Still short on funds but cop with cancer prepares to fly to India - TT Newsday

POINT Fortin policewoman Zelia Christiana Castello, 27, who has cancer, is scheduled to leave for India on October 2, for what could be potentially life-saving surgery.

The officer is very short of the $1.4 million needed to offset the cost of her treatment, but despite this, Castello said she has to leave, because the chemotherapy treatment, which lasts for a month, is no longer effective.

It has been seven weeks since this municipal police officer, who worked at the Siparia Regional Corporation, had her last chemo treatment, and the symptoms of Hodgkin’s lymphoma have returned with full force.

My last treatment was seven weeks ago and doctors said there is nothing else they can do for me here.”.

The first procedure she will need once she gets to India, she said, is high-dose salvage chemotherapy, which is not done at the Indian hospital, but privately.