Young woman needs funds for angiography
It’s hard enough to find yourself in the middle of a life-threatening medical emergency, but to have to face it without any financial resources only makes the ordeal that much worse. Today News Five spoke with one young woman who is not only battling intense pain, but feeling increasingly worried she may not be able to afford even the test to determine the cause.
Jacqueline Woods, Reporting
It will be one week since twenty-seven year old Sherida Garnett was discharged from the Karl Heusner Memorial Hospital. It was not the first time that Garnett has been hospitalised. Shortly after she was born, she was diagnosed with sickle cell anaemia. The condition has contributed to number of medical problems and crippled her ability to work and make a living. Her history of suffering from severe headaches and neck pain worsened on September eighth.
Sherida Garnett, Sickle Cell Anaemia Patient
“I went to lie down and like in ten minutes time I started with a headache, I can’t see nothing. I start can’t feel myself or nothing like that.”
Garnett who lives with her nine-year-old daughter and boyfriend in this one room dwelling was rushed to the K.H.M.H. A test revealed that a vein located in her head had ruptured and was bleeding. The K.H.M.H. says Garnett was allowed to leave the hospital in order to go abroad to undergo a delicate test called an angiography, a study of the blood vessel, to determine whether or not Garnett had suffered an aneurysmatic rupture
Sherida Garnett
“My head?”
Jacqueline Woods
“You’re having severe headaches right now?”
Sherida Garnett
(Shakes head, yes) “They give me some medication for the swelling, the bleeding, and the pain, but the headache come on and off.”
Although the test, which will be conducted in Merida, costs only three thousand dollars, it?s a lot of money for the family who is already struggling financially. Garnett says she is tired of the pain and is appealing to the public to help her get the medical attention she desperately needs.
Sherida Garnett
“Only me and God know what I di go through right now in my head. So whosoever like to help me, cause I want take the test.”
Lavern Gordon, Mother
“She worse right now. I really would need a lee help abroad”
Goldburn Mascal, Boyfriend
“Whoever could help her, just try give her a lee hand and thing you know, because she deh inna pain and thing. I di try help her, but I noh di work right now, so I could only do so much.”
The family has received some assistance from their church and pastor to purchase the medications Garnett needs to take daily. Today she gave thanks to all those persons who have helped.
Sherida Garnett
“I just want to say thanks to the nurses and the doctors for helping me. Thanks to everybody that was praying for me. Only me and God know the situation I am in and what I’m going through, so I just want to say thanks to everybody.”
If you can help Sherida Garnett, the family can be contacted at cell phone number 604-3924 or you can contact K.H.M.H. social worker Sandra Moguel at telephone number 223-1639. Jacqueline Woods for News Five.
