RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Moth­er of four Elo­ra Er­i­ca Grant fell ill on Wednes­day and had to be rushed to the hos­pi­tal af­ter ex­pe­ri­enc­ing breath­ing prob­lems.

Grant, who suf­fers from thy­roid can­cer, is still in need of over $17,000 to do a Ra­dioac­tive Io­dine Scan ( RAI) scan and treat­ment.

Since Guardian Me­dia aired her sto­ry two weeks ago, do­na­tions were made but this has not been enough to cov­er the cost of the treat­ment.

While doc­tors have con­firmed that the can­cer is ma­lig­nant, they can­not treat her un­til a scan is done to de­ter­mine the ex­tent of the spread. How­ev­er, Grant ex­plained that the RAI scan was cost­ly and she could not af­ford to pay for it pri­vate­ly.

In an in­ter­view, Grant said when she end­ed up in Ac­ci­dent and Emer­gency, she was told that the can­cer was caus­ing the breath­ing prob­lems.

While mem­bers of the pub­lic reached out to lend sup­port, Grant said more than a week lat­er, she still had not re­ceived the scan.

“We got an es­ti­mate for the scan to take to a doc­tor who called and it costs $17,000-plus. We got about 50 calls and about 200 peo­ple called to give reme­dies to treat can­cer,” she said.

Grant re­vealed, how­ev­er, that the hos­pi­tal au­thor­i­ties were not treat­ing her case as ur­gent.

“They are say­ing this is no emer­gency but I end­ed up in A&E. I couldn’t breathe. They said that I have sar­co­ma and this is why I am hav­ing breath­ing prob­lems. All my med­ical notes are in the hos­pi­tal. More lumps are pop­ping up and every day I feel sick be­cause they are not giv­ing me any treat­ment un­til the scan is done,” she said.

An es­ti­mate from a pri­vate hos­pi­tal in­di­cat­ed that a treat­ment course of ra­dioac­tive io­dine would cost $19,146 but with a con­ces­sion of $6,474, Grant would still need to come up with $12,672 for one dose of the ra­dioac­tive drugs.

She al­so needs $1,750 for a thy­roid func­tion test, thy­ro­glo­bin and an­ti-thy­ro­glo­bin an­ti­bod­ies, while a fur­ther $2,000 is need­ed for a whole-body scan.

Grant has al­ready un­der­gone sev­en CT scans and two surg­eries but the can­cer has con­tin­ued to spread. She has been to all the ma­jor pub­lic hos­pi­tals, in­clud­ing the San­gre Grande Dis­trict Hos­pi­tal, Ari­ma Hos­pi­tal, St James On­col­o­gy Hos­pi­tal, San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal and the Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex.

How­ev­er, be­cause the scan is not avail­able in a pub­lic hos­pi­tal, Grant has been strug­gling to man­age her med­ical bills. Her hus­band Christo­pher was forced to leave his job be­cause of fre­quent hos­pi­tal and clin­ic vis­its.

Any­one want­i­ng to as­sist Elo­ra can call her at 292-9697 or do­nate to First Cit­i­zens at ac­count #2972079.