RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Chloe Ram­nar­ine, whose coura­geous bat­tle with can­cer has touched hearts na­tion­wide, is now call­ing for prayers as she trav­els to Colom­bia to­day for life-sav­ing surgery.

The 23-year-old, of Grand La­goon, Ma­yaro, was di­ag­nosed with Hodgkin’s Lym­phoma, a can­cer of the lym­phat­ic sys­tem, which forced her to pause her Com­put­er Sci­ence stud­ies at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies.

De­spite the chal­lenges, Chloe re­mains op­ti­mistic and will leave T&T at 3.18 am to go to Fun­dación San­ta Fe de Bo­gotá, a uni­ver­si­ty hos­pi­tal in Bo­gotá, Colom­bia.

Her moth­er Thilly­er Ram­nar­ine said Chloe is ex­pect­ed to un­der­go tests on Tues­day in prepa­ra­tion for the surgery.

“At this point, she just wants to go there and get over this,” she said.

Chloe said she was hap­py that she could fi­nal­ly get the surgery which costs US$120,000.

“I am pray­ing that all goes well. I want this to be over so that I can re­sume my life and go back to my stud­ies,” she said.

Al­though her fight is far from over, she re­mains con­fi­dent that all will go well. She thanked sup­port­ers and vol­un­teers who helped her to raise US$120,000 for the surgery.

“This jour­ney has shown me the good­ness in peo­ple. I know I can over­come any­thing be­cause so many peo­ple have prayed for me. I need your prayers now more than ever,” she added.

Chloe said she was ex­cit­ed for the jour­ney.

She was di­ag­nosed with Hodgkin’s Lym­phoma in Feb­ru­ary 2023 af­ter dis­cov­er­ing a small lump on her neck.

When she be­gan chemother­a­py, en­dur­ing gru­elling rounds of treat­ment, she con­tin­ued her stud­ies.

Last March, just two weeks be­fore her uni­ver­si­ty ex­ams, Chloe’s doc­tors de­liv­ered the dev­as­tat­ing news that the can­cer had re­turned.

She was told a bone mar­row trans­plant was her on­ly chance of sur­vival and im­me­di­ate­ly be­gan re­search­ing pos­si­ble op­tions, lat­er de­cid­ing on Fun­da­cion San­ta Fe Hos­pi­tal in Colom­bia be­cause of the lo­ca­tion and costs.