HELP NEEDED FOR POCHOLO MEDICAL EXPENSES IN THE PHILIPPINES

One of my close friend's son, Pocholo, is fighting for his life in the Philippines and is in St. Luke's Hospital ICU for almost a month now suffering from an Autoimmune Encephalitis, a rare and life-threatening disease where his immune system attacks his brain. He recently recovered from a Neuroleptic Malignant Syndrome, a rare near-fatal reaction to haloperidol which he was treated with due to misdiagnosis. My friend Hope, the mother of Pocholo (who is a single mother of 2 kids), has already spent 7 million Philippine pesos or roughly $122k US dollars, and he still has a long way to go for his treatment. The amount keeps going up per day. (For those people who are not aware that medical bills in the Philippines is so expensive as most people do not have a medical insurance coverage and the government does not give assistance to the families in need).

This is taking a great toll on his family's finances. Any help is greatly appreciated, and we cannot thank you enough. All donations will be sent over to the Philippines as soon as possible in hopes of getting this disease cured.

Here is what Pocholo's sister had to say about the circumstances:

"My brother, Pocholo Luigi Acosta, 22 years old, is suffering from a rare case of overlapping conditions: autoimmune encephalitis (AE), a rare neurological condition where his immune system attacks his brain; and complications left by neuroleptic malignant syndrome (NMS), particularly tardive dyskinesia.

He started experiencing symptoms on June 7, and he had five seizures in the span of one week from June 9 to June 13. Because of this, we brought him to multiple hospitals, all of which could find nothing wrong with him after conducting CT scans, MRIs, and EEGs. Finally, we contacted his psychiatrist, who convinced us that his seizures were caused by psychosis and advised us to send him to a psychiatric facility.

Unfortunately, while being treated at that psychiatric facility, Pocholo experienced NMS, a rare and life-threatening reaction to neuroleptic medication. When the facility informed us and rushed him to the ER at St. Luke's on June 25, Pocholo was near death. Pocholo has been at the ICU ward ever since.

Even after the NMS finally left, my brother still remained unresponsive. This led the doctors at St. Luke's to investigate further, and after checking his cerebrospinal fluid, they finally discovered that what had caused all his earlier symptoms was autoimmune encephalitis. We are now starting treatment for that, but we still have a long road ahead of us.

All this has exhausted my family's finances. Our hospital bill at St. Luke's alone has totaled more than 7 million pesos as of July 21. The medicine that he needed for NMS and what he needs now for AE are exorbitantly expensive, and they account at 2.5 million pesos. This number is only expected to go up, as he is about to start another line of treatment (Intravenous Immunoglobulin) which is estimated to cost 800K pesos for five days.

My mother is a single mother and I am Pocholo's only sibling. My father passed away less than a year ago. As much as we don't want to resort to this, we need all the help that we can get. We are desperately knocking on your hearts to help us heal Pocholo and bring my little brother back.

My brother is a good kid and very hardworking. He's currently studying at UP Diliman, where he consistently achieves high grades (he is an uno student). Aside from that, he is part of many orgs and is beloved by many.

Thank you so much." - Zofiya (Pocholo's sister)