Thankful to be alive
One minute Andrea Bailey was sitting in a packed barber salon and the next she was staring through the glass door at a gun pointed in her direction.
The 47-year-old woman was one of the victims shot on November 2, while at the King of Fades barber shop, in the annex of Sheraton Mall, Christ Church.
Her left foot is in a cast with fragments of the bullet still lodged in the calf and while there may be a long road to recovery since the bullet shattered the bone, Bailey is confident that she will recover, she told the Weekend Nation from her home earlier this week. After seven days in the Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Bailey recalled the horrifying incident which ended the exciting vacation plans she and her boyfriend had started to enjoy.
She was sitting inside the packed barber shop waiting for her partner to get his hair cut and
also timing the cleaning of her car next door at the auto spa. At one point, her boyfriend said he did not want to be in the shop because it was too full.
Then things started to unfold as Bailey observed three men walk out of the salon and one of them quickly ran back in.
“I said to myself, this very strange. Why he running in the barber shop locking the door. I looked at the door and saw a person wearing a ski mask. I cannot say if it was male or female, but I saw the ski mask and the person had a gun pointing.”
Bailey, who was sitting in the chair closest to the door, said before she could make a move she saw smoke coming from the gun.
“I felt a shift in my left leg, a heaviness and a burning, and I jumped up. I jumped up and said, ‘my foot’! It couldn’t move because it was broken so I had to hop to my boyfriend. I saw everybody hit the ground, but my boyfriend ran to me. I remember distinctly saying to him, ‘Babe, I got shot.
I got shot.’ He looked at me and took off his shirt and tied it around the wound and then he took off the cape and tied it below. When I looked down all I could see was a lot of blood and I started to feel real dizzy.”
It was then that her boyfriend lifted her to her vehicle and she started to shout for someone to drive them to the hospital. She said an employee at the barber shop jumped into the car, put on hazard lights and started to drive her there.
“I was telling him to drive and I was saying I can die. He told me ‘I got you, I got you, it’s going to be good’. When I finally get to the hospital I said to myself, ‘Thank you Jesus’.”
At the hospital she was informed that the bullet had struck her left inner calf, shattered and was still in.
“It broke my tibia and my fibula,” she explained, pointing out that the hospital did not have any rods or screws to put into the foot and informed her that they would have to be ordered. However, Bailey, who works in health care, said she dreaded having the rod inserted.
“I told them I don’t want the rods even though I would benefit from them and my recovery would be greater but long term I cannot take any more pain so the first thing I did was pray. I was in the hospital for a whole week. I was getting antibiotics three times a day, just to make sure I didn’t get an infection and then I was discharged with the plan of returning to the operations department. I went back on Tuesday for an x-ray and it showed that the bones are in alignment and the doctors could not believe that. The bones are lining up nicely and my wound is healing perfectly,” Bailey cheerfully said, adding, “God is good”.
As a result, a whole cast was placed on the foot.
She has also been able to keep positive due to the overwhelming love, support and good wishes from family, friends and workmates.
Bailey, who pointed out that she had a degree in criminology, is now focused on getting physiotherapy which would assist her in walking again and uplifting her 16 year-old son, who she said was absolutely affected by the incident.
“When I reflect on so many people who have lost their lives in recent times to gun violence, I say to myself, I am so lucky, I am so blessed. God picked me and He said my time on this Earth is not over,” she said.
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