'Fight with Nathan': Help sought for baby with rare disease | ABS-CBN

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'Fight with Nathan': Help sought for baby with rare disease

'Fight with Nathan': Help sought for baby with rare disease

Trishia Billones,

ABS-CBN News

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MANILA- Facebook has been a popular tool for networking, advocacy, and raising awareness. Now, a Filipino couple is hoping the same platform can help save their baby.

Judith and Archie Riva are banking on help from strangers online, to save their newborn baby Nathan, who has a very rare disease.

Nathan was born full term, weighing 8 lbs, but at 23 days old had to be rushed to the emergency room after vomiting throughout the day. There, they were told he needed to undergo surgery to remove 95% of his intestines.

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After they were told that Nathan's condition would span his entire lifetime, they decided that this plight cannot be carried by the two of them alone.

"We believe that more people praying for one cause, the more powerful it becomes," said Archie, adding that they then opted to put up a Facebook page simply to ask for prayers for their kid.

Eventually, they decided to humble themselves and ask for help from netizens to support Nathan's cause.

The new parents say, they have exhausted their savings and their pooled resources from their families, but it was not enough because as Judith revealed, though they now stay at home, Nathan's maintenance still cost about P250,000 to P300,000 per month.

Through their GoFundMe account, they were able to raise some P700,000 for Nathan.

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"Really, the group, our friends, and family members have been a tremendous, tremendous help because without them, we know that we won't be here, Nathan won't be here," she said.

Judith added, the world of social media may be "traumatizing," with people misinterpreting your every post, they still share Nathan's journey with and for the grace of God.

"Whenever we post, we always pray before we post--for it to be something that is inspiring, something that will help draw people closer to God, something that will be accepted in the right way because really, the intent of our page is apart from fundraising, is really our promise to God that we will be using the page to inspire a lot of people, to show his mercy, his love through Nathan," she said.

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