News
Yvonne Webb
POINT Fortin policewoman Zelia Christiana Castello, 27, who has cancer, is scheduled to go away for India on October 2, for what may very well be doubtlessly life-saving surgical procedure.
Even although preparations have been made with the Apollo Hospital in India to begin her process, Castello informed Newsday on the weekend that she remains to be woefully short of funds.
The officer could be very short of the $1.4 million wanted to offset the price of her therapy, but regardless of this, Castello stated she has to go away, as a result of the chemotherapy therapy, which lasts for a month, is now not efficient.
It has been seven weeks since this municipal police officer, who labored on the Siparia Regional Corporation, had her final chemo therapy, and the signs of Hodgkin’s lymphoma have returned with full power.
“I’m three weeks off chemo. All the signs have returned: physique pains, muscle spasms. I can’t even maintain my spoon to eat. My palms shake like a leaf.
“My lymph nodes are swollen, my neck, everywhere is starting to swell up. I can’t hold on much longer, I really need to leave for treatment,” she stated. She revealed having to cancel preparations to go away in early September, owing to the dearth of funds. Without the therapy, “there may be each indication that I’ll I might die.”
Castello’s plight was first printed in Newsday on September 4, and the mom of a seven-year-old son stated the response to her enchantment was optimistic.
While she is grateful for the funds obtained to this point – $70,000 by a First Citizens checking account: 2283611, plus US$3,000 by a GoFundMe account – that is solely sufficient to begin the method. Her airline ticket to India has additionally been sponsored.
The illness has meant she is unable to work. “I have been under some financial strain, because cancer medication is expensive.” Her insurance coverage doesn’t cowl cancer.
She defined, in a earlier interview, that in January 2021, she was recognized with cancer of the lymphatic system, which is a part of the physique’s germ-fighting immune system. She was first handled at San Fernando General Hospital (SFGH).
“Chemo puts the cancer to sleep. It stays in the body for one month. As soon as the chemo wears off, the cancer wakes back up. My last treatment was seven weeks ago and doctors said there is nothing else they can do for me here.”
Castello stated the cancer has progressed to stage 4, which means pressing bone marrow transplant is what’s required.
The first process she’s going to want as soon as she will get to India, she stated, is high-dose salvage chemotherapy, which isn’t finished on the Indian hospital, but privately.
A US$15,000 down cost had to be made for this aggressive type of chemo earlier than the transplant will be finished. This entails eradicating the affected person’s bone marrow, clearing out the cancer cells and reimplanting it.
“Once this happens, I will be on my way to recovery and can live to see my son grow up,” she stated.
