Season of sadness - Dengue robs daughter of spending Christmas with dad

“Tell me babymother seh mi soon come and that she mus kiss Shackay for me.”

Kemar Bailey, a resident of Dalvey in St Thomas, was confident that he would overcome dengue. He told relatives last Sunday that he would get out of hospital soon.

But Kemar, 36, like more than 40-odd other Jamaicans in the past year, did not make it. He died on Tuesday, December 3.

With his untimely death, a four-month-old baby girl has been robbed of the experience of spending Christmas with her daddy. Also left in sorrow during what is usually celebrated as a festive season, is Bailey’s other family members, including his mother, who lives overseas.

“His mother is taking it real hard because she lost a son two years ago to gunmen and now Kemar to dengue,” Denise Lindsay , a relative, told THE WEEKEND STAR.

“It real hot cause just as we are about to heal from that loss, this come, so we won’t have a nice Christmas at all. We are going to be in mourning,” said Lindsay, a resident of Dalvey in St Thomas.

Lindsay told THE WEEKEND STAR that on November 25, Kemar returned from a construction site on which he was working and complained that he was feeling unwell. She said the following day, he told the family that he had the flu and was treating it as such. This was until he “began feeling pain all over his body”, said Lindsay.

Treatment

Kemar sought treatment at the Isaac Barrant Health Centre in Hampton Court, St Thomas, and was referred to Morant Bay Health Centre. After consultation there, he was sent to the Princess Margaret Hospital in the parish where he was diagnosed with dengue. He was then admitted.

“We visited him on Saturday morning and talked with him. I asked him what the problem was and he said they did the blood test and he said it showed that he has dengue. I asked where hurting him and he said all over the body … I asked what they gave him for it and he said Cetamol and he was also wearing a drip.

“We visited again Sunday evening. He was laying on his back and said he was very weak and that he wasn’t eating because he had no appetite, he was just drinking water. He was vomiting and when I looked on it, it was clear and frothy. I asked what they gave him and he said they gave him two injections and said he wouldn’t vomit anymore,” Lindsay shared.

“When we were leaving, I told him to take it easy and that we weren’t going to come on Monday but that we’d see him on Tuesday. He said: ‘Yea man, mi soon get better and come out. Tell me babymother seh mi soon come and that she mus kiss Shackay (his daughter) for me.” Those were his last words to her.

However, when another family member went to look for Kemar on Monday, December 2, his condition had worsened.

“Another aunt went to visit him and realised that he was very weak and couldn’t help himself to the bathroom, so she asked that he was transferred to KPH (Kingston Public Hospital) and they said there’s no need for him to be transferred. When I called him later that day to check up on him, he told me that they gave him blood and charged him $4,500 for it, even though they had not contacted us about it,” Lindsay said.

Later that day, the hospital called Kemar’s mother, who is abroad and told her that he got worse so they have to take him to KPH. When he reached there it was 4 a.m. on Tuesday and the next call we got was to say we needed to come by urgently.”

Calls to his phone went unanswered as the worried family members made their way from St Thomas to the hospital in Kingston.

“When we reach, they put us in a room and tell us that he was losing blood because of dengue. We asked if we could see him because we didn’t believe that Kemar gone. Him baby a turn five-months next week … Him only child. His mother all end up (at the) doctor and we just nuh know because we just a get over his brother’s murder. Now in Christmas, we have to be planning another funeral.”