An attorney is claiming she suffered radiation poisoning at a popular private nursing home in San Fernando after undergoing a CT scan.
Cherry-Ann Rajkumar, 42, accompanied by her husband Marvin Ramnarine held a second protest in three days calling for the nursing home, which has not accepted liability, to release the machine’s logs.
Rajkumar said the logs will assist her doctors in determining the exact level of the radiation she was exposed to so they could administer the appropriate treatment.
Last Friday, she protested in front of the nursing home and yesterday she protested in front of a commercial building at Independence Avenue, San Fernando.
Rajkumar said she went to that particular private nursing home to have the CT scan done because it was advertised as the best medical clinic with only brand new machines.
“Just within two hours of doing the X-ray there on Monday June 11, 2018, I almost went into a coma. My whole face burn up. My lips burn up. My hair, if you come home by me I have more than 100 bags of hair that dropped from my head. My eyes were bloodshot like Count Dracula. My whole body started to jerk and weakness like I was dying, like almost in a coma. I almost died. I was in constant pain. It is only like right now the pain is much less. But imagine being in pain like if they dip your head in boiling water for eight months. I have not been able to work, mind my child, eat. It is terrible. I am lucky to be alive because the amount that I got in the head blast was more than Smokey and Bunty. So I am a walking miracle, “ she lamented.
Rajkumar said last week was the first time in eight months she had enough strength to walk.
She said, “Imagine all this happen from a normal X-ray and this could happen to anybody in this country.”
She said the nursing home is insisting that the machine was brand new. However, she said a physicist from New Zealand was able to find out that the machine which the nursing home advertised as brand new was actually 10 to 12 years old.
She was advised that a machine that age was supposed to be discarded and not used on human beings. “What my doctors know is that I got beyond two grays of position radiation because they told me that hair damage only begins at above two grays. I really suppose to get a fraction of a gray for a head CT scan,” she said.
Rajkumar said she does not have the money to initiate legal action and her focus at this time is getting better.
In a three page report, which was forwarded to T&T Guardian Dr David Evans, a medical physicist, stated that he and a radiation oncologist assessed Rajkumar and came to the conclusion that she was exposed to radiation overdose.
Rajkumar complained that in the past eight months she has written several letters to the nursing home’s owners and to Health Minister Terrance Deyalsingh, but nothing has been done.