Thoughts and Updates

My sister, who is in Canada, emailed her fraternity brothers and sisters here in the Philippines and in minutes, news of our niece needing blood donors spread like wildfire, reaching the different offices and departments of Clark Development Corporation where she worked for 9 years.

Many people from CDC signified willingness and intention to donate blood but we are now facing a dilemma - transportation and approval from the HR department for the bloodletting to be considered an "official business". A lot of people, most of whom have known my sister for years, are currently up on their toes exploring options and possibilities to make all of this happen.

Also, an army camp based in Angeles City requested us to submit a formal letter to their Commanding Officer to seek help in looking for more blood donors. One of the army reservists, my brother's high school batch mate, believes that his battalion will extend assistance since they really donate blood for cases such as ours. Again, in case approved, our only hurdle will be the means of transport for the donors.

I have spoken with the local bloodbank (PNRC) and although they have approved our request to use their venue, manpower and facilities, which means they will do everything from screening to extraction, then they will just issue cards to each donor which we can use to redeem blood from the PNRC-Manila bloodbank, we still have one major problem: We still have to pay P500-P800/bag upon redemption at PNRC-Manila which defeats the whole purpose. So scrapping that idea altogether, we have no choice at the moment but to go on with transporting donors to Fe del Mundo.

There is also an ongoing text brigade right now calling for more donors to proceed to Fe del Mundo or to get in touch with me. So far, not even one has contacted me yet, but it is still pretty early so we'll see in the next few days.

To be my usual honest and transparent self, folks, this has been very stressful not just for me but also for my family. We all worry for AJ, his dad and my dad who's been on crying spiels every now and then. There are days when I know people around me are starting to somehow lose hope, some of them would sometimes just feel that the pressure is too much to handle and yes, I am no exception to that.

But you know what? God has been really gracious and merciful these past weeks that I cannot help seeing how truly blessed we still are in the midst of this crisis. I cannot help but compare our pains to God's own pain when Christ hung on that cross on Calvary. If we, mere humans who are wretched sinners, could feel all of these frustrations, pains, hurts and sufferings for a loved-one, how much more God the Father whose Son lived a righteous and sinless life on earth? Truly, His pains in seeing His Holy Son suffer condemnation and death is incomparable to the pains we are feeling right now. And that thought is where I draw my strength and inner peace from... Oh how blessed we truly are for having a Redeemer. It makes all of this amount to nothing for He is the only Light at the end of this dark tunnel and He is so reachable and so possible!