When 26-year-old Oni­ka Charles of Crown Point be­gan train­ing to be­come of a fire­fight­er with the T&T Fire Ser­vice (TTFS) in 2019, she nev­er imag­ined that she would spend the next 20 months ex­pe­ri­enc­ing con­stant pain, ne­glect, mount­ing debt, and loss.

Oni­ka claimed af­ter be­ing in­jured at the TTFS dor­mi­to­ry, what she termed as neg­li­gence by the doc­tors at the Scar­bor­ough Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal has now placed her in con­stant pain, from a wound that has nev­er healed due to an in­fec­tion. Charles said she now re­quires spe­cial­ist surgery to save her foot, yet pleas for as­sis­tance from au­thor­i­ties in To­ba­go have all fall­en on deaf ears.

“In March 2019 I be­gan train­ing to be­come fire­fight­er, the po­si­tion re­quires that trainees live at the fe­male dor­mi­to­ry at the Ar­gyle Train­ing Fa­cil­i­ty, and while there I fell on a stair­case.”

She said she was tak­en to the Scar­bor­ough Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal and sub­se­quent­ly di­ag­nosed with a frac­tured an­kle.

“At the hos­pi­tal, they said they would not be able to per­form the surgery in To­ba­go so the doc­tor in­sert­ed a Stein­mann pin to sta­bilise the frac­ture un­til I got to Trinidad where the surgery could be done. ”

Af­ter be­ing air­lift­ed to the Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex in Trinidad she was ad­mit­ted and dis­charged sev­er­al times with­out the surgery be­ing done. In April, hos­pi­tal of­fi­cials in­formed her that the surgery would not be avail­able any­time soon and she was sent back to To­ba­go.

“Here in To­ba­go they sent me home, all this while I kept telling them I felt that some­thing was not right be­cause I was in in­tense pain. At one point I went back to the hos­pi­tal I asked them to re­move the pin, in­stead, they gave me an Olfen shot and sent me back home.”

She said she de­cid­ed to seek help out­side of the pub­lic health­care sys­tem as no one was able to say when the surgery would be done and she could no longer bear the con­stant dis­com­fort.

“I had the pro­ce­dure done in April at a pri­vate hos­pi­tal in Trinidad and I re­turned to the Scar­bor­ough Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal for fol­low up care, but I still kept feel­ing a lot of pain and even­tu­al­ly I de­vel­oped a fever.”

Charles said in June things took a turn for the worse when the at­tend­ing doc­tor ad­vised that she was suf­fer­ing from a bone in­fec­tion at the site where the Stein­mann pin had been in­sert­ed and this was the cause of her nev­er-end­ing tor­ture.

“Doc­tors had to go back in­to the in­jury to re­move dead bone and tis­sue from the site, X-rays show that a hole re­mains at the lo­ca­tion. Since then I have had to go back in­to the in­jury sev­en oth­er times to clear away the in­fec­tion.”

Charles, who does not have a his­to­ry of di­a­betes said the site of the in­jury would oc­ca­sion­al­ly be­come swollen and be­gin ooz­ing, ac­com­pa­nied with with in­tense pain and this she said would sig­nal the need for in­ter­ven­tion.

“I sought a sec­ond opin­ion with a spe­cial­ist in Trinidad and they said I need surgery to ad­dress the in­jury,” Charles said thought the last 20 months would have been a ma­jor step to­wards cre­at­ing a bet­ter life for her­self and her eight-year-old daugh­ter.

But in­stead, the months have been a down­ward spi­ral as she has lost every­thing she ac­quired be­fore be­com­ing a fire­fight­er trainee.

“I was in­de­pen­dent be­fore the ac­ci­dent, had my own apart­ment and pos­ses­sions I ac­quired over time. I was bedrid­den for sev­en months; I have lost every­thing and my debts are mount­ing. I now have a job at a su­per­mar­ket but I have to be at the hos­pi­tal at least ten days out of every month.”

She said she is thank­ful for the sup­port of her moth­er through­out the or­deal, as in spite of many re­quests she has not re­ceived sup­port from any­one else.

“I ap­plied for rental as­sis­tance—noth­ing has ma­te­ri­alised. The Trinidad and To­ba­go Fire Ser­vice has aban­doned me, I reached out to the Chief Sec­re­tary An­cil Den­nis and the Sec­re­tary for Health Tra­cy David­son-Ce­les­tine with no re­sponse.”

She said par­lia­men­tary rep­re­sen­ta­tive for To­ba­go West Sham­fa Cud­joe did, how­ev­er, give her a one-time-use $500 food card, for which she said she was grate­ful.

Charles said she would ap­pre­ci­ate some as­sis­tance with ac­cess­ing the cor­rec­tive surgery she needs to rec­ti­fy the in­jury so she could re­turn to her nor­mal ac­tive lifestyle and be­ing able to care and pro­vide for her daugh­ter.

Sev­er­al calls to the Di­vi­sion­al Head of the Fire Ser­vice in To­ba­go, David Thomas for com­ment went unan­swered. Chief Sec­re­tary An­cil Den­nis said he was aware of Oni­ka’s case and based on his in­for­ma­tion “she would have re­ceived some as­sis­tance.”

He re­ferred us to the Sec­re­tary of Health Well­ness and Fam­i­ly De­vel­op­ment Tra­cy David­son–Ce­les­tine for fur­ther in­for­ma­tion.

When con­tact­ed, the Com­mu­ni­ca­tions arm of the Di­vi­sion of Health Well­ness and Fam­i­ly De­vel­op­ment stat­ed, “The hos­pi­tal is re­view­ing its records to make an in­formed re­sponse, since the re­quest from your news­pa­per came with­in a short time of your dead­line.”