RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Doc­tors in Colom­bia have up­dat­ed Chloe Ram­nar­ine’s di­ag­no­sis to ear­ly Stage 4 Hodgkin’s Lym­phoma, re­vis­ing the ini­tial Stage 2 di­ag­no­sis made lo­cal­ly.

Ram­nar­ine, 21, of Grand La­goon, Ma­yaro, touched the hearts of thou­sands of peo­ple last year af­ter Guardian Me­dia high­light­ed her strug­gles with can­cer. She has been un­der­go­ing tests and treat­ment at the Fun­dación San­ta Fe de Bo­gotá, a pres­ti­gious uni­ver­si­ty hos­pi­tal in Colom­bia, since ear­ly Jan­u­ary.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Ram­nar­ine said even though the can­cer was worse than she thought, her spir­its re­mained buoyed by the love and sup­port she con­tin­ued to re­ceive from peo­ple near and far.

“I am grate­ful to say that my treat­ment plan has been ad­just­ed to bet­ter suit my sit­u­a­tion and is aimed to en­sure my full re­cov­ery. I’ll be do­ing im­munochemother­a­py, fol­lowed by a PET scan, and then the bone mar­row pro­ce­dure will be sched­uled,” Ram­nar­ine ex­plained.

She added, “I want to again thank every­one who stood by me. Your gen­er­ous do­na­tions, your kind­ness and care, and words of en­cour­age­ment mean the world to me.”

Her moth­er, Thilly­er Ram­nar­ine, al­so said she was hap­py for the ex­cep­tion­al care her daugh­ter had been re­ceiv­ing so far.

“I am grate­ful that a team of spe­cial­ists is now guid­ing her treat­ment. The land­lords where we are stay­ing have been so kind, and even though our stay in Bo­gotá will be longer than we an­tic­i­pat­ed, we are com­fort­ed by their gen­eros­i­ty,” she said.

She al­so praised God that all their med­ical ex­pens­es were cov­ered.

“We re­ceived a US$10,000 grant from the Min­istry of Health, and this is what we are us­ing for the ad­di­tion­al ex­pens­es,” Thilly­er added.

She ex­pressed grat­i­tude to the team at the Fun­dación San­ta Fe de Bo­gotá, say­ing once all goes well, she and her daugh­ter will re­turn home by April.

Ram­nar­ine was di­ag­nosed with Hodgkin’s Lym­phoma in Feb­ru­ary 2023 when she dis­cov­ered a small lump on her neck. She had to halt her stud­ies in Com­put­er Sci­ence at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies as she un­der­went gru­elling chemother­a­py ses­sions. When the can­cer came back in March last year, she was ad­vised to seek bone mar­row surgery abroad.

Guardian Me­dia high­light­ed her sto­ry in De­cem­ber, and with­in weeks, donors raised the US$140,000 that was need­ed to fund her life-sav­ing surgery.