Crippled mom needs help to raise funds associated with surgery

Ten months ago Martina Edwards walked into the Maternity Ward at Mount St. John’s Medical Centre (MSJMC) hoping to deliver a healthy baby girl, but something went wrong and today Edwards is crippled while she continues to grieve for her stillborn daughter, Eden.
The 34-year-old woman is getting ready for surgery scheduled for March 25 in Trinidad, and is praying that she would someday walk again. But for that to happen, she must raise US $7,300 and she is pleading for help to do so.
The Parham resident, whose life was turned upside down, said the cost for the surgery (more than US $27,000) is covered by Medical Benefits and her insurance. But the money from these sources is not enough for the related expenses of getting to Trinidad for the surgery and accommodation.
She provided documentation to support the estimates and the diagnosis which has caused her to lose her job and render her unable to take care of her five-year-old child.
The first diagnosis in December 2018 was from Belmont Clinic in Antigua where Dr. Eumel Samuel found “grade IV avascular necrosis of the right femoral head, associated with moderate edema of the gluteus minimus and the obturator muscle … in addition to grade 1 avascular necrosis on the left femoral head.”
The second one, done in Trinidad in February, showed “the right hip is completely destroyed with avascular necrosis and there are left-side changes suggestive of ongoing degeneration of that hip with a bone-on-bone appearance of the superior aspect of the joint.”
Dr. Araujo, an Orthopaedic surgeon, advised Edwards that she “needs hip replacement surgery on the right and left will need replacing as well” in order to regain mobility.
Edwards said anyone who wishes to help her regain a “normal” life and care for her child can contact her on 722-6499 or her aunt Collette Browne on 772-8042.
Chronicling how she got to where she is now, Edwards said in May last year she went to MSJMC to have labour induced according to schedule and in keeping with advice based on her being diabetic.
She said after labour was induced, she began encountering great difficulties because the baby, which was her second child, could not pass through the birth canal.
“I was in labour for a very long time and the baby was not coming from my birth canal. I requested to have a Caesarean section. They eventually prepped me to go to the theatre and afterwards everybody was waiting around. The baby was basically pulled from my body. She was really big. They were trying to resuscitate her but they didn’t save her,” she said.
According to her, the hospital had contacted a consultant to do the Caesarean section but he was told that the baby’s head had eventually passed the birth canal and the medical staff would proceed with vaginal delivery.
“He was on his way to the hospital but after he heard the baby’s head had come out he didn’t bother to come. The next day when I saw the consultant that’s what I was told. Since then I have been suffering from a lot of pain. I didn’t know what the pain was from for a long time. I had pelvic pain, I had pain in my legs,” she said.
By July 2018 she could no longer work, lost her job, had to get a caretaker and move from where she lived, and had to get relatives to assist in raising her first child, a daughter.  All the while the pain got progressively worse and when she queried whether being forced to deliver her baby vaginally was the right thing to do, she was reportedly told that the hospital “followed procedure”.
Once she got the avascular necrosis (AVN) diagnosis, she was also told that it could be linked to how she delivered the baby because the pressure caused the death of bone tissue due to interruption of the blood supply.
Edwards said she has been seeking legal advice, but for now her focus is on surgery and regaining mobility.