Life is transient, hold on to it while you can. Yet, how will you hold on to it when right before you is a hand slowly losing grip? How will you hold on to a dear one with life seems fleeting?
Life for 10-year old Yam Bayogan, should have been her favorite endless reading and stuffed toys. It shouldn’t be injections and tubes, eerie blood transfusions, and excruciating chemotherapy. But for reasons unknown, her young life is faced with uncertainties. She is forced to see life from a different perspective and by battling a foe that hides in the shadows – ACUTE MYELOGENOUS LEUKEMIA. It is a type of leukemia that has poor prognosis and normally occurs to adults.
The enemy is within her, gradually grabbing her the opportunity to see life beyond childhood. Even if the family, especially the parents Jon and Emma, is honest to Yam about her conditions and she fairly understands it along other bits of life, there are still moments of eerie silence and moments of seeing thin line of hope.
Contemplating is the word, her daddy said. Twice the pain goes to the parents by simply looking at their daughter taking her battle daily. They cannot help but contemplate as well as to how will their daughter emerge from the battle? Victorious or defeated?
With constant prayers and encouragement from people who care, the family is surviving each day. And their hearts are filled with joy during the days when Yam is on high spirits. Like she always have been before her on and off fever in April. And when the family have been as well before Yam was diagnosed with the disease last May.
Then June came. Her first chemotherapy proved that indeed Yam is sick and is to be treated. That day the family might have surpassed the stage of denial.
After four days, her crowning glory began to fall but she still managed to joke that her hair should be saved for daddy’s wig. A manifestation of Yam’s crowning courage amidst difficult times.
As the family held on to each other, Yam as well showed signs of hope as the doctor told them that their dear Yam is responding positively to treatments.
After difficult times dealing with side effects from the first and the second chemotherapy sessions, she is still to undergo three courses of chemotherapy in the face of piling hospital bills and funds dipping low in so short a time. It seems not fair for anybody to be robbed of all the hopes left just because of a wanting financial resource. But as long as the faith on helping hands still flicker on the dim light, RAISING 2-3 MILLION pesos IN 2-3 MONTHS could not be entirely out of reach.
Walking on thin line, Yam's Dad is trying every way he could think of to fund Yam’s BONE MARROW TRANSPLANTATION. With great hopes that he could somehow hold on still to his daughter’s hands and prolong her life if not to completely win it back.
Is there pain greater than for a father to see his daughter change from a healthy and bubbly newborn to a sickly hospital patient who does not know what comes next?
We could help ease the pain of the family; we could help Yam conquer the disease and win her battle; we could let her see life beyond childhood – go back to regular classes, read her favorite books again, play with her stuffed toys, acquire more than four medals next year, grow up and live a healthy life.
Yam would be eleven on October 18 this year. Is there greater gift than giving a helping hand that will push her to victory against AML?
(This was written three months prior to Yam's bone marrow transplant in September 2006 in an effort to seek financial help. Yam has since then underwent the medical procedure and is now well)
