In an unprecedented public revelation, Opposition Senator Lambert Brown on Friday shared details of a medical scare that brought him to death’s door last September, and used his contribution to the State of the Nation debate in the Upper House to talk about the shortcomings in Jamaica’s health-care system, in particular a lack of beds.

But for the intervention of his daughter and two of his colleague Opposition senators, who shared his medical records with a doctor “behind my back”, Brown admitted that he may not be alive today.

While he was not his usual firebrand self, the heavyset Brown, looking several pounds lighter, used approximately half of his roughly 40-minute presentation to detail his frightening experience, which had the full attention of not just his fellow senators but the parliamentary staff and, safe to say, people listening or watching the proceedings on television or via the Internet.

About four minutes into his speech Brown told the presiding officer, Senator Tom Tavares-Finson, “Mr President, allow me in this presentation to be a little personal.”

He began by sharing that on September 18, 2023 he underwent a major operation and was hospitalised for two weeks.

“Since then, I’m slowly recovering, and hopefully one day I’ll be back to full strength,” Brown said, adding that he owed “more than a debt of gratitude to some people for the role [they played] in my presence here today”.

“I came pretty close to not seeing you guys at my funeral,” Brown said pointedly with the chamber going silent as he paused for effect before explaining that a misdiagnosis almost sent him to an early grave.

“The doctors missed the fact that my appendix had ruptured, and it had been so for more than a week, and the negative effect of that had begun to set in,” Brown shared.

In a telling demonstration that he had still not regained his strength, Brown leaned on the lectern at intervals for support as he gave his uncharacteristically short presentation.

His speech was punctuated with gratitude to the many individuals, among them his daughter and senators Donna Scott-Mottley and Sophia Frazer-Binns, whose timely intervention ensured he did not meet the Grim Reaper ahead of time.

He thanked them “for conspiring” — he later said for “collaborating” — with his daughter “behind my stubbornness to have Dr James ‘Jeff’ Liburd, who’s the husband of Senator Frazer-Binns, review my medical records after I was told I needed to be admitted to the hospital but there was no bed available”, he said.

“Not because I didn’t have money to pay for a bed. There was no bed available in the private hospitals, and the only place that would take me was the University Hospital of the West Indies,” he shared.

“They took me in the Tuesday about 1:00 am and they discharged me by 6:00 am Wednesday. I thought I was fine. I went home, struggling, but home and happy.”

Brown explained to the Jamaica Observer later that he had started feeling ill more than a week prior to being hospitalised — gripped by pain in his abdomen, diarrhoea, vomiting, and weakness.

In his address on Friday, the senator explained that while at home on Sunday, September 17, the day of the PNP’s annual conference, he got a call from Frazer-Binns’ number.

“I said, ‘Are you at conference already,’ but the person on the phone said, ‘No, Lammy, this is not Sophia, this is Jeff’ (Frazer-Binns’ husband).

“He said, ‘Lammy, I have looked at your records and you should not be at home, you need to be in the hospital now.’”

Brown shared that Dr Liburd told him that he had made arrangements for him to have a bed and he should go immediately to Andrews Memorial Hospital.

“I’m alive today, thanks to him and his intervention,” Brown said to applause from both sides of the chamber. He expressed thanks to Dr Baker for facilitating the hospital admission.

The senator showed some emotion when he talked about the lead surgeon who operated on him — Dr Lucien Tomlinson.

He said that, after being admitted to Andrews Memorial Hospital on September 17, Dr Tomlinson walked into his room on the 18th and asked him if he had got the news. “I said, ‘What news doc?’ And he said, ‘I just looked at your CT scan and you need immediate surgery.’”

This was 5:30 pm, a mere hour after the CT scan had been done.

Dr Tomlinson told him they were going in at 7:30, that’s how urgent it was, but the team ran into problems as Dr Tomlinson’s deputy, the anaesthesiologist, was out at dinner with his wife on her birthday. The deputy, however, cut the birthday celebration short and arrived at the hospital.

“The anaesthesiologist looked me in the face and said, ‘You must be important why I leave my dinner and come here,’” Brown recalled.

“I don’t know that I could be important on the gurney, but I knew they were going in,” Brown told his colleagues.

A significant portion of his presentation was dedicated to just saying thanks to Dr Tomlinson and his team, the management and staff at Andrews Memorial and the nurses “who treated me, the nurses who did some personal things that I couldn’t do for myself”.

Brown also thanked the technical team, those who administered CT scans, ultrasound and X-rays, the ancillary staff, the porters, his physiotherapist who he jokingly referred to as a ‘physioterrorist’ — Dr Savionne Francis — “for the tremendous work in restoring strength to muscles that had fallen”.

He expressed thanks to his Senate colleagues for being there during his most difficult hours with prayers, visits and kind words.

“The Minister of Finance [Dr Nigel Clarke] sent me a lovely bouquet, [Government Senator] Ransford Braham came and he prayed with me, [Government Senator] Kavan Gayle was also in touch, as well as Matthew Samuda and others,” he said.

He used the opportunity to assure the public that despite the vigorous debates on the Senate floor, which some people may take personally, they are friends who get along with each other.

He singled out Leader of Government Business Senator Kamina Johnson Smith, with whom he has had a testy relationship over the years, stating “Minister, I will not share with them our love letters.” The comment elicited laughter, including from Johnson Smith.

Brown also thanked his family and friends who were there with him for every moment of his illness and his colleagues in the University and Allied Workers Union.

He pledged to become a strong advocate for ending the practice of turning patients away from hospitals because there’s no bed.

“I’m not blaming the Government on one side or another. The reality is, all of us have left our people short, not because resources aren’t available, but our vision did not take into account the fact that every man and woman in this country who pay taxes, and their family, shouldn’t be turned away,” he said.

He noted that even during his illness he had to reach out to Senator Samuda to intervene in assisting his niece who had had a stroke and was at Savanna-la-Mar Hospital for three days “on the tough bench because there were no beds available”.

He concluded by telling his colleagues, “I got my flowers while I could still smell them. I heard the glowing tributes while I was alive. My day will come to depart, but it has not yet come”.

Additionally, Brown hinted that he is near to the end of his political career, noting that “this is likely to be my penultimate or very well my ultimate State of the Nation presentation”.

“I’m conscious that age and health have put me in the winter of my public service, so I am ready to move on whenever that time comes for me to move on,” he said, but quickly advised that he does not want the news headlines to say he has retired.

— Alecia Smith contributed to this story