila so an emergency dialysis can be performed. Our nephrologist says that she can't give a verdict as our case is rare. There could still be recovery, but for now, Jherica needs continuous dialysis, 2x a week (hiflux dialyzer+ Recormon/hemoglobin shots), and we were told that we should be open to possible kidney transplant.

All our plans went to a halt and all of our savings were used up for Jherica's hospitalization and ongoing treatment.

She needed to resign from work, and I also had to let one of my clients go, hurting our income big time which is really not practical given her condition as we don't have any household help to take care of my wife, my kids, and all other stuff that needs attention like working on government guarantee letters, donations, and accompanying her to dialysis and follow up check ups.

We are still paying off our debts after my wife's initial hospitalization and at times we are adjusting her medication to make ends meet. We're trying to be creative to provide sustenance to the lives (both humans and pets) entrusted to us by God and the universe while we're living our way through this life situation. Unfortunately, dialysis treatment in the Philippines is very expensive and at its initial stages of getting proper support from our government.

We are banking on the less than 10% chance of natural recovery, but we've accepted that kidney transplant might be the end process, which is a goal for another time. We'll not be able to reach the preparation stage for that, as well as the post transplant maintenance medications, if we're already having challenges maintaining her dialysis sessions.

Jherica's been on dialysis for 7 months now and we're humbly asking for your prayers and assistance so she can continue this road to recovery. We just want to make sure that she'll never miss any sessions and we'll be able to take her required medication. Any extras will be allotted to payment of hospitalization debts to at least give our family some peace of mind and let her focus on recovery instead of stressing about funds and having self pity.

We are grateful for each and everyone of you who is reading this and we're thanking everyone in advance for any prayer or financial support that you'll be able to spare.