Advancis and Jhea-Mae's face burn

 It's been a while since my last blog. Computer problems!!  Deep joy!!


Anyway, through the incident with Tiffany (in my last blog), the hospital where she had been confined, opened its doors for Val to give lectures to doctors regarding the care and treatment of burns.  She was able to leave free dressing packs in the emergency room to ensure that no child burn victim would have to go untreated due to a lack of finances.  

As for Tiffany every 10 days I would have to take her to visit Val to have her dressing changed.  

Unfortunately, Val, who was very willing to treat Tiffany completely free of charge, ran out of dressings.  I traveled 2 1/2 hours to find the much needed dressings which I found as I stumbled across the tiniest of stores who gave a great discount when I told her of Tiffany's story.

In the meantime my niece who had recently returned to the UK, wrote to several pharmaceutical companies in the UK who made dressings, appealing for help.


Whenever Tiffany saw my car she would scream, because she knew that it was time to have her dressing changed.  It was hard to endure the screams as she had the wound bathed and cleaned with nothing more than oral paracetamol and anti-histamines to dull the pain and make her a little drowsy.  She screamed in pain the entire time, every time!!  On the way home, to end on a happier note, I would take her and her parents to Jollibee (which is the local children's favorite fast food chain similar to Mc Donald's), which of course she loved.

 

Whenever I arrived to collect her for her check-ups, she got in the car screaming but  between the screams and sobs she would say, "Jollibee tayo?" (are we going to Jollibee?)

TIFFANY AT JOLLIBEE

                                                              
Thankfully, aside from the much needed pressure garments, Tiffany is now doing fine.  As she is only two years old, she has a lot of growing to do.  Disfiguring is caused as the new skin is not as flexible and doesn't stretch with growth as the original skin does.  Pressure garments help prevent this disfigurement. Sadly these pressure garments are not available here in the Philippines and are very expensive.  So Tiffany is still waiting.


Just before Christmas I received a message from my niece Rachel.  She returned home one day to find boxes stacked up on her doorstep.  One of the pharmaceutical companies Advancis responded and donated boxes of the expensive dressings that Val needs to reach out and treat burns victims who would otherwise receive no treatment.

When my mother contacted the 'balikbayan' courier service she uses to send me dad's old gadgets, they insisted to send us the boxes free of charge!!


The day I went to deliver the packages to Val, there was a little girl who had just had an accident with some hot noodles.  Climbing up on a chair in their kitchen, Jhea-Mae slipped and pulled the hot noodles all over her chest and face.  The parents took her to the hospital but didn't have the means to pay for her medication, so she had been referred to Helping Hands  (Who knows what happened to the packs that Val left???  ...and Jhea-Mae's dressing also looks strikingly similar to Tiffany's!!!  It is quite frustrating for Val, but as always, we just plod on and do our best to help and to hopefully make a difference whenever we can!!)  

Helping Hands is a mission run by Claire (a good friend of mine).  They reach out to help indigent children in need of medical care, operations and care for children in their recovery unit.   Knowing of Val's expertise, Claire had in turn referred Jhea-Mae to Val.  


Val was wondering how she was going to care for Jhea-Mae without the much needed honey dressings.  What perfect timing!!  Mae was able to have the very best of care.

VAL DELIGHTED WITH HER GIFT FROM ADVANCIS

Val was so pleased too as she was about to treat a baby boy who had a coffee burn.  The parents had left the toddler in a room unattended with the coffee sitting on the side.  The toddler wasn't taken to the hospital because the family didn't even have the fare to get to the hospital much less afford the hospital care.  Imagine the pain that this little boy endured for four days with no medical care at all??? 
 


You can only imagine Val's elation that she had the supplies and was able to treat these children with the very best of dressings, without having skimp!!  

It was nice for us Brits (although Val is now an Australian citizen!!) to unite together to reach out and help these little ones that would have been without hope!!

 

Jhea-Mae is thankfully recovering well from her burn as is Tiffany and so many more children will reap the benefits of the dressings that came to the Philippines on account of Tiffany's tragic accident.  So something good came out of the trial!!!

2 year old oil burn victim

Talking of Nanna Jean losing her sister to a burn brought back me my experience here in the Philippines with little Tiffany last year.

