MORE than two weeks after a staircase on which she was sitting collapsed and left her injured, 59-year-old Althea McIntosh is still suffering from injuries to her back and the inability to fully use her hands.

On Sunday, November 17, McIntosh was sitting on the staircase leading from the second to the third floor at the front of a more-than-30-year-old apartment building in Torrington Park housing scheme in St Andrew when it gave way and crashed below.

Scratched, bruised, and in pain, McIntosh was taken to Kingston Public Hospital where she was treated then released the evening of the incident. Since then not only has her trauma lingered, but the pain from her injuries.“I can’t hold anything in my [right] hand, which is still swollen and hurting me. I can’t stand up too long, my knees hurt, as well as my back. I am also still feeling pain in my neck,” she told the Jamaica Observer on Monday.

McIntosh says she is most perturbed by the lack of mobility in her hand as this is preventing her from earning a living. She usually sells fruits in the market in downtown Kingston.

“I can’t work now. Christmas is coming, my birthday is coming. The 13th of next month I am 60 years old and it is hard for me to sit down and I am used to do my little hustling to hold my little money. I don’t like to depend on anybody; I like to have my own,” she said, adding that it is her children, who have children of their own to care for, who she now depends on for her survival.

“I still have to just thank God when they can help me with even a little food, but I still need help,” she added. She further declared that she would have loved to have been visited by Prime Minister Andrew Holness “even once” just to see how she was doing.

“Not because I didn’t break my hand or my foot, does not mean I did not deserve some attention from him. Suppose I had died? Would the response have been the same?” she questioned.

In a previous interview, two days after the incident, McIntosh had revealed that she was still reeling from her experience, which she said could have taken her life.

“I could have died; I am traumatised. It was a frightening experience. I have not been able to sleep. I am afraid to go up to my apartment,” she said then as tears welled in her eyes.

McIntosh recalled that she had been waiting on the steps for her 10-year-old grandchild, whom she had sent to the shop to buy rice, and upon his return, he witnessed her coming down with the steps.

“He is also traumatised. He has been crying non-stop and keeps hugging me,” she said.

McIntosh said that while she has been left with several bruises on her body, she is nevertheless grateful that her injuries were not worse.

“I have to give thanks to God. If I was standing, you see how I am big, my weight would probably come down on my legs and cause more serious injuries,” she said, noting that she narrowly missed steel piercing her leg, as it instead tore through a pair of shorts she was wearing. She had also hit her head during the ordeal.

Contractor Dockswell Construction, which has been selected to carry out the major infrastructural repairs to the deteriorating building, has since erected a temporary staircase to allow displaced residents to safely enter their apartments.

The temporary wooden stairs erected by contractor Dockswell Construction at the Torrington Park housing scheme in St Andrew, after the staircase gave way and injured a resident last month. Photo: Joseph Wellington