In­nis Fran­cis

Guardian Me­dia cor­re­spon­dent

in­nis_fran­cis@ya­hoo.com

T&T’s ac­claimed co­me­di­an Tom­my Joseph has gone 180 de­grees since be­ing struck by a se­ries of ail­ments in 2022 as his fam­i­ly pre­pared for the worst.

Fol­low­ing his doc­tor’s dis­tress calls, Joseph’s fam­i­ly gath­ered at his bed­side and now he is re­cu­per­at­ing at his San Fer­nan­do home main­tain­ing a healthy di­et plan, rou­tine ex­er­cise, and abreast of all the cur­rent af­fairs.

He is al­so look­ing for­ward to cul­tur­al events, no­tably work­ing with the Kaiso House Ca­lyp­so Tent.

Health is­sues came up when Joseph had to be hos­pi­talised at the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal for flu­id re­ten­tion con­sis­tent with a heart con­di­tion.

While there, he was treat­ed for an ab­scess on his chest and a cere­brovas­cu­lar ac­ci­dent (stroke) to his en­tire left side.

Ab­sorbed by the dilem­ma, Joseph’s wife, Judy Bac­chus-Joseph, who spoke in an in­ter­view at their home in San Fer­nan­do, last week, said every­thing was sud­den.

She said in 2019 his job be­came re­dun­dant at 1.05 FM due to the COVID- 19 pan­dem­ic, where he was one of the co-hosts for Mixed Nuts Morn­ing Show along­side George Gon­za­les and Na­tal­ie Morales.

She said her hus­band’s bout of health is­sues was un­fore­seen and dis­tress­ing.

Bac­chus-Joseph praised the pow­er of prayers for her hus­band’s ini­tial re­cov­ery as it was shared by many; in­clud­ing his per­son­al physi­cian Dr Sudesh Bal­li­ram, and for­mer Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment and Cul­ture min­is­ter Joan Yuille-Williams.

She al­so said a lot of peo­ple did not know he had been ail­ing, but with the in­ter­ven­tion of prayers and the help and time­ly med­ical ap­point­ments, his re­cov­ery had been con­sis­tent.

“When he fell sick, I start­ed to end it in my mind and look at the worst case, he was wear­ing adult di­a­pers. He was talk­ing out of his mind, as they say, talk­ing about things when you ‘trav­el’. It is a mir­a­cle. Some­where along the line, some­body’s prayers were an­swered. We have good neigh­bors and well- wish­ers. We can’t for­get peo­ple like Clyve Main­got , Sher­win and Rhon­da Paul, Vidya, Shaquille Sparks, Keron “Shorty” Et­tianne, who lit­er­al­ly car­ried Tom­my on his back; we are eter­nal­ly grate­ful,” Bac­chus-Joseph said.

A for­mer sec­ondary school teacher, Bac­chus-Joseph said the task be­came gru­elling to get Joseph up and down the stairs of his Em­bacedere home. She said they had to ex­tend the liv­ing room in­to a tem­po­rary sleep­ing quar­ter for him.

Bac­chus-Joseph said she en­sured his com­fort af­ter be­ing dis­charged from the hos­pi­tal. She al­so said Joseph had to get a home hos­pi­tal bed, a wheel­chair, and a walk­er in ad­di­tion to his med­ical sup­plies, in­clud­ing a life­time of Xarel­to pre­scrip­tion med­i­cine.

Joseph, 69, re­flects on how dif­fer­ent his life could have been if he had heed­ed life’s signs.

He said: “I would be sleep­ing at nights and just get up, this was reg­u­lar. I feel that was a sign that some­thing was not right. And I would feel dizzy and very tired. I used to drink and smoke, but that was many years ago. I drop that.”

He now has to fol­low all the med­ical pro­ce­dures and reg­u­lar vis­its with a phys­io­ther­a­pist. He said the ther­a­py is still im­por­tant to his full re­cov­ery.

Joseph said: “I couldn’t talk, walk or re­mem­ber plen­ty peo­ple.”

Bac­chus-Joseph said: “The fam­i­ly are so grate­ful to every­one who helped and those who formed al­liances and host­ed fundrais­ers for Tom­my; it start­ed with Na­tal­ie (Morales) in Ari­ma, Je­re­my Richard­son and his co­me­di­an friends, and nurse Sha­nia Roach. Morel “Lu­ta” Pe­ters or­gan­ised shows in Port-of-Spain, San Fer­nan­do, and To­ba­go in col­lab­o­ra­tion with East­lyn Orr and Frank Mar­ti­no. Where sev­er­al of Tom­my’s friends per­formed, like pan­nist Dane Gul­stan, Crazy, Gyp­sy ,Pink Pan­ther, Dwayne O’ Con­nor and his son and Twig­gy. And in To­ba­go artiste like Prince Unique, Bind­ley B, and Leslieann Elis. A spe­cial thank you to Carl and Car­ol Ja­cob for Ca­lyp­so Blues, Ash­ford Jack for Apex in To­ba­go and, Ian Arther­ly for Arther­ly’s by The Park.”

De­spite be­ing a pub­lic fig­ure both lo­cal­ly and re­gion­al­ly, Joseph said his name weighed heav­ier than his bank ac­count.

He said com­ing out of the era of raw tal­ent and the gift he shared to make a name that was of­ten tak­en for grant­ed, he said the re­mu­ner­a­tion gains were em­bar­rass­ing.

He said: “We worked in an era where we didn’t get much mon­ey; a few hun­dred and a lot of sad sto­ries. I want to tell peo­ple in the en­ter­tain­ment in­dus­try to de­mand your re­wards. I am fo­cused now on mak­ing a full re­cov­ery be­cause it is un­com­mon for me to be home for this long time.”

The Joseph fam­i­ly thanked every­one who made mon­e­tary con­tri­bu­tions and prayed for him and ex­tend­ed an open door pol­i­cy if any­one wants to vis­it . Tom­my can be reached at 336-8655.