Twenty-four-year-old Essequibo mother Phyziena Etwaroo is seeking the public’s help to offset the cost of brain surgery for her one-year-old girl.
Little Akeelah has meningitis and has seizures every day.
Akeelah will be two-years-old on July 31 this year but it will be a bitter-sweet event because she is in need of the surgery urgently.
The single mother told the News Room it was on June 27, 2018, when she observed that her baby had a high fever which only got worse overnight; the mother said she rushed her to the Suddie Hospital the next day.
“For that night I bathe her, I soak her and give her panadol syrup to drink and the next morning I rush her to Suddie Hospital and they examined her and said she had a throat infection and give her antibiotics and sent her home,” the mother said.
Within that week in June 2018, the baby appeared normal; she was creeping and playing but still appeared sick and her mother decided to take her back to the hospital.
“They told me to continue the treatment and they send we home back. The Sunday (July 1 2018) morning when I woke up she was in a lot of pain and crying, and that is when I took her back to the hospital and the doctor start pressing the baby and I wouldn’t be able to say what injection they give her and when they give me the baby to nurse, from that day, baby refused to nurse she keeps biting my [breast],” the mother said.
Baby Akeelah was later transferred to the ICU at Suddie as her condition worsened and the next day she was then transferred to the Georgetown Public Hospital, where she remained for an entire month.
The mother said, “At Georgetown Public Hospital they do a urine test, blood test and they discharged her and they said they didn’t see a reason why she was transferred.”
The mother explained to the News Room that while packing up to leave the hospital after being discharged, another doctor came and checked baby Akeelah and she was readmitted because of high temperature.
“That was when they had me do a CT scan…everything come back normal but on the day she was admitted at GPHC she sit and did everything like a normal child; she hold her chips to eat and had her bottle in her hand but when my baby came out from there, she came out like a vegetable, she couldn’t do anything for herself,” the mother said.
The Georgetown Public Hospital diagnosed baby Akeelah with meningitis last year while a private hospital in March this year determined that she has chronic neurological disabilities and severe brain abnormality. She cannot sit upright or sit by herself.
“They are saying that she has severe brain damage, public hospital says the baby has meningitis so they were treating her for seizure and recently I do whole body check with her at private and that is when we know that the baby had fluids in the brain,” the mother said.
The private hospital recommended that a bilateral craniotomy be done.
“They say she needs to do brain surgery to take the fluids out of her brain,” the mother said.
Baby Akeelah gets three or more seizures every day and in the night time.
The mother said very often she is rushed to the hospital and is seeking assistance so that she can have the surgery done.
Anyone willing to assist Baby Akeelah can contact her mother on 689 4867 or make direct deposits at Republic Bank to account number 58 026 32.
