(Trinidad Express) – Couva market vendor Amar Ramkhalwhan would have turned 34 in just four months had his life not been taken by the Covid-19 virus.
Ramkhalwhan passed away shortly after 8 p.m. on Tuesday at Couva Hospital and Multi-Training Facility.
Relatives say he had spent hours at the facility begging to see the face of his elderly mother before dying.
He was hospitalised for less than one week before his passing. He left behind three sisters, two elderly parents, a girlfriend and countless family friends who say they have been left in a state of shock and horror.
“It is really hard and, to be honest, none of us know what to do. To this point we have kept my mom in the dark about some of the details because I don’t think she could handle it at this point.
“Amar was our only brother; he was a part of all of our lives and he meant so much to us. Days before he was telling my kids not to worry, he would come out of this quickly and come back to us and then this happened,” said Yashoda Ramkhalwhan, Amar’s eldest sister, in a telephone interview with the Express on Thursday.
Ramkhalwhan said Amar suffered from asthma and sinus infections and began experiencing Covid-19 symptoms on Monday, May 10.
By Wednesday afternoon he had deteriorated to a point of breathlessness and was transported to the Arima Hospital by emergency services.
He was then transferred to the Mt Hope Hospital and the Caura Hospital where he spent four days.
Difficulty breathing
While hospitalised at Caura, Ramkhalwhan said Amar had experienced severe difficulty breathing. Without access to oxygen, he asked family members to contact the hospital and request assistance. By Tuesday morning, she said he was transferred to the Couva Hospital to access their oxygen supplies.
While en route, she said the ambulance ran out of oxygen. Amar was rendered unconscious. In the space between his arrival at the hospital and his death, she said he had been revived from a state of unconsciousness at least twice.
“On Wednesday, he started getting trouble breathing and the ambulance picked him up.
“He spent a while at Arima Hospital and was transferred to Mt Hope and then to Caura Hospital, where he spent four days.
“They did a second assessment there and his lungs were completely checked out.
“He was begging us to call the doctor. We were calling them and no one was answering.
“On Tuesday, we spoke to him while he was being transported from Caura to Couva, the oxygen ran out and he was revived.
“At the Couva Hospital, the oxygen ran out again and he was revived.
“They said he was crying and begging and fighting but they could not help him as there was no oxygen in the hospital,” she said.
In the hours leading to his passing, she said Amar had put up a fight.
“He kept begging, he wanted to see my mom. He died at around 8.p.m. They called 7.p.m. and said he was in a bad state and facing the worst.
“The doctor who tried to keep him alive said they left him in the ambulance and they couldn’t move him from point A to point B. When they did move him, he turned black. They told us that he was crying and begging. He didn’t want to go,” she said.
Last messages
Amar’s last WhatsApp messages to family were shared with the Express. In them he pleaded for assistance, telling the family he required oxygen to survive.
“Tell daddy to call the doctor and tell him I need oxygen for the ICU,” he wrote. Ramkhalwhan said she believes her brother would still be alive had he been given oxygen in a timely manner.
“We just don’t want another family to go through the hurt and pain that we are going through. My brother was messaging and saying he was neglected. He was dependent on that oxygen to be fully recovered. If he had that oxygen, no question he would have been here,” she said.
Following Amar’s passing, Ramkhalwhan said the family faced a multitude of distress. She said her brother’s body was misplaced by the hospital for two days post death.
The family was told his body had been collected by a funeral home. While relatives spent these two days trying to locate the body, they were contacted by the hospital and told it had been found still at its premises and in a decomposing state.
“They lost his body, we spent from yesterday morning until today looking for it. It was lying in the Couva Hospital.
“The hospital told us a funeral home took the body and we are calling and calling and no one knew where the body was.
“The hospital said they are in a rush. He is the only one we have, we just wanted to see him. When they found the body, they said they can’t send us a picture because of the state it was in.
“This is what we haven’t told my mom. She thinks we’re just making the normal funeral arrangements. I am trying to understand as much as I can about the issue with the oxygen but I can’t understand it,” she said.
