Latest update April 25th, 2024 12:59 AM
Mar 09, 2013 News
Another complaint about a popular herbalist that goes by the name of ‘Sister Lynn’ has surfaced. This time, a Corentyne woman is claiming that her son started to vomit blood one day after using liquid bottled concoctions that she purchased from the herbalist’s Number Two Village, East Canje clinic in December.
According to Esther Tickchand, the treatment was supposed to have been for skin cancer and resulted in her dishing out US$1100 [$220,000] to the herbalist, who refused to repay any money after the vomiting episodes and allegedly chased her out of the clinic.
Tickchand said that her son, Joshua, 19, had a skin condition. “He had some black spots coming out of his skin”, she stated.
The boy visited numerous doctors who agreed that he had an allergic reaction “and they were treating him”. But it so happened that one night while enjoying an evening with the family, Tickchand was channel surfing and there was self- proclaimed herbalist Sister Lynn (whose real name is Lurline Smith) on the television hosting her Live TV herbal call-in programme.
She decided to take her son to the clinic at Number Two Village on December 12, last, “and when she [Sister Lynn] looked at him, she said that the boy does not have a skin problem—he has a skin cancer”. She told the herbalist that the boy had visited five doctors, [one at] N/A Hospital, Dr. Anamayah, Dr. Walter Singh, Dr. Narine, and Dr. Balwant Singh and “all of them said it was the same problem and he was on a tablet called Prednisolone”. She stated that it “kept the spots down but the spots did not disappear. That was the reason I took him to [Sister] Lynn”.
He would usually have high fever and headaches when the spots would appear on the skin, “and when I carry him to Sister Lynn, she said that the boy has skin cancer, so I started to cry and told her that it was not possible…so she said that the doctors want to ‘hang their mouth’ and that she (is) trained and certified to treat cancer and that she would treat him three-month treatment and the boy would get better”.
Tickchand then enquired how much the treatment would cost, “and she told me US$1100. Then she said it will be another next $29,000 separate for three cancer injections and some cancer pills”. The woman doled out the $29,000 the very day and paid the $220,000 the following day.
The treatment comprised of several one- liter water bottles filled with liquid, one marked ‘Herbal tea’, tube creams, etc.
During the second day of treatment, the boy started to vomit blood. “I went back and told her and she said that she cannot do anything about that and those drugs are expensive. So I asked her to return some of my money but she did not want to do that”.
Upon advice from family members, she was asked to do a biopsy to determine whether the teen had skin cancer, which she later did with Dr. Motilall at the Anamayah Memorial Hospital in Corentyne, on December 15, 2012. The results proved negative.
“So I went back and told her and showed her the results and she started to threaten me to get out of there because I ‘do not know she is who and that she deals with Maccabee bible and that she can appear and disappear’.
“But I know she was just trying to scare me to get out of there”. Repeated attempts to reason with Sister Lynn to collect back some of the money proved futile and Tickchand then made a report at the Central Police Station. “There was not [any] justice there and they told me that I have to go take a private action [lawyer]”.
However, the woman said that taking a lawyer to sue Sister Lynn for receiving money under false pretence would be too expensive, given that she already dished out US$1100 for the treatment.
‘She ripping off a lot of people because afterwards then I get to hear…that people telling me that she is a fraud and not only here—Georgetown too—Also I was made to understand that she did it to another man in the next village- -she took almost $249,000 from those people and almost killed the man too”.
When contacted, Sister Lynn stated that Tickchand “is a lying, wicked bitch”. “It get some very wicked people—I have clients who can tell you about me”, she stated. She noted, too, that she never told Tickchand that the boy had skin cancer, rather that the black lesions could become cancerous and prescribed the concoctions and treatment.
“People come to me—no one is forced to come to me because they visit all the doctors and when they get fed up they come to me”. Sister Lynn stated, too, that she is an “indigenous lady and I have a right to practice my indigenous rights”.
The Guyana Association for Alternative Medicine has distanced itself from some self-proclaimed herbalists.
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