A Story of Faith

We get the life that we have been taught to live and imagine, but what if, by some inexplicable force of fate, we find ourselves on an off track–one that is not only less traveled but a blinding pathway no one has taken before?

A seven-year-old son, a two-year-old daughter, a new baby and all the warmth and the love that a comfortable life and a family generates. Picture perfect? Perhaps, but not for Agnes Mondoñedo.

In July 1998, the stock market crashed, Asia was in financial turmoil, the global slowdown was wreaking havoc on economies across the world. She was out of work–let go by her stock brokerage employer just months ago. Even more devastating, her bouncing one-month-old baby boy was fighting for his life.

Until then, life as Agnes knew it had been gliding along smoothly; at least according to the parameters of a material world, she was doing A-okay. But one cruel twist of fate in both spheres of her life and her pretty little neat life came stumbling down.

Losing a job, says Agnes, was nothing compared to the prospect of losing a son. But how could one argue with the doctors or even with God? It was no ordinary illness: little Lorenzo, or Enzo, was diagnosed with auto-immune hymolytic anemia, the first documented case in the Philippines.

"When we get sick, our antibodies attack the bacteria or virus that enters our body. In Enzo’s case, his antibodies turn against his own body and attack his red blood cells, bringing down his hemoglobin count to precarious levels," Agnes explains.

Red blood cells carry oxygen around the body. The hemoglobin in red blood cells brings oxygen to all body cells. When a person’s hemoglobin count is not enough, it means the body is also not getting enough oxygen.

A normal person’s hemoglobin count is 13 to 16, she says. But the first time Enzo was rushed to the hospital, his red blood cell count was down to 2.6, certainly not enough to sustain life.

The immediate but temporary cure was blood transfusion; Enzo needed to be injected with packed red blood cells (RBC). For the first six months of his life, it was done every three days.

"It was a race against time," Agnes recounts. "We knew that he would only live for as long as we could produce packed RBC."

And it wasn’t at all easy because Enzo blood type is AB, one of the hardest to find in blood banks, and even then not all type AB blood matched Enzo’s.

"First, we sourced blood from direct donors, then we resorted to the blood banks, until one day we practically lost all hope," Agnes shares.

In September 1998, a dengue fever outbreak hit the country. Hospitals were full of patients, mostly children, needing blood, which became a very rare commodity. For little Enzo, it literally meant no more blood.

When our options run out, we find ourselves at a crossroads. Do we give up or do we continue fighting, even if it may seem futile?

In Agnes’s case, she neither gave up nor continued to fight: "I merely surrendered my son’s life to God." And strangely enough, as her son lay dying on his hospital bed, there was peace in her being. "I was completely calm and assured that my son will be well, no matter what."

Does she believe in miracles, in divine intervention? When the prospect of death is looming and all seems lost, will there be an angel to give life back?

Such is the mystery of life that Lorenzo Mondoñedo, little Enzo, is still alive to this day–a normal, rambunctious, healthy seven-year-old boy. Enzo’s doctors had said that he would not grow to be as tall as the others in the family because of the effect of steroids and other medications that he received for the first four or five years of his life.

But what does it matter? The boy is a survivor and God didn’t give up on him, and neither did his family.

Looking back now, Agnes says that if there is one lesson she learned in her son’s battle with a very rare disease, it is the fact that sometimes you need to empty yourself so that God can fill you. A cliche, yes–and it will probably draw smirks from those who do not believe in the power of a higher being.

"Sometimes, people find it so hard to ask the Lord for help. We are so proud to ask until he’s all we’ve got," Agnes says.

On the night that blood couldn’t be found and they were on the verge of giving up on Enzo, a man just walked in to the hospital wanting to donate blood.

"It was the first miracle," says Agnes. The man had type AB blood–and it even cross-matched with Enzo’s blood. "So we asked ourselves: How can we give up on Enzo when the Lord didn’t give up on him?"

It was, says Agnes, the beginning of a series of experiments for a cure for the disease. First, his doctors experimented on cancer drugs to slow down the production of antibodies. It failed. Another cancer drug was tried and it failed again.

Then his hemolytic pediatricians compared notes, through e-mail and conference calls, with doctors from Stanford in the US where they had a similar case, a girl. To keep her antibodies from attacking her red blood cells, her doctors removed her spleen, that organ of the body where the anti-bodies are produced–and it worked. Enzo’s medical history was sent to the US.

Enzo’s doctors recommended a similar operation in January 1999 when Enzo was seven months old, and the family consented.

Clinically speaking, the spleen surgery could have paved the way for Enzo’s healing. Who knows? But it was not all, says Agnes. She knew in her heart that there was something more to Enzo’s road to recovery.

Those months were extremely difficult for the family, Agnes admits. Aside from Enzo, they have two other children who also needed their attention, and she was still out of job so financially, the family was in a real tight bind.

But in the middle of the ordeal, she was re-hired by the bank she formerly worked for as head of its customer service division. "It was a wonderful blessing, coming at a time when we most needed it" she says. Since it was not a front-line job, it was not so demanding and allowed her to devote time to her sick son and to contribute to the family income as well.

Little by little, Enzo’s condition was also improving. The interval between blood transfusions was growing longer: From three days, it lengthened to a week, then weeks, then months, until it finally stopped in January 2000 when Enzo was 18 months old.

But even the last transfusion is a story replete with miracles.

On the day he was about to undergo another transfusion, the doctors had tried more than 20 bags of packed RBC, but none cross-matched with Enzo.

"His blood level was so low that it was already a matter of time before it reached critical level," Agnes says.

Like the first time he hovered near death, the family prayed for God’s will and surrendered him completely to His hands. Instead of breathing his last, Enzo’s blood count surprisingly started to rise, then stabilized to normal levels after some time.

"Yun pala we didn’t find blood because he was already on his way to healing. What God was actually saying is that ‘I didn’t give you blood so that your body can find its way’," she says.

A triumph of God’s love, a family’s devotion and medical breakthrough, Enzo’s story is one inspiring story of hope and survival.

"I know that whatever happened, God allowed it to happen," says Agnes.

But what if the outcome of Enzo’s ordeal had been different?

"I think I would have ended up in the same position and faith because I surrendered everything to the Lord," Agnes, a renewed Christian who found much comfort and hope in her Christian cell group in 1998, now says.

She admits though that there were many moments when she questioned God’s motives during her family’s most difficult moments.

"I asked my boss once: Why me," she recounts."And my boss, who is also a very good friend and sister in Christ, said, ‘It’s because God loves you. He is putting you through all this, so that you could experience Him totally."

What Agnes had to learn the hard way is that people pray for something based on a very limited concept or understanding of God’s way.

"The Lord provides for your need in His way," she says with total confidence. "We have our own ideas of what will make us well or happy, but His way will always be what’s best for us. After all, He is our creator."