YEARNING FOR A NORMAL LIFE
Nearly two decades after she left the Philippines for San Jose, life finally started getting easier for Nerissa Ramirez.
She had worked her way up the assembly line at a Fremont electronics company and bought her first car. At night, she spent time with friends or attended local Jehovah’s Witnesses meetings.
But then she was diagnosed with lupus — a chronic autoimmune disease in which the body attacks its own organs and tissues — along with kidney disease.
“All of a sudden, I’m fighting with my body,” recalled Ramirez, 52. “It was so hard.”
In the years since that 2012 diagnosis, that fight has slashed Ramirez’s independence down to a fraction of what it once was. After years of working and living alone, her illness forced her to spend most of the past year in a skilled nursing facility, receiving dialysis treatment a grueling four times a week and relying on others for tasks like eating, bathing and going to the bathroom.
It was during that time that she met Tita Das, a case manager with the Silicon Valley Independent Living Center, a nonprofit organization that offers people with disabilities in Santa Clara County a range of free services, such as advocacy, peer counseling and help transitioning from the hospital to independent living.
“I could see that she was very sick,” Das said, “but she has that motivation, that yearning.”
Das began mulling over a key question: “What can we get out of her way so her journey can be completed in at least one way?” Ramirez, meanwhile, is hopeful.
“Even though I’m in this kind of situation, I really, really want to live a normal life like everybody,” Ramirez said.