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Crissy Rollan is the mom of an amazing boy named Chance, and the founder of A Gift Of Chance Foundation.
During her fourth month of pregnancy, Crissy found out that her baby had a rare anomaly called Partial Acrania, Encephalocele. Even though her doctor told her that her son was not compatible to life, all Crissy wanted was to give the baby a chance, and that is where the name Chance came from.
From a 0% life expectancy, Chance touched the lives of so many people in the fourteen months he lived. “Every life is beautiful on its own, and everybody deserves a chance whether normal or not,” says Crissy. They took Chance’s difficult medical prognosis and transformed it into a journey of love, patience, and compassion.
Today, Chance’s memory lives on through Crissy’s foundation. “A Gift of Chance is drawing from my own experience, where cases like Chance is not common in the Philippines. Through my research and the support groups I have met, I’ve started an education campaign for moms who find themselves in similar situations. If we’re given a diagnosis that our kids are not compatible to life, we don’t just wave our life plan and say that’s it,” adds Crissy. She knows there is always hope.
Crissy has since met so many mothers who went through the same things that she did. Through the foundation, she helped them find the right doctors, develop birth plans, and prepared them for the challenges. Unfortunately, some of the moms only had a few minutes with their babies, while others were able to stay with their little ones for 12 hours; but to them, every second they spent with their little angels was treasure.
“One week before Chance was rushed to the hospital, it was this mother’s dream that she gets an opportunity to carry her baby. Her baby was 16 months old and her Encephalocele was even bigger than the baby’s head. We helped her by raising funds and introducing her to the doctors who operated on Chance. And after 16 months of prayerfully waiting, her baby had a successful surgery, and she was able to carry her baby,” shares Crissy. However, the baby suffered from post-surgery complications and passed on the same day that Chance was rushed to the Intensive Care Unit (ICU).
Mommy Mundo sat down with Crissy just a few days after Chance’s passing. The sadness was present and piercing, yet Crissy looked at the future with strength, determined to let Chance’s legacy live on by giving hope to other moms. “Nobody can prepare you to become a mother, yet alone, be the best mother. But I think what my son has taught me is to be resilient, strong, and to be accepting. There’s nothing in my system that felt I had to sacrifice anything for my son. All I remember in the past 14 months that he lived was joy. I saw Chance as somebody who brought happiness and allowed us to live one day at a time, beautifully. Every moment with our child counts,” shares Crissy.
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