Man appeals for help for gravely-ill son who needs surgery

Two-year-old Mark Jhian Fajardo has been confined at San Lazaro Hospital’s intensive care unit for over two months due to meningitis, an infection that affects the delicate membranes called meninges which cover his brain and spinal cord.

“His attending doctors told us that there is a mass of water inside his brain but the condition can’t be hydrocephalus because the size of his head remains the same,” Mark’s father Louiemar told the Inquirer.

That fact that Mark’s brain has not swelled up despite the presence of water makes his condition more serious, leaving him in need of immediate medical care, Louiemar said, citing the doctors’ diagnosis.

“The patient has preferential gaze, occasional muscle spasm and [is] lethargic,” Dr. Roselyn de la Cruz said in Mark’s clinical abstract.

“There are instances when he would be awake, but most of the time he [would be] sleeping. He would suffer seizures in between,” the doctor said, adding that the medicines being given to the boy were not effective.

Louiemar is hoping that he and wife Edwina would be able to raise P22,000 because their son is scheduled to undergo an operation. Doctors want to insert a shunt, a narrow piece of tube, into his brain to remove the excess fluid.

Louiemar, who lives with his family in Punta, Sta. Ana, has been working as a janitor at the Arzobispado de Manila in Intramuros since 2005, earning P400 daily.

Those who want to help his son can reach him at  0946-3536833 and 0912-0350211. Donations can be deposited in his BPI account (Louiemar Fajardo, #3719-3882-63).