(I know blogs are supposed to be short to hold your interest, but this is a long story.  I hope you'll stick with me.)


Moments after our Xcell meeting ended one Saturday, I sat down in my office to start my work when I received a call.  I could barely hear what was being said because there was just noise and panic.  Two year old Tiffany (who had just been at our meeting with her grandma) had been in an accident and a pan of deep frying oil had fallen and poured over her back. 

Grandma had gone with friends to visit a lady who sold fish balls for a living.  There are no health and safety regulations here for people selling food by the roadside, and the wok of deep frying oil stood precariously less than a foot from the ground.  As the friends chatted and ate their freshly fried fish balls, Tiffany tripped and pulled the whole pan over her back, chest, arm, and neck.  It was a miracle that she was still alive and that the oil hadn't touched her face.

Here in the Philippines  it is said that toothpaste and ketchup are remedies for burns, so the neighbours had subjected poor Tiffany to bottles of ketchup and tubes of toothpaste prior to calling me.  As they removed her clothes, her skin was stripped from her body too. That was when they called for my help (as I am their only friend with a car).


As I approached the area of the accident, shocked neighbours crowded the streets and watched as panicked friends were running carrying Tiffany by her hands and feet not knowing what to do, but trying desperately to avoid anything touching the burns.  I didn't know what to do either!!  But when I don't know what to do, I always find that the best thing is to pray.  Knowing what happened to Nanna Jean's sister, I knew that a miracle was the first thing we needed. Tiffany stopped screaming and a calm seemed to come over her.

I asked my son Nathanael to drive us to the hospital but hen I suddenly remembered Val.  Val is an English/Australian nurse who specialized in the treatment of burns and had worked in the best British and Australian burns units.  She now works as a volunteer here in the Philippines, helping arrange for teams of volunteers to conduct cleft palate operations for the indigent.  When I called her, she told me not to go to the hospital but to go straight to her and she'd be ready for us.  So we did a u-turn  and headed straight to Val's.

Within 30 minutes she had Tiffany's burn completely dressed with the best honey dressings that money can buy that 'just happened' to arrive from Australia days before.  Though Tiffany was clearly in pain, her wound was well protected.

Val explained to me that it was good that I had brought Tiffany to her because the nearest burns unit was over 4 hours drive away and the local hospitals do not have any trained staff to deal with burns.  However, she cautioned us that due to severity of the burn (that covered more than 20% of her body) Tiffany may need to go to hospital for re-hydration and anti-biotics. But she warned me that the dressing must remain on for 10 days and must not get wet under any circumstances.

Tiffany's fever rose and we had no choice but to have her confined in a local hospital.  I told the staff that we had been given strict instructions for the dressing not to be removed.  Which they agreed.  I left Tiffany at the hospital with her dad (as her mum was working away).  Less than an hour later I received a call from a very stressed dad.  Just as I had feared, the moment I left the hospital, the new surgeon on duty insisted that Tiffany's dressing be removed, and she was convulsing.  Of course, I do understand that a doctor would like to see the extent of the child's wounds if that child was being confined, but surely they would make sure that they could give at least as good a protective dressing as the one they removed??  But no!!!



When I called Val, she was so upset.  Aside from the waste of the expensive dressings (of which she only had 1 more piece), she knew that they had put Tiffany's life in danger by exposing her wound.


When I returned to the hospital I wanted to cry when I saw her.  I could not believe the flimsy excuse of dressing that they had put on to protect her from infection, and she had been put on the general ward with children with all kinds of sicknesses and diseases.  Even the attending Pediatrician asked who had left this child in such a state, and immediately had her put in isolation (which had another patient in but it was considerably better than the general ward).  

I have learned over the years, that it doesn't help to get angry.  It only antagonizes people and nothing improves.  So Val and I asked nicely if she could come and re-dress Tiffany's wounds (which was strictly against hospital policy for non-staff to be involved with the patients for obvious reasons).  However when I showed the chief surgeon the state of the 'new dressing', he had to admit that the child was severely at risk of catching infection, and (as the skin controls the body temperature) there was little hope of her temperature stabling.  It took hours of convincing then one kind surgeon offered to change the dressing under Val's supervision in order to satisfy the hospital's requirements and our request was granted (incidentally both surgeons had witnessed Val's skill and success in treating burns, so they knew that Tiffany was in safe hands).

