Sickness won’t stop her from doing relief work

JOCELYN Hernandez (center) packs relief goods in her house in Bacoor City in Cavite, briefly setting aside her own battle against a kidney abnormality. CONTRIBUTED PHOTO

Jocelyn Hernandez was driving home to Bacoor City in Cavite when she heard the news from the radio about the huge losses brought by the monsoon floods to thousands of families in Luzon. Instantly, kindness kicked in as she made mental notes of how to raise donations for the victims.

The 46-year-old migrant worker had just been to the hospital. Just recently, doctors found her blood platelet count dropping and had diagnosed abnormality in one of her kidneys—symptoms that if untreated may lead to lupus.

Lupus is a disorder of the immune system in which there is an attack against healthy cells and tissues of the body. “It is a tricky disease that can damage the joints, skin, blood vessels and vital organs,” Hernandez, 46, said.

Hernandez is based in Hong Kong. She began working as a singer in a hotel in 1986 and met a Filipino engineer whom she later married. In 2004, she moved to her present job as a clerk in a lending company that offered loans to overseas Filipino workers (OFWs).

She regularly goes home to visit her mother in Bacoor City in Cavite. She had thought of skipping the trip this year; her family would anyway settle down in the Philippines next year when her daughter enrolls in college.

“This visit was actually unplanned,” Hernandez said. The only reason she and her husband came home in July was to seek a second opinion after doctors in Hong Kong advised her to get a bone marrow transplant.

It started months ago when she had “this pain in the back and legs that made me feel like I have flu all the time.” At first, she thought it was a simple arthritis, but the fact that two of her siblings had died of cancer drove her to seek medical attention.

In the Philippines, “my hematologist found one of my kidneys shrinking. And my platelet count was plummeting, like if the normal count is 140, mine is just 45,” she said.

Donations

Interviewed on the phone the night before her flight back to Hong Kong on Sunday, Hernandez didn’t sound a bit depressed but rather thrilled about how she ended her visit home.

She had called up her high school batchmates at South Eastern College in Pasay City and invited them to join a relief mission.

“Back in Hong Kong, we really take the effort to pool resources and send them to calamity victims in the Philippines. How much more now that I am actually here?” she said.

Amy Ng, one of her school friends, suggested channeling the donations through the Serve the People Corps, the sociocivic arm of the militant Bagong Alyansang Makabayan, which has been doing relief operations for flood victims in the Calabarzon (Cavite, Laguna, Batangas, Rizal, Quezon). Ng’s son, Andrianne, happens to be the group’s coordinator.

“Because of my condition, Amy insisted that we let Andrianne’s group do the repacking and distribution. But I told her I really wanted to do it myself and be part of it,” Hernandez said.

Two more friends came over and they spent the entire evening repacking the rice, biscuits and canned goods at Hernandez’s home. Unfortunately, during the actual relief distribution, she had to beg off as the pain shot up again.

Kindness, hope

Her predicament didn’t stop Hernandez from showing kindness to others, a trait she believes is inherent even among other OFWs in Hong Kong. “When you see OFWs meet, you hear them talk and even ask about their day’s meal. It turns out, they don’t even know each other,” she said.

When calamity strikes the Philippines, she said, the OFWs “will shell out even $10 out of their pockets just so to send help back here.”

Hernandez said that being in Hong Kong did not diminish their desire to help their countrymen. “It doesn’t mean we cannot help even those we don’t know or are not related to us,” she said.

She is now back in Hong Kong where she continues to work and seek treatment. “I am strong,” she said. Her message is the same to the victims of calamity: “This storm, too, shall pass.”