Asthma kills teen; did she have to die?
It’s a medical condition that is a growing problem worldwide…and for one Belize City family, the dangerous reality that is asthma has left them in mourning. News 5’s Jacqueline Woods reports on the death of a teenager that, by all accounts, did not have to happen.
Jacqueline Woods, Reporting
The family believes Monday’s hot weather triggered the asthma attack that left thirteen-year-old Crysann Tillett in distress. On that day, the Standard Six student walked home for lunch and by the time she reached her house, she felt flustered.
Jeanette Hudson, Grandmother
“During the day when she came home she never (gasps for air), she never had that. She just talked fast and just breathe, and we told her to stop harass herself, she shouldn’t have come home. And then she took her time and gone back to school, and the evening when we came home she nevah stay like that.”
That is until later that Monday evening. According to Jeanette Hudson, who raised her granddaughter from when she was only two months old, she had taken another grandchild next door to Matron Roberts Health Centre when Tillett, who looked as if she was in distress, entered the clinic.
Jeanette Hudson
“She came there to me and said…”(makes wheezing sound). “So I didn’t even get to talk to her, because the nurse say, come, come, come and took her in and gave her the nebulizer.”
While at the clinic, Tillett received several medications to help restore her breathing.
Jeanette Hudson
“A liquid for cough, the Ventolin spray and another pill for infection. And she said if she start to breathe again like that, you take her to the hospital. So we came home and gave her the medication and she sat by the table.”
Later that night, however, Tillett started to complain about a chest pain. Hudson says she did not take her child to the hospital because her breathing seemed normal. But her granddaughter started to vomit and act uncontrollably, that’s when she decided to call for an ambulance.
Jeanette Hudson
“I said you alright? She took another thing and dash it again. And like she… (makes thrashing motion with body) on the floor. I seh, weh happen, weh happen? And she tek her clothes like she want tear it. I seh no man, noh tear the shirt. And she grab me inna my clothes. I say, mek I phone for the ambulance mek they come for you.”
Hudson claims it took the ambulance thirty minutes to reach her house, but by that time, her granddaughter had died. Tillett had suffered with the condition since she was a baby and was frequently taken to the hospital for treatment.
Jeanette Hudson
“I phoned them about quarter past eleven and they never got here until quarter to twelve. Suppose they mi even got here eleven-thirty and they tried for her, I wouldn’t have mind, because then I wah seh they try and she noh make it. But when they came in, you know you do C.P.R. or you press the heart, nothing. They noh even bring in the oxygen to put on the nose, because I distinctly told them it was an asthmatic case, I tell the lady that, and not even the oxygen they bring in. And I tell them over and over last night, that dah sake ah unuh she dead.”
Today BERT told News 5 that they first received the call at eleven-thirty that night and it took their medical team between five to seven minutes to reach their patient, but she had already been dead for twenty minutes.
Javier Canul, Cardiac E.M.T., BERT
“We have a standard procedure here with the ambulance. Whenever the ambulance goes to any location, it is a standard procedure that we move along with an oxygen tank and a drum kit. Because we don’t know what we’ll encounter when we reach to a scene, so we need to take these things with us. And the drum kit has a bit of everything that we need that would be in the ambulance, so we have to take that with us.”
“When I got there the patient had already ceased to breathe. How we noticed these things, is because there is several things that we check for, cyanosis, which means that we check is the patient is becoming blue in the face, there are different stages. The blue phase means that the person is still in the process where you can try to rescue the patient. And when the patient is white, or the lips become white, then you know that’s a problem right there, it would be difficult for you to try to revive back that patient.”
Canul says he sympathizes with the family, but believes there was a delay in getting help as soon as possible for thirteen-year-old Crysann Tillett.
Javier Canul
“Sometimes, for a case like asthma, some people wait until it’s too late, then they try to get a transportation to take them to the hospital. It’s good if you call the ambulance, because we have oxygen, nebulizing kits, and we give these things to the patient and then we transport them to the hospital. But if you wait too long like in the case last night, as I said, I sympathise, but it was a case of taking too long to even call for the ambulance I would suppose, and when we got there the patient had cease to breathe.”
In Belize, it’s not certain just how many people suffer with asthma, but the condition afflicts both the young and old. However, with the ample level of medical services available in the country, physicians say it’s only in a rare situation that an asthmatic patient would die from the condition.
Dr. Miguel Rosado, Physician, Universal Health Services
“It is something that can be controlled. It can be controlled with medication, it can be controlled with an educational plan in what to avoid, in order not to trigger the spasms of the airways.”
Dr. Miguel Rosado, a physician specialist at Universal Health Services, says he is not familiar with the Tillett case, but from what he has heard, the young girl had a severe crisis that he believes could have been prevented from the first time she started to show symptoms.
Dr. Miguel Rosado
“It is very frequent that we see patients that don’t know how to recognise the first signs of their crisis, and they wait for the last minute until a severe crisis is established in order for them to seek assistance. It is very important that the healthcare provider, the doctor, give them a very good educational plan in order to recognise the first symptoms, know how the manage the first symptoms, what to do when the patient is not responding, and then tell them when to assist to the hospitals. It is very important.”
Rosado says frequently asthma patients succumb to the condition because they simply did not recognize when they were going into a crisis. Jacqueline Woods for News 5.
Asthma is a respiratory problem in which the airways become very sensitive to elements such as dust, air pollution and changes in temperature. The condition gradually builds up and can become severe if not controlled. The development of asthma is most often a matter of heredity. In some instances young patients outgrow the condition by the time they reach adulthood. Unfortunately, Crysann Tillett never got that chance.
