UAE | General
Desperate plea: Please help us save our girl
Debt-stricken Filipino parents seek help for three-year-old daughter battling rare kidney cancer
- By Jay B. Hilotin, Chief Reporter, XPRESS
- Published: 00:00 February 2, 2012
- Image Credit: Supplied
- Therese Faye, left, in September 2011 prior to chemotherapy sessions. Right: Therese at present
DUBAI: A Filipino couple weighed down by a personal loan which they took to bankroll their child's battle against a rare kidney cancer has appealed to Good Samaritans for help to give her a life-saving bone-marrow transplant (BMT).
Three-year-old Therese Faye Macababbad was diagnosed at Tawam Hospital, UAE's leading cancer hospital and a Johns Hopkins affiliate, with a clear cell sarcoma of the kidney on February 2010, when she was only 18 months old.
Since then, Therese has been in and out of hospital following an operation. She has also undergone radiotherapy as well as six months of chemotherapy.
Therese is the only child of telecommunications specialist Leonardo and his wife, Rowena, a nurse.
"Our daughter is fighting the disease," said Leonardo, 31. "We'll do what is humanly possible to help our child get the right treatment. We're appealing to people to give her a chance."
A test in June 2011 showed Therese's right kidney had a 2cm mass. By August, however, the mass had more than doubled in size — to about 4.5cm. More tests on her frail frame were done in September and Therese then re-started her chemo sessions on October 24, 2011.
Time is critical
Therese is racing against time.
Her oncologist, Dr Mustafa Baroudi, stated in his report: "Clear cell sarcoma of the kidney is known to be a non-favourable high risk renal tumour that is difficult to cure once it relapses."
Therese's best hope, Dr Baroudi said, is an autologous stem-cell transplant (harvesting the patient's own blood-forming cells), which provides an excellent chance of a cure - but the procedure is currently not available in the UAE.
Referrals sent to different countries showed Therese' fight would cost her parents dearly: UK's Great Ormond Street Hospital, the UK's top paediatric care centre, gave a £300,000 (Dh1.7 million) quote for the treatment. Singapore's National University Hospital offered it for S$100,000 (about Dh290,000).
After taking a Dh100,000 bank loan recently to pay for the down payment asked by NUH, Rowena decided to fly with Therese to Singapore last week to harvest her bone marrow in a three-day procedure which ended on Sunday (January 28).
But with a combined monthly income of Dh9,000, the couple said they had to appeal to Good Samaritans. "Our daughter is strong and looks like a normal girl, except for the fact that she's losing her hair," Leonardo told XPRESS from Al Ain. "In my heart, I believe she will win this battle and grow up like any normal girl."
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