Dr. Cuellar Spent His Last Days Thinking About Belize

Last night, we told you about the untimely passing of Belize’s beloved Doctor Fernando Cuellar. Today, his siblings spoke with News Five about his final moments. Judith Cuellar, Doctor Cuellar’s sister, says her family has been receiving an outpouring of condolences and well wishes. She says that while they are unable to respond to every message and call, the family is comforted by the overwhelming expressions of support. And they wanted the public to know that Doctor Cuellar had all intentions of fighting to overcome blood cancer. Judith Cuellar says her brother’s sole concern was getting back to Belize to be with his children and patients and the Belize Medical Associates. Here is more of what she told us.

 

Voice of: Judith Cuellar, Sister of Deceased

“Tony as he is better known was kind of private when it came to certain things. He was also our eldest brother. So we looked to him for guidance and he would let us know if he wants us to know about certain things. So, we knew he was having health issues and he discussed some of those health issues with us. To me as a critical care nurse, my brain is going a mile a minute. It could be more. He finally called me on the twentieth of March saying he needed my help. My brother never asked for help. So that brought alarm bells. He flew up to California on the twenty-third. From the moment I saw him I knew something was wrong. He had back problems and pain was the major issue. He just wanted the pain to go away. So I took him to the hospital because we wanted to see if they could help with the back and do anything for the back and sure enough he underwent the surgery and it turned out he had three fractures in the back. This man was living with three fractures, seeing patients and still going about what he does best, not taking any pain medication at all. We managed to fix the back with Dr. Jackson, one of our orthopedic surgeons here. But the blood work came back and it was not normal. So we started to decipher what that meant. We took a bone sample and the diagnosis of T Cell Lymphoma came back and that is a very rare form of cancer. So, he was special to the end. If anybody is to get it Tony got it. So they started aggressive chemotherapy and unfortunately the chemotherapy does its job which is to shut down the body systems and we gave other medication to reboot. And that is where we ran into trouble. His body wouldn’t reboot and with that we dealt with the issues of him quickly. Us as siblings, we are still grappling with it. We are comforted by the fact that he had discussions about not wanting to suffer. He had discussions about not wanting aggressive treatment in the form of artificial life support and things of that sort. And up to the end he was actually negotiating with the doctors what he would allow and true to the end, we will do this and I will give you two days. And that is true to his form until the bitter end.”

 

According to Judith Cuellar, Doctor Fernando Cuellar’s wishes was to be cremated. Following that process, she intends to travel back to Belize, with his remains, to join Belizeans in a celebration of his life.