KEVON FELMINE
kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

Af­ter strug­gling through hard­ship as a child, Kris­sa Bis­soon was fi­nal­ly see­ing the sun­light through the storm when she land­ed a job at a suc­cess­ful con­struc­tion firm in Nas­sau, Ba­hamas. 
That was in Feb­ru­ary.

How­ev­er, fate dealt a cru­el blow to the Ari­ma moth­er, who is now bat­tling cer­vi­cal can­cer. She now can­not get back home for con­tin­u­ing treat­ment as T&T’s bor­ders re­main closed. Get­ting out of the Ba­hamas be­fore the bor­ders were first closed on March 30 was near im­pos­si­ble, as it was a mere 24 hours af­ter she awoke from surgery at the Doc­tor’s Hos­pi­tal in Nas­sau.
She was dealt an­oth­er blow on Sun­day when Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley an­nounced the bor­ders would re­main closed un­til at least May 15 de­pend­ing on the find­ings of in­creased COVID-19 sur­veil­lance.
“I am 34 years old, no­body ex­pects that a lit­tle pain in your stom­ach would be can­cer. No­body ex­pects a pan­dem­ic to oc­cur and the whole coun­try shuts down. I can’t wait. What will hap­pen to me if I wait any longer and there is a sit­u­a­tion? I am in pain every day,” an emo­tion­al Bis­soon told Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day.
Six weeks have passed since she un­der­went a failed surgery that left her con­fined to bed in the Ba­hamas with no fam­i­ly around. Her hus­band and daugh­ter are home in Trinidad. Through the com­pas­sion of her land­la­dy, Bis­soon gets by. But with no salary com­ing in and the fi­nan­cial aid from her fam­i­ly run­ning low, she needs as­sis­tance. It will now cost ap­prox­i­mate­ly US$150,000 ($1 mil­lion) for Bis­soon to un­der­go an­oth­er surgery in the Ba­hamas. But her hus­band’s T&T in­sur­ance cov­er­age has been re­ject­ed by Doc­tor’s Hos­pi­tal and her doc­tor has now ad­vised her to re­turn to Trinidad for treat­ment.
“I need to come home be­cause I need to get my pro­ce­dures done. I start­ed some here: CT Scan and MRI,” Bis­soon said.

“I have eight weeks of ra­di­a­tion that was pre­scribed by my on­col­o­gist and I have six ses­sions of chemother­a­py. I am await­ing those costs. I al­so have an­oth­er surgery to do at Doc­tor’s Hos­pi­tal and that is ex­pen­sive.”

Bis­soon had worked as a quan­ti­ty sur­vey­or for the ex­ter­nal works dur­ing the ren­o­va­tion of the Red House and Ca­bil­do Build­ing with NH In­ter­na­tion­al be­fore leav­ing Trinidad. How­ev­er, be­fore she left for the Ba­hamas she felt a pain on the right side of her stom­ach and vis­it­ed a gy­nae­col­o­gist who did a pap smear that re­vealed ab­nor­mal cells. But she said her new em­ploy­er, SMG Con­struc­tion, want­ed her to start as a quan­ti­ty sur­vey­or ear­li­er than ex­pect­ed and she went to Nas­sau on Feb­ru­ary 12 and be­gan work­ing the fol­low­ing day.
Fol­low­ing her gy­nae­col­o­gist’s rec­om­men­da­tion, she sched­uled a biop­sy at the Ladies Me­di­al Cen­tre to de­ter­mine the cause of her un­nat­ur­al cells. Af­ter a month of resched­ules, she un­der­went the pro­ce­dure which left her bleed­ing. A few days passed and her con­di­tion wors­ened. Her land­la­dy took her back to the gy­nae­col­o­gist, who rec­om­mend­ed a blood trans­fu­sion and cone biop­sy. The pro­ce­dures were done and two weeks ago, Bis­soon was told she had can­cer.  
Even if her in­sur­ance cov­ers the cost of surgery, she is re­quired to fork out 20 per cent of the US$150,000 for the new surgery. 
“I am pay­ing for every­thing out of my pock­et at this time and it is ex­pen­sive here,” she said.

Bis­soon said she tried get­ting con­tact in­for­ma­tion for Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Stu­art Young to start a process for an ex­emp­tion to re­turn home but was un­suc­cess­ful. She al­so tried send­ing emails to the T&T Con­sulate in Nas­sau and the Con­sulate Gen­er­al in New York but both bounced back. She said when she con­tact­ed the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­istry in T&T, the staff told her to send a let­ter from her com­pa­ny stay­ing she was laid off.
“They said to me ‘you know the bor­ders are closed right?’”
The Ba­hamas has al­so closed its bor­ders to stem the COVID-19 cas­es and Bis­soon non-es­sen­tial ser­vices had al­so been shut down and her em­ploy­ers in­formed her that be­cause she was new they could not of­fer her a salary dur­ing the shut­down. 
“I asked whether they would pay rent or of­fer as­sis­tance through the pan­dem­ic. I had to fight and stand up and let them know that I am alone, I had no fam­i­ly here and they were leav­ing me strand­ed in a for­eign land. What am I to do?”
SMG ad­vanced Bis­soon part of her rental cost and told her to give half to her land­la­dy.

Bis­soon said there may be oth­er T&T na­tion­als in the Ba­hamas and hope­ful­ly they can pool re­sources for a flight back to Trinidad if and when Young re­sponds to her plight.