It is normal practice in local hospitals (where there are no burns specialists) to clean severe burns every day and scrape the burn (with absolutely no sedation even for small children).  The purpose I'm sure is to keep the wound clean, but in actual fact, every time a dressing is removed, it removes the skin and hinders the healing process.  Tiffany would have been subject to having her wound washed (with local tap water) and scraped daily.  Thank God for surgeons who had compassion and spared her that!!  


I picked up Val to take her to the hospital.  She was equipped with scrub suit, baby bath, purified water, sterilized  equipment, dressings, anti-histamine meds (to at least dull the pain) and even a table on which to place her equipment.


True to his word, the doctor came and the procedure started.  It was hard for me to endure the screams of hysteria as poor Tiffany had to bathe in soapy water so that the flimsy dressing would fall off with minimal pain and damage.
 

I will never know how on earth the doctors would be able to endure the kicks and screams daily as they would normally bathe their patients wounds without purified soapy water and no pain relief at all, scraping away at the sores!!  Thank God that this was the last that Tiffany would have to endure for at least 10 more days!!

Nanna's Jeans

As I previously mentioned, my grandmother from Jarrow (who was affectionately known by everyone as ‘Nanna Jean’- or ‘Nanna’s Jeans’ to one of the toddlers who didn't quite understand that Jean was her name not her clothing) was one of the most amazing people I ever met. Though she has been gone for several years, she left us with so many great memories.

What do I remember most about my Nanna’s Jeans?  Nothing!!  I never had the privilege of seeing her in a pair of jeans, but my Nanna Jean was one of the most selfless people I ever met (my mum is a chip off the old block which I will get to share with you in another blog).

I remember as kids, my brothers and I would get excited as we asked her to tell us about ‘The Good Old Days’.  She was never too busy to tell us. 

Her real name was Jenny Sparrow (from Jarrow) and the kids at school called her 'Sparrow legs'.  But the 'Sparrow' is a whole other blog!!  Suffice to say that when she left home at 15 to work in Manchester, she left Jenny behind and made a new start as Jean.

She told us about how poor they were when her father worked down the pits and would go down to the pub on Fridays to spend every penny he earned.  She told how her mother would buy a half penneth of bones to make stew and would open her door to share it with all the kids and young people in the neighbourhood.     

She told us about little Tommy putting the cat’s tail through the old mangle shouting “Hush pussy, you’ll soon be through!!”, and about the two Londoners who went to place a bet on a horse “Ideentna” (Geordie for “I don’t know”) which they’d heard was the favorite.   She had a great sense of humour and such an excellent story teller that we didn’t know what was truth or fiction, and we didn’t care!!

She told us about the sad times, like when her sister died in her father’s arms as he ran to the hospital after a pan of stew poured over her head.  How she too was scolded on the head and lived forever in fear of going to the hairdressers as they would see the bald patch that was her constant reminder of the not so ‘good old days’.  How her husband left her with my mum (a teenager) and my auntie Hazel who was just two years old. 

Nanna Jean lived to help others.  After she re-married she got a job as a cook in a borstal (home for juvenile offenders).  The detainees loved her and went to her in stead of the social workers when they wanted advice.

When I was a teenager I shared a bedroom with Nanna Jean for a year or two (which I loved because I got to hear more about the good old days) because she gave her house to a young homeless family.

It was only later in life that I learned that my grandma and granddad Hailes had not accepted dad’s marriage to mum.  They looked down on her because she was from a divorced family (which wasn’t acceptable practice in the fifties).  But when Grandma and Granddad Hailes were sick and needed help, it was Nanna Jean who gave up everything and went to be a live with them and care for them.  She bathed them, clothed them, took them to the toilet, cooked for them, washed their clothes, ironed and gave their medication until the day they died.  Needless to say they grew to love my Nanna Jean (as did everyone who knew her). 

That is the story of my Nanna Jean.

The tragic death of 3 month old Baby Nathalie & the NHS

Have I told you that I live in the Philippines?

The custom here in the Philippines on Christmas Day is that kids take to the streets visit their godparents where they expect to get Christmas presents. There's no such thing as 'silent night' and 'heavenly peace' here, Christmas is all about noise and crowded streets.


