IT’s a new year, but Kingston residents Georgia Wood and her daughter Shushanne Johnson, 24, who are battling lupus and hypothyroidism respectively, are still trying to make ends meet.

In the first few weeks after their story was told in the Sunday Observer on November 5 last year, help poured in for medication and other needed supplies.

For a while, they looked to have been making inroads in their bid to get a handle on their illnesses and their overall poor financial situation.

“In the first half, things really looked hopeful. With the help from Mr Ennis from Georgia, we were able to buy Shushanne’s glasses (at a reduced cost at Broadbent),” Wood told the Observer on Tuesday. “Monique Cassanova, she gave some money, and we used it to help purchase medication for Shushanne. Miss Madden from GraceKennedy also purchased $10,166 worth of heart medication for Shushanne.”

Wood smiled as she relived the hope that typified that period, adding that help came from a number of other kind persons – Pastor Winston Grant out of the US, a local councillor and his wife, as well as from teachers and students at Dunoon High School where Shushanne was a student.

It is help for which Wood and Johnson have expressed deep gratitude.

“I am feeling overwhelmed,” Johnson told the Observer in the week following the November 5 article, noting the help that she and her mother had received.

“Mi want yuh see mi. Mi eye dem a go in and mi jaw dem a full out back. Mi just feel happy and glad and everything. Mi feel like a new me. Mi neva used to talk and now mi just a chat suh,” she added excitedly.

Unfortunately, however, the help was not enough. Now, more than two months later, while still optimistic, Johnson has begun to lose weight again, even as the swelling at her throat is becoming a little more pronounced each day.

Her condition is not helped by the fact that she is stressed by her inability to work to help take care of her two children – Jataya, 2, and Jashana, 3.

Her mother attested to this.

“In November to December, she was looking much better but because it coming back to school now and there is no money to send the kids to school, it’s like she stressed out again,” Wood said.

Meanwhile, as part of their efforts to mitigate the stress on the family, in December they had to send Shushanne’s sister’s daughter, Shennel Williams, to live with her paternal grandmother.

The tuition for Shushanne’s two little girls is $25,000 each, excluding the weekly cost for lunch.

The children’s father is not in a position to take the little girls – much to the annoyance of a frustrated Shushanne, who is eager to be able to afford surgery on her thyroid gland so that she can work.

But with surgery estimated to cost anywhere between $20,000 and $100,000 or more, that has become a distant dream.

At the Kingston Public Hospital, where Shushanne has been going for treatment, the downpayment for admission is $8,000 while the downpayment on the surgical fee is $12,000.

“Mi just want to do the operation and get it over with, but that not possible until everything stabilise,” she said, noting that not only did they not have the money, but also that her body was not ready.

“The last blood test I did shows everything is out of range.,” she explained. “They can only increase the medication and I was like taking 30 tablets but (after) the chest infection clear up it was 21. Now it is back to 27.”

What Wood and Johnson contend with as matter of immediacy is being able to meet their daily expenses – including the cost of keeping themselves and the children fed and the little shop they operate in stock.

There is also the matter of a $7,000 hospital fee that has been owing since December.

With the cards appearing stacked against them and without family support, the duo is asking for a little more help.

“We received some help, but if we receive some more it would be much better,” said Wood. “We really appreciate the help that we got, but we will need some more.”