A Point Fortin moth­er of three is walk­ing around with what she de­scribes as “a tick­ing time bomb” in her head and she is ask­ing for the pub­lic’s help to save her life.

Di­ag­nosed with a brain aneurysm, Pen­ni Beck­les-George needs to raise $200,000 for ur­gent life-sav­ing surgery.

“It’s a fear­ful thing be­cause I have three chil­dren so I don’t know when it could burst, it feels scary. It’s very scary to know that you have a bomb in your head and you not sure when it is go­ing to ex­plode,” sobbed Beck­les-George dur­ing an in­ter­view at her Co­conut Trace, Fan­ny Vil­lage, Point Fortin home.

She al­so has a brain tu­mour but at this stage, it is not life-threat­en­ing. Beck­les-George, 35, re­called that in Sep­tem­ber 2019 she was in the hos­pi­tal for an­oth­er con­di­tion when she sud­den­ly could not move her right foot or hand. Af­ter the MRI re­sults, she re­ceived the ter­ri­fy­ing news.

But, she had to do a cere­bral an­giogram to find the lo­ca­tion of the aneurysm. Since that test was not avail­able through the pub­lic health sys­tem, she ap­plied for fund­ing through the Min­istry of Health and last De­cem­ber her ap­pli­ca­tion was fi­nal­ly ap­proved and the test was done.

“I have to do two brain surgery but one of them is ur­gent. An aneurysm is some­thing that can burst at any time so I have to get the surgery done. How­ev­er, the lo­ca­tion of the aneurysm is not in a com­mon place, there­fore, I re­al­ly have to get it done through coil­ing em­boli­sa­tion and that is cost­ing a lot of mon­ey. If it burst, chances are I may not live. If I do live I may have a dis­abil­i­ty so I may not be able to do cer­tain things or talk again and things like that.”

She said Mt Hope Hos­pi­tal has the fa­cil­i­ty but not the equip­ment to do the surgery while the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal does not have the fa­cil­i­ty.

Beck­les-George said her con­di­tion is hav­ing a sig­nif­i­cant im­pact on her fam­i­ly and their qual­i­ty of life.

“I have three chil­dren ages nine, six and three-years-old. So I am not able to take care of them the way I am sup­posed to. They have on­line class­es and be­cause it is my brain I can’t fo­cus prop­er­ly so they can’t fin­ish their work as they should. I can’t play with them as I would like to. They like me to play with them and some­times I just can’t, I have to lie down. Some­times I feel dizzy. Every day I get headaches and I get pain on my right foot.”

Beck­les-George re­signed as a pre-school teacher when her el­dest child be­gan ex­pe­ri­enc­ing se­vere seizures. She and her hus­band Daniel George start­ed a decor busi­ness but be­cause of her ill­ness and COVID-19, their busi­ness took a nose­dive.

Plead­ing for a chance to live

She and her hus­band are ask­ing for any as­sis­tance pos­si­ble so she can live to spend more time with her chil­dren.

But Daniel, who lost his job at Trin­mar as a ca­su­al labour­er when Petrotrin closed its doors, said he felt un­com­fort­able ask­ing for mon­ey be­cause he usu­al­ly pro­vides for his fam­i­ly, but they need help.

“I un­der­stand that in this time there are a lot of peo­ple who don’t have an in­come and can­not af­ford to give, those who can we are just humbly re­quest­ing that you give some sup­port and prob­a­bly it may not be us di­rect­ly or some­body else might be in a po­si­tion to help you when you are in need.”

George said the Move­ment for So­cial Jus­tice arranged for them to meet with a lo­cal team of Cuban doc­tors but there were no pub­lic health fa­cil­i­ties for them to per­form the surgery. He be­lieves that if the bor­ders were open his wife would have been able to do the surgery in Cu­ba, pos­si­bly free of charge. He has since writ­ten to Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh ask­ing if they could fast-track and ap­prove their ap­pli­ca­tion for fi­nan­cial as­sis­tance through the min­istry since his wife’s surgery is sched­uled for March 22 at the Caribbean Heart Care fa­cil­i­ty in St Clair.

George has since ap­proached sev­er­al cor­po­rate bod­ies for as­sis­tance and sent let­ters to the Point Fortin May­or and Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment.

He has al­so set up Go­FundMe and Fund­MeT&T ac­counts, but so far they have on­ly raised $1,500.

Beck­les-George be­lieves that it is on­ly through the grace of God that she has sur­vived for so long.

“Please, any­body that can help me, any­one no mat­ter how much amount, any­one, if you can help me to save my life so that I could be able to take care of my fam­i­ly, my chil­dren.”

Any­one will­ing to as­sist can de­posit funds to FCB ac­count 2415961. The cou­ple can al­so be con­tact­ed at 309-1767.