PORTLAND, JAMAICA (VIDEO): 64 y-o Mom, BEVERLEY SOBAH says she will join dead son soon...Cancer patient's hope fades due to lack of radiation machine, money woes....the radiation machine at the Kingston Public Hospital (KPH) is not in working condition, Sobah is unable to do the required radiotherapy that could prolong her life.

 BY DONNA HUSSEY-WHYTE Sunday Observer staff reporter husseyd@jamaicaobserver.com  Sunday, January 11, 2015

BEVERLEY Sobah has hardly slept in the last five months.

She lies in bed staring at the ceiling, listening to the silence, lost in her thoughts. When that becomes monotonous, she will stand by her bedroom window staring into the still night at the grave of her son who died of cancer 13 years ago.

“Ricky, I will soon be beside you, because now I have cancer too,” she will say out loud. Last August, Sobah, 64, was diagnosed with carcinoma of the left parotid, a rare form of cancer that begins in the salivary glands of the mouth, neck or throat.

Beverly Sobah and her husband
 Seebert,who have been together
since she was sixteen years old, 
are a picture of grief as they
 try to stay strong.
 (PHOTO: GARFIELD ROBINSON)

However, because the radiation machine at the Kingston Public Hospital (KPH) is not in working condition, Sobah is unable to do the required radiotherapy that could prolong her life. A tearful Sobah told the Jamaica Observer last Wednesday that her fear had been made worse because she lost both her father and her son to cancer.

A blue and white grave at the back of her Grange Hill home in Portland is testimony of the 33-year-old son who died of bone cancer. She explained that about a year ago she noticed a lump at the left side of her neck. In August last year she visited the doctor and was given antibiotics and told that it could be her sinus draining.

However, upon completion of the medication the problem persisted. “I went back and told her to please give me something to go and do a test to see what is happening because my son died of cancer and my father died of cancer,” Sobah said. “She referred me to the ENT clinic at Kingston Public. more