By Jeannette Andrade
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 22:28:00 06/02/2008
MANILA, Philippines -- After Jennelyn Guansing, a 35-year-old housewife, gave birth to Sam, her youngest son, she and her friends attributed his condition to her inexplicable preference for snails during her pregnancy.
Sam was born on January 26, 2006, with an imperforate anus, a condition that afflicts only one in every 5,000 children. Without an anus, the baby was unable to get rid of the waste in his body the normal way.
"I found out about his condition two days after I gave birth to him with the help of a midwife in our home. I was cleaning him up with a cotton ball soaked in baby oil when I noticed he had no anus," Jennelyn told the Philippine Daily Inquirer, parent company of INQUIRER.net.
Jennelyn is married to Moreto, 43, a farmer in San Jose, Occidental Mindoro. The couple and their children live in a nipa hut, which belongs to the owner of the land Moreto is tilling.
Despite their poverty, Jennelyn said she was determined to let Sam live a normal life, even if it meant seeking help from relatives and strangers in far-off places, including Metro Manila.
She turned to her aunt, Angelita Guansing, and her cousin, Annie Magbanwa, for help. The two women, residents of Batangas City, consulted doctors at the Batangas Regional Hospital, who recommended an immediate operation to save the boy's life.
Sam needed to undergo a colostomy -- a medical procedure where an opening in the abdomen is created through which a small portion of the colon is brought up to the surface of the skin. This new opening, called a stoma, allows stool to pass directly out of the body.
"My husband asked his employer for a loan and he was lucky that he was given one because he has been working there for 10 years," Jennelyn said, explaining that the loan was in the form of several cavans of rice, which they sold.
With the money, Sam immediately underwent a colostomy.
The boy, however, needed to undergo another procedure, an abdominal perineal pull-through operation where the rectum is "pulled down" and sewn into a newly-made anal opening in the perineum. The operation costs at least P100,000.
With the help of Senate President Manuel Villar, who agreed to finance the operation, Sam was operated on at the Philippine General Hospital.
Dr. Esther Sagui, the PGH pediatric surgeon who led the surgery team of four doctors, told the Inquirer that the procedure took three to six hours but remarked that it was good that the operation was done while Sam was still young.
"Children should be given a chance to live normal lives. It was good that the procedure was done as early as possible to allow the child to develop normally," she said.
Sam is expected to go through one last operation -- the closure of the stoma on his abdomen -- a source of relief for his mother.
"I am sure now that he will live and grow up normally like other children," she said.
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