For four-year-old Irish Franchesca Dequiroz, the pain of her early leukemia (diagnosed in October 2007) and the gruelling chemotherapy sessions, were not nearly as unbearable as not being able to walk. This wasn't so much from a weakness in the limbs as it was a failure of the spirit, brought to a pitch by an incident after her first cycle of treatment.
By nature active and outgoing, her legs literally failed her one day-along with her appetite and general vigor-and she collapsed on her feet as her young body assimilated the effect of the strong drugs for the first time.
The fainting incident left its mark on her and she had to be carried around for the next few weeks although she could still have walked if she wanted to. According to the attending medical staff, she went through a period of sulkiness uncharacteristic of her when she was first diagnosed, a shadow of the chubby little majorette in her preschool ID.
She was already in the grips of pain from her knees, a common sensation among patients with leukemia. Later on, she experienced a more intense but intermittent one in her abdomen, causing her first chemotherapy cycle to be prolonged as she buys time to recover from the abdominal trouble.
She was close to raising a white flag to a disease that has plagued so many young lives before her. But she would take her cue to fight again from these other young sufferers who share with her the routines of the leukemia-plagued in the hematology section of the Philippine Children's Medical Center where she receives treatment.
When she tried to resist another bout with the dreaded injections, her young friends spelled out to her in no uncertain terms what will happen."Kaya lang lumakas ang loob niya, sinabihan ng mga kasama sa chemo
na pag di sya nagpatusok, mamatay sya," narrates a relative.
Hers was a rudimentary idea of what death is, and her relatives take pain to hide from her the extent of their fears knowing how confusing and upsetting it is for her to see how affected they are. These relatives include her parents and a sorely missed grandfather in the province who is himself suffering from liver cancer.
As she entered her second cycle of chemotherapy, she was slowly coming to terms with a lifestyle that has to be borne for at least the next two years with a great deal of patience even by an adult. Half of her week is spent in the hospital undergoing various procedures, most of them painful.
Before she can even get to the formal round of injections for the chemotherapy drugs, a battery of laboratory tests-no less physically taxing than the main event-had to be administered first.
Bone-marrow aspiration is a regular ordeal, the physical incursion leaving her drained of her usual buoyancy no matter how often it is done. Despite the topical anesthetic that which is supposed to render the whole thing as painless as a lidocaine-fortified session in a dentist chair, she would be crying throughout the whole procedure.
In the course of four weeks, her frail body would take in a seemingly endless parade of needles to test her response to the treatment and infuse the chemo drugs.
The needle pricks are one thing, the sheer discomfort is another, as a body used to movement and play sometimes has to submit to hours of being supine and motionless so that the more delicate procedures can be performed with minimal hitch. Nor is she spared from the known side effects of the drugs such as mouth sores and vomiting, alleviated only by antiemetics that are on hand for such reactions.
She submits to everything in tears but with a reluctant resignation, a sign of what others see as her precocious passage to emotional maturity. Living through what is surely the most trying time in her life, she is quick to look around for inspiration, especially among those who are helping her get through the experience, with an artless faith that life still has a lot in store for her.
"She wants to become, not a doctor or a nurse, but a medical technologist," a hospital aide close to her says, "because she sees how much the med techs are working for her."
Out on a limb
The closest that teenage deep-vein-thrombosis (DVT) sufferer Rheniel Wagan could come to cataloguing his pain is to evoke the feeling of one's leg bones breaking under tremendous pressure. That was how his swollen, hematoid right leg felt sometime in January 2005.
With his leg dying from under him, he had to stop schooling and had to endure the pain in tears for three months before receiving proper medical attention.
What took him so long? Ill-advised relatives, whether out of misplaced beliefs or false economy, took him first to a "mystic healer" who could supposedly appease the denizens of the spirit world who caused the boy to have the mysterious pain in his leg.
The spirits were obviously not appeased. A doctor who finally got on the case was incensed to find out that the boy was put in mortal danger of a fatal blood clot by the unscientific intervention that went before. Rheniel was confined for two weeks at the Philippine Children's Medical Center (PCMC) before being given a clean bill of health and a prescription for pain killer and maintenance medicine.
The disease struck again with redoubled fury two years after, affecting his left leg this time and landing him in the intensive-care unit right after high-school graduation in March 2007.
The physical agony was so great that Rheniel had to take three varieties of oral and intravenous painkillers, two of them potent enough to be deployed in the operating room. The pain would snap him out of his slumber many times, only to be brought back to a drugged stupor by the powerful pain relievers that had to be administered to him every few hours.
With his body in hibernation most of the time, eating was out of the question and he lost a lot of weight, with only intravenous nutrients maintaining him.
His affected leg took on a separate life dedicated only it seems to conducting more and more pain. "Bumabaluktot ang mga daliri ng paa ko na parang sa isang pusa. Nakakatakot tingnan. Then
nararamdaman ko na kumakalat ang hematoma," he relates.
He would cry, call for the nurse, and he would pray. His return bout with the disease also amplified other pains that are not quite physical.
He never knew his father and his mother went off to parts unknown at the worst possible moment, when he was first experiencing the symptoms of the disease. He was left to the care of a grandfather and his mother's siblings who only somewhat grudgingly acknowledge their responsibility, especially after it became clear that he would have to live with the disease for life.
Apparently, the reassertion of the disease also had to do with Rheniel's failure to come back for follow-up medical consultations due to budget constraints. Not wanting to inconvenience his reluctant guardians, he also tended to play down his medical problems, be it the moderate asthma he has been suffering from since childhood or the much more serious DVT.
His disease had further strained his already saggy relationship with these guardians. He talks about a grandfather whose second stroke, coming at the heels of his grandson's latest medical woes, had made the old man more temperamental. During Rheniel's latest hospital admission in January, he said he did not receive any visit at all from his aunts.
"Nagsawa na rin daw sa kaaalaga dahil sa gastos," says Rheniel of his relatives.
Inutang lang din kasi nila ang pinanggastos sa akin. Gusto ko na ngang magtrabaho o mag-aral para hindi habang buhay aasa ako sa kanila."
Cheerful and friendly by nature, Rheniel is buoyed by the support of many friends, including a church group that has pitched in for some of his medical expenses. He stands by his plans to study for a career either in hotel and restaurant management or the theater arts.
Nearer down the line, he brings the same resolve to go on with life despite his medical perils, ascribing his DVT to a perverse, subconscious wish to find out just how far his relatives will go out on a limb to help him.
"Di ko na lang iniisip na maysakit ako dahil lalo ko lang nararamdaman. Nung muntik nang maputol ang paa ko, iniisip ko na lang na di mapuputol. Sabi ko dati, di ako papayag kahit sabihing kailangan. Mamatay na lang ako kesa maputulan ng paa," he vows.
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