Kidame loses 3-year battle with illness

After years of suffering, Kidame Kingman will feel no more pain. The 13-year-old student died last week Friday, January 11th, at the Milton Cato Memorial Hospital in Kingstown.{{more}}

Kidame, who had been diagnosed with an inflammatory myofibroblastic tumour, had been sick for over three years, her father Maliki Kingman told Searchlight. The teenager had undergone numerous operations and had to be fed liquids through a feeding tube.

The former St. Joseph’s Convent Kingstown student had travelled to Vermont in the United States of America in May, 2006, hoping for a cure. This, however, was not to be.

“She went through a lot of suffering – pain day and night,” said the grieving father. Maliki Kingman is no stranger to loss, having lost two other children while they were newborn, and his wife, Kidame’s mother, when Kidame was just two years old. He is now left alone with only memories.

“I am barely holding up. I can’t eat, can’t sleep. I just lie here staring at her pictures,” the heartbroken man told Searchlight, admitting that his only consolation now is that she is out of pain.

The Calder resident, however, expressed his thanks to all those businesses and individuals who reached out a helping hand to Kidame, including Searchlight newspaper, C.K.Greaves & Co. Ltd., LIAT, Hadley Blooms, St. Vincent Motors Ltd., St. Vincent Packaging Ltd., La Chic Salon, St. Joseph’s Convent Kingstown, the Girls’ High School. He also extended a special word of appreciation to the doctors and nurses of the Milton Cato Memorial Hospital.

Kidame will be laid to rest at the St. Joseph’s Cemetery at Stubbs on Monday, January 21, following a funeral service at the New Testament Church at Calder at 3 p.m.