Brain tumor infant passes away -- before undergoing life-saving surgery in Trinidad & Tobago
Written by Jeanna Pearson, Friday, 23 August 2013 22:46, Source
FIVE-year-old Bibi Mohamed, who made headlines after she was diagnosed with a severe brain tumor and was scheduled to undergo a direly needed surgery at the St. Clair Medical Centre in Trinidad, was buried early yesterday morning after her parents found her dead in her bed on Wednesday.
Five-year-old Bibi Mohamed and her mother, Tyjawattie Mahadeo.
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Bibi was expected to undergo surgery next Thursday. The news of her situation travelled quickly, and soon people from everywhere were donating money for the critically needed surgery, following pleas to help save her life made by her parents in the media.
“I’m building she home now,” Bibi’s father said, and started to cry early when this newspaper visited the home, early yesterday morning. Family members and friends were building a box in which to place the young girl’s body. Her father was decorating the edges with white lace. “I never got to build a house for her; now I’m building her first house,” he tearfully said.
Tyjawattie Mahadeo, Bibi’s mother, was inconsolable as the girl’s aunts dressed the body. “It’s never going to be okay…it can never be okay,” she said, weeping. She recalled that the night before Bibi died, the girl was complaining about a headache. “I gave her tablets, and the next morning when I wake up fa give she tea, she wasn’t moving,” Bibi’s mother cried.
She related that at that moment she had begun to shake the child, not accepting that she was dead. “I shake her and then when I see she ain’t waking, I started to scream and cry.”
That same Wednesday, the family had planned to buy the tickets for her flight to Trinidad. “WE get through with the money. People help…but…”
At the age of three, the young girl was diagnosed with the tumor, and had undergone a surgery at the Georgetown Public Hospital (GPHC) in 2011, where a portion of the tumor had been removed. But life took a sudden twist for the once high-spirited girl. A few weeks ago, after consulting doctors had discovered that the tumor had become enlarged, they authorized an immediate surgery to save her life. Bibi was never told that she had enlarged tumor in her brain. All that her father had told her was that she should behave and be a good little girl because she was sick.