Nursing multiple injuries, and facing mounting medical bills
–life couldn’t get more complicated for this 25-year-old

TWENTY-five year-old motor cyclist, Jesse Gibbs, injured in an accident with a car at Little Diamond, East Bank Demerara two weeks ago, remains warded at the Georgetown Public Hospital in a state of limbo even as the motorist who ploughed into him, totalling his motorcycle and leaving him indefinitely incapacitated, continues to drive as though it is ‘business as usual.’The accident was caused by an allegedly drunken motorist and happened in the wee hours of Sunday, April 21. Gibbs, who was struck on the knee and impulsively thrown off his cycle and into a clump of bushes, suffered an open fracture to his left knee, which, to date, remains bolted with steel.

His pillion rider, Marino Matthias, was thrust forward and ended up under the motor car, which almost dragged him to death, as the driver began to rev his engine preparatory to departing the scene of the accident.

He suffered a broken leg and burns to the head and face inflicted by the car’s radiator’s water.

Police visited him in hospital last Friday, two weeks after that accident, and he was made to understand that the errant vehicle has not been impounded for even one day.
Meanwhile, Gibbs remains immobilised, and can do nothing for himself. He continues to cry out in pain, and is scheduled to return to theatre for a second surgery, which will determine the outcome of his injuries. That second surgery had been scheduled for Tuesday, but has been deferred because of his elevated blood pressure and insufficient blood.

In the meantime, he is required to have several units of blood to adequately prepare him for the surgery. So far, he has been given one unit of blood, but with an ‘O-positive’ blood type, he is unsure of his chances at securing the remainder in the near future, especially now being unable to work and so cannot earn.

But even as Jesse Gibbs continues to languish on a hospital bed, the man who caused the accident has never once visited him in hospital, Gibbs disclosed. Gibbs said the offending motorist spoke with a relative, offering a negligible sum as compensation; but even that has, to date, has not been forthcoming.

Notwithstanding his confinement to bed, his regular daily expenses have not been minimized or even stabilized; rather, they have increased considerably, Gibbs reasoned. And with a wife and two infant children to provide for, he is at his wits end to face each new day.

Meanwhile, for as long as his blood pressure keeps going up, and his blood (hemoglobin) count remains low due to anemia, his chances of being admitted to theatre for his second surgery will remain minimal, further greatly compounding his present condition. He is, however, grateful to the doctors and nurses at the GPHC for their kind and attentive care.

In the circumstances, the injured man is calling on the offending motorist to ‘have a heart’ and to ‘let his conscience be his guide.’

(By Shirley Thomas)