Relatives of a 21-year-old man who succumbed at the Georgetown Public Hospital six days after jumping into the Lamaha Canal popularly called the `Blacka’ believe that negligence by the hospital’s staff had a big part to play in his demise.
At the time of his death Jermain Alexander of Lot 2972 North Ruimveldt, was paralysed from the neck down and he was conscious.
Last Thursday, Alexander went to the canal with some friends. They were all sitting on the dam and then they jumped into the water, which was lower than usual. Seconds later, Alexander shouted that he was unable to move. His friends immediately took him to the hospital where he was seen by a doctor and admitted to the open ward of the medical institution. Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) and computed tomography (CT) scans done at the St Joseph Mercy Hospital several days later revealed that Alexander sustained trauma to the head and a fractured spine.
Around 5am on Wednes-day the man died although he was said to be in a stable condition.
It was reported to the man’s relatives that at the time of his death excrement was coming through his mouth and nose and that he had called the nurses, but no one went to him as they were allegedly looking at television.
Alexander had apparently had difficulty breathing and was calling for oxygen. He had not defecated for the entire period he was hospitalised. Contacted on Wednes-day the hospital’s Medical Director Dr Madan Rambarran told Stabroek News that people with paralysis were usually constipated. Dr Rambarran said it was unlikely that oxygen could have helped Alexander. He said respiratory problems usually came with spinal injury.
According to the doctor, signals go from the organs to the spine then to the brain and this would explain the severity of Alexander’s injury.
He asked this newspaper to give him up to yesterday afternoon to comment further on the case including the alleged negligence on the part of the nurses. Stabroek News complied with the doctor’s request but when efforts were made to contact him at the stipulated period he could not be reached. The man’s mother Tracy Norville told this newspaper on Wednesday that after the test results were made known, she was informed that her son would have to undergo surgery because of the neck and spinal injuries. She said a doctor told her that her son would have to go overseas for the operation since it could not be done here.
The grieving mother said that when her son died she was waiting for an estimate of the cost of the operation.
Norville told this newspaper that she only became aware of the seriousness of her son’s condition over the weekend when he did the tests. She explained that it took so long because she had to find $60, 000 to have them done.
She said that it baffled her as to how her son could have died so suddenly when he was conscious all along and appeared to be doing well.
Norville told Stabroek News that her son a former student of North Georgetown Secondary and St Rose’s High was an aspiring biochemist and understood his injuries well.
“For the time he was in the hospital he was explaining his injuries to me. He even kept asking me to see the results of the test but I was afraid to tell him because he would have known how bad his condition was,” she said maintaining her composure.
“I hustling to repair me house and Jermain always use to tell me ‘mommy, pay for my exams them. Mommy don’t worry I will look after you.'”
His mother described him as a quiet and simple person who always liked to make the atmosphere lively.
Recalling the day of the incident, Norville said she was at home and Alexander was jovial with her as usual. She said that she took a nap and up to the time she fell asleep she was hearing his voice.
“I woke up suddenly and around 1 o’clock Jermain’s father came and tell me that he gone to the hospital.”
She said that she would never have consented to her son going to the canal and she believes that he might have gone there to swim before.
His father Derrick told this newspaper that he was made to understand that they were all sitting on the embankment and they just `pushed off’ into the water. The man said that when his son surfaced he threw his hand, in a swimming motion.
“When he flip his hand, he went down in the water for over a minute. He friends didn’t realise that something was wrong until he came up frothing.”
Stabroek News was told that there were about five other boys with Alexander at the time of the accident. Shortly after he surfaced he told his friends that something was wrong with his neck and when he was taken out of the water he couldn’t walk.
When Norville arrived at the hospital on Wednesday for the 6 am visiting hour her son was already dead. She told this newspaper that he was still lying uncovered on his hospital bed with faeces in his mouth and nose. Some was also on the sheet, she said. The woman said she cleaned up the mess and the body was later wrapped and tagged.
“I tell the nurse a day that he isn’t defecating. He never did while he was hospitalised. All she did was shake her head,” Norville said.
The dead man’s parents stated that a man who was on a bed not far from their son’s informed them that shortly before his death Alexander was calling out to the nurses to give him oxygen.
“He was calling out to them because he couldn’t breathe and he probably realized what was happening to him.
No one came to help him,” Norville said.
The patient also told Alexander’s parents that he even fell off his bed while he was calling for the nurses.
Norville said that every day at visiting hours she would go to clean up and look after her son. She said that it the nurses had a problem tending to him she would have stayed with him.
Alexander leaves behind his parents, an older sister and other relatives and friends.