My twin godsons Nathanael and Paul visited me this last Christmas (as they do every year without fail) with the whole family (wife, children, parents, sister, nephews and nieces etc). Nathanael was really proud of his baby daughter Nathalie who was three months old.  She was such a cute baby. We had a nice time together and of course we gave gifts and goodies for all the children.


You can imagine how shocked I was to receive a text a couple of weeks later asking me to lead the funeral as baby Nathalie had died.
As we rushed to the family home for the wake, little Nathalie's body lay lifeless in the home made casket (that was made by granddad from wood donated by caring neighbours) which was covered in balls of cotton wool (a typical style for the coffins of children of poor families). They couldn't afford funeral, embalming and undertakers costs, so she had to be buried within 24 hours.

Here in the Philippines there is no NHS.  Thankfully there is at least the PhilHealth now, through which patients are able to get help with hospital bills (usually not including medication) IF they are up-to-date with their payments.  Sadly there are many hundreds of thousands of Filipinos who can't afford daily food much less PhilHealth and therefore have no medical aid.

Babies such as Nathalie are born at home with no professional medical assistance.  Usually there is an old lady in the village 'experienced' in assisting with child birth who will offer her services for a small contribution. 

One time I was sitting in my GP's surgery when a young woman ran in with a baby that I guessed was a plump 3 month old.  It turned out that Timothy was a newborn baby, the 'old lady' in the village didn't have the means to suck the birth fluid and free the baby's airway and he died.  My GP freed his airway but she couldn't revive him.  He was a healthy 8-10lbs at birth.  What a tragedy!!

Then there was the woman who couldn't afford a Cesarean Section so the midwife in the hospital tried to pull the baby from the mother and actually decapitated the infant.  Of course no money for a Cesarean Section also means no money for a lawsuit and nothing was done about that baby's tragic death.

For babies born at home there is then of course no hope of any new birth screening.  
Who knows if baby Nathalie was actually born with some serious disorder?  All we know is that she seemed to be out of sorts, but the family had no money to take her for a medical check up.  She then got a fever and the grandfather rushed her to emergency.  They gave her an injection of something (probably to get her heart pumping), but it was too late, she died minutes after her arrival.


As the grandfather tried to take his lifeless granddaughter home, he was stopped by a guard at the hospital door and told that he couldn't leave with the baby because he had to settle all bills first.  At which point the grandfather lost his composure and threatened to kill the guard. ( I'm sure he meant it too!!)  So the guard finally consented with the doctor's approval, to let them go.

Nathalie's young mother fainted at the graveside because she was just not able to accept the tragic loss of her baby.  Very sad!!!


To all my British friends, fight with all you can to keep the NHS.  It is terrible living in a country where there is no free medical assistance and you just can't afford for your child to be sick.  Many people lose their children and they don't even know why.  When their children get sick they just don't have the means to have a medical check up, and many deaths could have so easily been prevented.  How many innocent British children will be lost if we lose the NHS?  I hope it will never come to that!!

The fur lined belly button warmer

So, I know what you are thinking, that I look nothing like Princess Di.  Well that would be because my grandmother had a more striking resemblance to Winston Churchel than to Princess Diana!!!  How unfair was that!!!

I actually know very little about my father’s side of the family as he rarely speaks of them.  What little information I have I mostly gleaned from my mum and nana.

As a small child I thought my grandparents lived the other side of the world, because our visits to them were quite infrequent and their visits to us were even rarer.  I remembered passing through narrow lanes with fields and cows which made it seem so far away to me, as we lived in the centre of town.  But in actual fact, they lived in Knutsford and we were just a mere four miles away in Altrincham.  I later learned that dad visited them regularly but mostly at night after work so we kids seldom had the opportunity to go along.

As a child I never heard any negative comments about my grandparents and we kids held them in high regard.  I treasured each moment with them and considered it a rare privilege whenever I got to visit.  I used to think they were quite well-to-do too, because Grandma spoke ‘posh’ as compared to my nana’s Geordie accent and they owned their own home as opposed to Nana’s rented house with an outside toilet and they also had a car (which was quite rare in the sixties, though we had a couple of cars too).

