Resh­ma Ra­goonath

Steps are be­ing tak­en to have trau­ma­tised rel­a­tives of Sasha Lysa Ali-Bis­nath re­ceive coun­selling. Ali-Bis­nath died last week af­ter she un­der­went a planned Cae­sare­an sec­tion op­er­a­tion at a pri­vate nurs­ing home in San Fer­nan­do to de­liv­er her sec­ond child, Siara.

Yes­ter­day Ali-Bis­nath's cousin Dami­an Ba­boolal, speak­ing with the Sun­day?Guardian, said rel­a­tives were still trau­ma­tised by her sud­den death. He said Ali-Bis­nath's hus­band, Damien, is still strug­gling to come to terms as well. Ba­boolal said Damien's em­ploy­er-Trinidad Ce­ment Ltd, and his broth­er's em­ploy­er-the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) have in­di­cat­ed that they will pro­vide coun­selling for the fam­i­ly.

"I think on Mon­day they will tell us when the coun­sel­lors will be com­ing. I do not think we re­al­ly will be nor­mal for a long while. We just try­ing to deal with it on a dai­ly ba­sis and we are de­pressed. It's on the news and in the news­pa­pers and every­body has to keep re­liv­ing it. Every night they talk about her in the news," he lament­ed.

"Every­body kin­da calm right now, I re­al­ly can­not de­scribe how they feel­ing on the in­side. We have a lot of fam­i­ly around help­ing with the ba­by, but what will re­al­ly hurt is when every­one leaves to go home." Ba­boolal said rel­a­tives do not know how to break the news to Ali-Bis­nath's two-year-old daugh­ter So­lara Alysa.

"She keeps ask­ing for her mom­my all the time. We told her she is in heav­en now but she does not un­der­stand that, she has a con­fused look on her face when we tell her," he said. He said all Ali-Bis­nath's Christ­mas presents which she pur­chased still re­main un­opened un­der their Christ­mas tree. "I think every­one too trau­ma­tised to deal with open­ing them now," he said.

No word from med­ical in­sti­tu­tion...le­gal let­ter served

On?Fri­day, the fam­i­ly served le­gal let­ters on the pri­vate med­ical in­sti­tu­tion to get Ali-Bis­nath's med­ical records. He said there has been no re­sponse from the in­sti­tu­tion as yet. "They told us they will con­tact our lawyer but they giv­ing us a run around.

We have no fur­ther up­date. They did not con­tact (the lawyer.) They said they call him and they got voice­mail, but we do not be­lieve that.?We have been in con­tact with him and we spoke to him be­fore and af­ter they said they called," he said.

Ba­boolal said they al­so tried to de­liv­er a let­ter to the doc­tor who did the C-sec­tion. He said to date she has not con­tact­ed the fam­i­ly or ex­tend­ed con­do­lences in per­son. "She said she would be in of­fice on Jan­u­ary 2 so we will be go­ing again on the sec­ond to drop her let­ter. She has not met with us.?She said she is try­ing to deal with it (Ali-Bis­nath's death.) She said she want­ed to of­fer con­do­lences but she nev­er called us," he said.