Every day, 20-year-old Derinique Smith, who spends most of her day in bed due to chronic weakness, hopes and prays the phone will ring and someone on the other end will tell her she can now come in and get the treatment she so desperately needs to battle her debilitating Crohn’s disease.
But there is no call.
There is no way of knowing when, or even if, there will ever be a call, but she remains hopeful.
The call she hopes to get would be from the Oncology Centre. The medication she needs can only be administered intravenously.
“I keep calling,” Smith told us.
“I called like three times one day and they told me, ‘It doesn’t make sense coming down here because we’re not accepting no one and there is no bed available.’”
And so, she just waits, weak, uncertain, but with strong faith that she will live to tell her story for a long time to come.
“I have family; I have about three aunties who work at the hospital who are trying to help me and they’re saying there’s nothing,” she said. “I am just hoping for someone to call and say, ‘Derinique, you can come for your treatment.’”
Getting a diagnosis that you have Crohn’s disease is a challenge under any circumstance. Getting such a diagnosis in the middle of a terrifying and unrelenting pandemic makes it that much worse.
Because of the strain COVID-19 is placing on the healthcare system in The Bahamas, Smith, who should be enjoying her youth and pursuing her dreams, is left barely able to walk.
“If I stay on my feet longer than 10 minutes, they get swollen to capacity, where I can’t walk,” she said.
After enduring months of migraines, insomnia and other horrible symptoms over the course of about six months, Smith finally got her diagnosis last December.
The Mayo Clinic defines Crohn’s disease as a type of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). It causes inflammation of the digestive tract, which can lead to abdominal pain, severe diarrhea, fatigue, weight loss and malnutrition.
Inflammation caused by Crohn’s disease can involve different areas of the digestive tract in different people. This inflammation often spreads into the deeper layers of the bowel.
Crohn’s disease can be both painful and debilitating, and sometimes may lead to life-threatening complications.
While there’s no known cure for Crohn’s disease, therapies can greatly reduce its signs and symptoms and even bring about long-term remission and healing of inflammation. With treatment, many people with Crohn’s disease are able to function well, the Mayo Clinic says.
But if an individual is not getting treatment, the quality of life does not improve, but is instead threatened further.
Smith said she went from 164 pounds to 98 pounds in several weeks.
It is hard to imagine all she has endured, both physically and mentally, especially given her inability to get medical attention with COVID-19 still raging.
Many other people suffering from non-COVID illnesses are also being placed on the back burner, shut off from care, abandoned, tossed aside; many feel forgotten and have no idea what will come next.
Speaking of the diagnosis, Smith, who was contacted by National Review after we learned of her challenges, said she felt relieved when her doctor identified what was causing her symptoms.
“I was happy that my doctor found out what it was because the challenges I was having before, the symptoms, I didn’t know … I was glad to know that I actually have something [to go on] and now we can work on treating it,” she said.
Smith admitted she was initially very afraid, but she said Dr. Marcus Cooper, the physician she was seeing for care, made her feel comfortable and assured that her illness was treatable.
She was placed on medications in pill form.
But an important treatment she now needs can only be administered intravenously.
“It is put through with IV. That is not a pill, so that’s why I had to go to oncology to go and take my medication, but when they said they don’t have [any] bed available, and they can’t accept me, I was hurt because I’m down bad, at my lowest, and I really need this medication,” she said.
Asked how it made her feel to keep calling and being told over the course of weeks that there is nothing that can be done for her right now, Smith said she sometimes feels incredibly discouraged, but holds strong to her faith and fights to remain positive.
“I’m hoping that I can get the treatment and hurry up and get better,” she told us.
“I know that they say there isn’t a cure for my disease, but my hopes are still up. I still believe that there’s a way and there’s a will. I need this medication to live. I lost weight. I don’t eat meals; I don’t have any appetite. I need this medication. It’s a need.”
We also asked her how she manages to stay positive at all under these circumstances.
“I pray,” Smith quickly responded with an assuredness that seemed to go well beyond her years.
“Every second I get, I pray. I just pray and I read my Bible and I ask the Lord for strength. I was supposed to be going back to school in January, but where I got so weak … I could barely walk to the bathroom. I could barely bathe myself. I just stay in bed all day. Now I’m bedridden.”
Others, too, are awaiting the call.
Last week, we told the story of Deangelo Cooper, a 36-year-old construction worker originally from Long Island, who has been waiting for someone from Princess Margaret Hospital (PMH) to contact him regarding a procedure he needs to identify why his blood count got so dangerously low that he collapsed on a job site in Exuma and had to be flown in on an emergency flight to New Providence on June 1.
Cooper was discharged on June 17 and is renting a place in New Providence as he awaits a call from PMH.
Dr. Cooper has seen many such cases during this pandemic, where individuals who should long have received care are just languishing without any certainty or help.
When we first spoke with him last October on the crisis non-COVID patients were facing, he said no doubt, there are people dying, not from COVID, but because of their inability to access care. Others die at home because they are too afraid to go into a hospital for fear of contracting the virus.
This is leading to what health officials identify as “excess deaths”.
Dr. Cooper said recently the oncology center is overwhelmed and is not taking any new patients, particularly patients who don’t have cancer, although they, too, are in urgent need of attention.
That has left Smith, the young woman with Crohn’s disease, without any immediate options.
While acknowledging she still gets scared sometimes, she said, “I’m just waiting. I’m thankful every day I wake up that I can open my eyes and know that God has given me a next chance and he isn’t done with me yet.”
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