At 37, Lovina Flood made a promise to God — and kept it.

She was sick in hospital, fearful she wouldn’t make it through. She prayed.

“I promised God that if I did get better I would dedicate myself to helping the sick,” said Ms Flood, now 83.

“Today I stay busy visiting the sick. I’ve probably seen 100 patients over the years.”

People with newly fitted ostomy bags were her focus. She helped found the Ostomy Association of Bermuda and served as its president, representing the charity at numerous medical conferences overseas.

“Getting an ostomy bag is a very difficult surgery, emotionally,” she said. “A lot of people need help afterward and advice.”

When she visited patients at King Edward VII Memorial Hospital, she’d often find them in bed with the sheet pulled over their head.

“I think they don’t want to face it,” she said.

She recalled one man who got sick while on a cruise to Bermuda with his wife.

“He busted a gut,” she said. “That was rough for him. When you’re on a cruise you don’t think you are going to be sick like that.”

Many people had their intestines damaged in cycle accidents.

She tried to offer words of comfort.

“I want to give hope,” she said. “I believe in prayer but I don’t believe in throwing prayer at people. I give them advice. Many of them are gone now. That’s very difficult, but I find I have to do something — it could be just cooking a pot of soup for someone. I get healing from doing that. If I went to the hospital and didn’t like someone’s slippers, I wouldn’t say anything, just the next time I’d take them a pair. Maybe that is why the good Lord has kept me around so long. I just enjoy doing for people.”

Ms Flood said helping people through such experiences has made her more appreciative of life.

One of her passions was singing with St Paul AME choir.

She was recognised for her service to it, in 2005.

“I stopped singing about three years ago,” she said. “My daughter, Wendy Robinson, followed in my footsteps. She sings and she is in charge of a band.”

Ms Flood has five children: Anthony, Terry, Wendy Robinson, Tyrone and Timothy. She also has 19 grandchildren and 19 great- grandchildren.

“I wanted another daughter, but it wasn’t to be,” she said. “My daughter Wendy always teases me that she wanted another sister but instead I gave her two more brothers. I think in my life I am most proud of my children.”

She was born in Ely’s Harbour, Sandys. Her mother, Georgina Bailey was a cook and her father, Edmund Bailey worked in the Dockyard for a time before returning to his native Antigua.

Ms Flood left high school at 17, in order to go out and work. She was always good with numbers and spent most of her career working in the accounts department at Gibbons Company. She left there and worked at Always Travel.

“I was supposed to do accounting work with them but in the end I did all kinds of things including taking groups overseas,” she said.

She was honoured by the Ostomy Association for giving the charity 40 years of service, in 2007.

She’s also helped with numerous other organisations including LCCA, the Salvation Army, PALS and the St Paul AME Church Building Fund and Organ Fund.

In her golden years she’s trying to take things a little easier.

“I was on the TB Cancer and Health council for 14 years,” Ms Flood said. “I think I suffered a little burnout. The children kept saying ‘It is just too much, you have to cut back’. So I gradually resigned from things.

“I miss talking to the people who had surgery. I don’t know as many nurses at the hospital anymore, so they don’t call me as much.”