The differences between 30-year-old Petra Gooding, a mother of Christ Church, and many other parents are clear.
For one thing, while some adults, faced with the challenge of life or death of a child, would contract like a shrinking violet, this Bajan uses her quiet demeanour and steely backbone to telling effect.
For another, eschewing aggressive language, she speaks calmly about her disagreement with the United States immigration authorities over a visa extension; and now that Washington has granted her a last-minute extension of the time she may remain in the country at the bedside of her seven-year-old daughter Niamh Stoute, Gooding is taking things in stride.
Relieved
“Thank God! I am relieved,” she said to the Sunday Sun after getting the good news.
Next is the nature of Niamh’s health problem. Without appearing to be an expert on the rare form of cancer that made the student of Charles F. Broome Primary School gravely ill, Gooding can relate with clarity many of the details of both the manifestation of Stage 4 neuroblastoma, a condition that spawns massive and painful tumours across a child’s abdomen, the mother can provide chapter and verse on what’s happening to the youngster.
“The doctors describe it as a secret cancer; it doesn’t show itself until it is cresting on a nerve or against an organ, causing havoc in her tummy. Since we were in the United States, beginning November 21st, she went through six rounds of chemotherapy. Then she had surgery that lasted for 11 hours, and she remained in the hospital for eight weeks.
“After the surgery she had a break; and she recently underwent high-intensity chemo and stem cell transplant. This is a very high dose of three different chemotherapy treatments on consecutive days.
“So, she is trying to fight her way back to recovery from the chemo which wipes out all of her [blood] count. She is very ill and you have to do everything for her.”
But that’s not all about Gooding and Niamh.
The mother has proven to be media-savvy, deftly handling television and newspaper interviews; so much so that Bajans quickly garnered widespread public sympathy across Georgia and the country for their case of the “foreign mother who may be sent home while child is treated for cancer” stays behind, as a major newspaper put it.
“The media exposure really helped,” Gooding said, “because before the stories appeared I was getting a lot of turnaround from immigration, and it would have come down to having to leave the country, come back and try to re-enter the United States and get a six-month stay.”
Now, Gooding is concentrating on her daughter’s care at the Children’s Heathcare of Atlanta’s Aflac Care Centre while thinking of how she and her immigration attorney Bernadine Layne, wife of Dr Edward Layne, Barbados’ Honorary Consul in Atlanta, would handle the next application for extension.
November date
“Niamh’s treatment is until June next year, but we have until November this year to be in the country,” Gooding explained.
The decision to turn to the United States for treatment came on the advice of an oncologist in Barbados. While the chemotherapy and other forms of treatment on the island are for nine months, in Atlanta they last for 18. Missing in Barbados are the high-intensity chemotherapy and the stem cell transplant.
Costs being met
“It should be noted,” Gooding explained, “that we have American health insurance provided by my husband’s employer Fed-Ex. And while I have to make co-payments, most of the costs of the care are being met by the insurance.”
Then there are the out-of-pocket expenses she incurs while living in Atlanta. Thanks to the generosity of Barbadians at home and in America, many of her daily expenses are met.
“Basically, I live with Niamh at the hospital, but, when I am not there I stay with a cousin,” Gooding added.
In essence, mother and child are not what officials call a “public charge”, meaning that she isn’t relying on Government assistance – in violation of immigration laws.
“My life is there in Barbados,” said Gooding who has been separated from her husband and a two-year-old son for nine months. “We really want to get back to Barbados.”
The one thing driving Niamh and Gooding through this whole ordeal is that “we are closer to getting back home”.
