Still remember Menchu Sanchez, the Filipina nurse commended by former US President Barack Obama for her heroism in the wake of Hurricane Sandy in 2012? The heroic nurse needs help this time.
According to GoFundMe thru her daughter Michelle, Menchu is suffering from a disease called IgA nephropathy or Berger’s disease which makes her weaker and weaker each day.
“As a family, we learned that there could be more potential matches in our motherland of the Philippines, but her medical insurance won’t cover surgery outside the United States. The surgery would cost $100,000 to have it done there.”
Apparently, Berger’s disease has no cure. The damage caused by the clumps can lead to chronic disease and kidney failure on its latter stage. And the only way for Menchu’s life to be saved is for her to undergo a kidney transplant.
The American Kidney Fund describesBerger’s disease as an illness where protein immunoglobulin A (IgA) which helps fight infections from clumps inside the tiny filters of the kidney.
Menchu’s GoFundMe account seeks to collect monetary support as she had been on the transplant list for three years due to an insufficient amount of money to fund her kidney transplant.
Looking back, it was in 2012 when Menchu saved 20 at-risk babies at the New York University Langone Medical Center when she devised a plan as the power was cut-off at the height of Hurricane Sandy.
She was commended during a State of the Union Speech made by Obama.
“We should follow the example of a New York City nurse named Menchu Sanchez. When Hurricane Sandy plunged her hospital into darkness, her thoughts were not with how her own home was faring – they were with the twenty precious newborns in her care and the rescue plan she devised that kept them all safe.”
Menchu was diagnosed with Berger’s disease after she returned from Quezon, her hometown in the Philippines, where she received the Quezon Medalya ng Karunungan award for her heroic deed.
Donors who wanted to support Menchu’s campaign to raise funds for surgery may visit her GoFundMe page.
