Roselle Derequito started feeling sick a few weeks ago. She had a fever and a mild headache — nothing too out of the ordinary.
But after a few days, both the fever and headache persisted. She became nauseated and started vomiting, so her family checked her into the emergency room in Orlando, where they reside.
She was quickly admitted to the intensive care unit, where she started having seizures, so she was transferred to the neural ICU for more specialized treatment. After she spent more than a week in the hospital in a medically induced coma, her boyfriend, Peter Cai, created a GoFundMe page to help cover her medical expenses.
He posted it around 11:30 p.m. Thursday. When he woke up the next morning, the campaign had already raised several thousand dollars, and by the end of the day, it had nearly reached the $10,000 goal. Doctors still aren’t sure whether the cause of her illness is an infectious reason or an autoimmune reason, so she’s being treated for both, said Cai, who is in his fourth year of medical school at UF.
Derequito has been put in a coma to prevent seizures that could cause brain damage. Even in her unconscious state, she has drawn supporters both locally and nationally who have fundraised and prayed for her family. Within seven days, the GoFundMe page raised $16,311 from 428 funders, many of them writing kind words of encouragement to her and her family in the comments section.
Those who know Derequito say they’re not surprised.
“Everywhere that she was involved in, they were deeply affected,” said Klea Jampasar, 23, one of Derequito’s alpha Kappa Delta Phi sorority sisters. Now, Jampasar said, she’s getting support back from everywhere she has touched. Derequito graduated from UF in 2014 and became an AmeriCorps member, working with the Red Cross. In June, she was deployed as a disaster relief caseworker to Shreveport, Louisiana, and worked two weeks helping flood victims. Derequito’s contract service would have ended just in time for her to begin working on her master’s degree in medical sciences at UF this Fall, living with Jampasar as her roommate.
“For her life, it’s not about her. It’s about helping others,” said Nam Diep, store owner of Lollicup, a place Derequito frequents.
Diep said he gets to know many of his customers, but Derequito wasn’t the average student. She had autoimmune conditions that might have limited others, but not her, he said. She was the type of student who was passionate about helping others, which shone in the type of work she did and her positive attitude.
“She has it worse than us, and she doesn’t complain about it,” he said.
Because of her deployments, she stopped visiting the store as much, Diep said. When he didn’t see her for a while, he assumed she was on another deployment, but that wasn’t the case. On Sunday, the conditions were so grave, her family was told to “start making preparations.”
Since then, her conditions have improved, but they are still severe. Before creating the GoFundMe page, Cai said he called the hospital, curious about the expenses. They told him told it costs about $5,000 to spend one night in the neural ICU with a nurse in the room. Derequito had already spent several nights hospitalized, and they have yet to factor in the 24-hour brain monitoring, CAT scans, MRIs and other medications, treatments and IV fluids she needs.
Although her parents both work as nurses, they’re in no position to spend hundred of thousands of dollars in hospital bills, he said.
After the first day, Cai raised the goal to $15,000, and later to $17,500 when it was again close to being met. Derequito’s sorority sisters have headed two fundraising efforts this week. On Monday, they held a fundraiser at Lollicup, and raised more that $280. The second fundraiser at Blaze Pizza raised more than $220.
Diep is holding a small fundraiser of his own, raffling off a Fitbit in his store for those who donate $1. Even with all the support, Cai said he doubts they’re anywhere near the cost of Derequito’s hospital expenses.
As for the GoFundMe, Cai said probably 95 percent of the people donating are people he and Derequito’s family don’t know. Some know Derequito by association. Others are complete strangers touched by her story and the stories others write about her.
“If she’s got a 1 percent chance,” Cai said, “we want to give it to her.”
[A version of this story ran on page 16 on 8/5/15]
Kendra Phillip (left), 22-year-old UF health education graduate, and Athena Wong, 19-year-old UF accounting sophomore, sign a giant card for Roselle Derequito at Blaze Wednesday. Derequito's sorority, alpha Kappa Delta Phi, held a fundraiser to raise money for her medical expenses.
