10-month-old needs open-heart surgery
Ten-month-old Jamelia Brown of Salt Spring, St James, urgently needs an emergency open-heart surgery.
Jamelia was diagnosed and shown to be suffering from several conditions, to include hypertrophic obstructive cardiomyopathy and severe supraventricular articular and ventricular stenosis.
“When we went to the Bustamante Hospital for Children, they told us that our baby is suffering from all those ailments. They said it is the first time they are seeing this obstruction in a baby. Her heart is swollen, and they don’t normally see babies with these problems,” Sasha-Gayle McCalla, the mother of Jamelia, told the WESTERN STAR.
McCalla is now seeking to raise funds to take young Jamelia to the United States to correct the problem.
“At Busta, they told us that she needs a heart transplant, and if we don’t do the heart transplant or the surgery, she is not going to have a long lifespan,” McCalla said.
McCalla said her daughter’s medical condition was discovered at six months old after she tried to remedy a nagging cold.
“During the process of checking her out, they (the doctors) said they heard a murmur on her chest which sounds like she has a hole in the heart. While we were scheduled to do an echocardiogram on July 13, she had a heart failure but regained consciousness the following weekend,” McCalla said.
Before her daughter’s heart problem, McCalla was gainfully employed in the tourism sector, but she has since been forced to stay home and provide care for her.
She said young Jamelia has been accepted at the Hartford Children’s Clinic in Connecticut, but the cost to do the procedure will not be known until an initial assessment of her condition is done upon her arrival in the United States.
McCalla is seeking the public’s assistant to cover the cost of airline tickets, US visa fees, and pocket money for the preliminary visit in the US.
To assist Jamelia to recover from her heart condition, persons can make a donation at the National Commercial Bank, St James Street branch, Account # 435734235, in the name of Sasha-Gayle McCalla.