THE many offers of help came too late for Juliet Codling.

By the time most Jamaicans read of her need for $1 million for a hip replacement in this week’s Sunday Observer, Codling — the 53-year-old woman who spent more than a year in the University Hospital of the West Indies (UHWI) — died at approximately 4:30 that morning.

Her passing, while painful for her family, has shocked them.

Codling’s son-in-law, Vivian Hosang, was unable to hold back the tears as he told the Observer of the final hours he spent with her.

According to Hosang, he went to the hospital last Saturday morning to pick up his mother-in law, as she was being discharged.

However, he said that when a porter lifted her off the bed and put her in a wheelchair “she started screaming out for pain”.

He said that eventually a doctor instructed that Codling, a sickler, be taken to do an X-ray, as she was complaining of a pain in her back.

At that point, Hosang said, he left the hospital and took her belongings to their home in the Mountain View area of Kingston.

“I said if anything I would just bring back whatever she needed because she was supposed to come home.,” Hosang said. “Later in the evening she called and asked if I could come up there; that was about 3:00, and I went and stayed with her until about 7:30 pm.

“The whole time she was in pain. They tied her arm up and gave her an injection. I asked what they gave her but nobody was explaining anything. She was in excruciating pain. In the night, she held my hand and asked me to pray for her and I prayed with her. But before I left she was asking if I could spend the night because she didn’t want me to leave her. But I told her I had to go home. I told her I would be back first thing in the morning,” he said, his voice breaking.

“The last thing I remember is that they put a patch on her shoulder and she started dozing off. So I said yes, the patch was easing the pain and she could get a little bit of rest. I told my wife that nobody should call her until she called us because she needed the rest,” Hosang said.

But early Sunday morning, Hosang said, he received a phone call from the hospital asking him to come in.

“When I got there no one wanted to explain anything to me,” he said. “They [nurses] told me I had to speak with the doctor. So I was thinking, because she was in my care they wanted to admit her again after the X-ray and they wanted my consent to do whatever they would do to her while she was there. When the doctor told me she had passed away I was in shock. It really took me by surprise because I couldn’t believe this.”

The Observer tried to get a comment from the UHWI, but was unsuccessful.

Codling had been in the hospital for the past 15 months after undergoing surgery for osteoarthritis in both her hips in 1997 and 1998.

“Everything was fine. But after 10 years you have to do it over. So because it wasn’t done over, the bone got brittle, so that is why I got a fracture too. So when they go in now they have to put in bone and so,” she told the Sunday Observer last week.

A letter from an orthopaedic resident at UHWI confirmed that Codling had sickle cell disease and needed of a post-bilateral total hip replacement.

The letter also stated that Codling had a left periprosthetic fracture.

The surgery, if successful, would have allowed her to walk again, and finally leave her hospital bed. But Codling just couldn’t find the $1 million needed for the operation.

After her story appeared in the Sunday Observer, many readers offered to help.

On Monday, Hosang appealed to those persons to assist with her burial.

“Her financial situation was tough because of the amount of medication that she had to buy and so on,” Hosang said. “So we are still asking for your support.”

Juliet Codling in her hospital bed last week. She spent 15 months in the hospital before passing last Sunday morning.