Dad had one younger brother whom we saw even more infrequently than my grandparents.  If dad didn’t have the opportunity to visit his brother at Christmas, gifts were not exchanged.  So we usually got to tag along with dad on his annual visit to uncle Stan’s house.  Again our visits were at night so our younger cousins were always well tucked in bed and had it not been for the photos on the TV I wouldn’t have known what they looked like.

Uncle Stan was a successful businessman and accountant and we always got to see the latest gadgets on our visits, (which would always whet dad’s appetite).  Dad, unlike uncle Stan, would study reviews and the ‘Which?’ magazine for months before risking purchasing anything of value.  He would let his brother be the guinea pig while Stan would get things hot off the press.  So our annual visits were usually consumed with talk about gadgets and we learned nothing of how the family feared only about the latest gadgets.

Though our visits to uncle Stan’s were rare, it was enough to get dad started on the road to gadgets.  He got every gadget that came out.  Everything in the house was electric or some latest technology.  We had an electric garbage compacter, an electric egg boiler (which incidentally still took 3 minutes to boil the egg!!), an electric plastic bag sealer and more.  Even our bins (trash can), and the toilet seats way back had some kind of hydraulic mechanism so the lids didn’t make a noise!!  When it came to Christmas, my poor mum found it so hard to find a gift to get him that he didn’t already have.  Then she eventually found it, it was 'a fur lined belly button warmer'!!  So then he finally had everything!!  (At least until the next gadget came out).  

Dad is now 79 and you would think that he'd have gotten over the 'gadget thing' by now, but not at all.  Now there is QVC and online shopping and dad has lots of time to shop in the comfort of his Bowdon home.  He even learned to like coffee when those handy dandy gourmet coffee machines came out!! 

Me?  Gadgets?  Please!!!  I had to go right back in time, to something I had never known before in my lifetime, which was a time of washing clothes by hand without the luxury of hot water!!!  Hydraulic toilet seats??  Our WC is made up of three toilets of differing sizes and colour, and only flushes on a good day!!  All this of course now that I find myself living here in the Philippines (though lately mum has been shipping me all the gadgets dad's finished with- but not the fur lined belly button warmer, it's too hot for that here!! So now I'm reaping the benefit of dad's little pastime. Thanks mum!!).

I'm related to Princess Diana!!!

Hi, I'm Chrissy and I was snobby Brit who ended up living in the Philippines.
I grew up in a middle class home (or 'upper middle class' as my mum would say) in Cheshire, England.

According to my parents, (which embarrasses my father somewhat each time mum mentions it- So please forgive me dad, for including this in my blog), we are related to Winston Spencer Churchel and Princess Diana (Spencer).  (My son keeps telling me how much I look like Diana, which I wish were true, but really, being surrounded by Filipino brown faces, flat noses and black hair, just being white makes me resemble Princess Di to most.  I assure you, being white and female is where the resemblance ends!! I'm sure you agree?). 

Anyway, my father's grandmother was a 'Spencer' who was cut off from the family as a result of her love and devotion for a commoner.  She married the commoner (an inventor I'm told) and my grandmother was born to them.  When my grandmother was around two years old, her father died.  The family did make an attempt to help my great grandmother, and offered her a small house.  She apparently turned it down, insulted when she found it contained no piano!!!
According to what I'm told, she earned her living playing the piano for the silent movies in the theatre where my grandmother (and Julie Andrews) spent her childhood.

And here ends my claim to fame.

My grandmother married Sydney Hailes, who was a plumber for a small company and earned a good living.   My father went on to become the managing director of that company where he worked for more than 40 years.
On the other side of the spectrum, my mother's family came from Jarrow, which is known in British history as being the most impoverished mining community of the UK of that time.  My grandmother (one of the most wonderful people I ever had the privilege of knowing) left home at 16 and moved to Cheshire to serve as a cook in what was called 'being in the service' at that time (which was the politically correct term for 'servants' in that day!!).  
She used to cook and clean houses in the posh part of Bowdon, never dreaming that one day her daughter would own a home there.


Mum and dad were high school sweethearts and went on to have my two brothers, Steve and Paul and me.  Imagine, this snob from Cheshire ended up here in the Philippines!!!