THE NEEDS OF JAMAICANS ARE GREAT– DISABLED CHILD IN NEED OF WHEEL CHAIR

RICHARD Christie is 11 years old but does not go to school and has to be carried around in a stroller.

It is his mother’s dream for him to get an education. However, Juelitte Brady is not able to make this a reality because her son has not been accepted into the education system due to his disability.

“Sometimes mi feel like fi cry because mi have him normal,” the mother said.

Brady, from Orange Hill, Brown’s Town, said that her son was born at the Alexandria Hospital in 2004.

“Before I took him home, the nurse told me she is going to visit me, but I didn’t take it for anything,” the mother recalled.

About five days after leaving the hospital, her son’s feet, face and abdomen became swollen and he was crying constantly.

The concerned mother took her child to the St Ann’s Bay Regional Hospital. That was when she received the disturbing diagnosis.

“They told me he has a heart problem. They had him on treatment but the swelling was not going down”, she stated.

Analyses later revealed that young Richard had a hole in the heart.

“Tests showed that apart from the hole in the heart, the valve was twisted,” she revealed.

When he was about three weeks old, heart surgery was done on Richard at the Bustamante Hospital for Children. However, it was not 100 per cent successful, Brady said.

The mother said doctors separated the twisted valves in the heart, but efforts to close the hole in the heart failed.

“They told me the patch fell off, but the valve was separated. From that time until now this is how he is,” she said.

Since then, it has been a challenge for the mother to care for the last of her children. Brady recalled having to travel to and from Kingston while her son was in the hospital.

“It was so challenging for me. Sometimes mi coming down mi crying on the bus,” she said.

Taking care of Richard as he gets older becomes even more challenging, but the mother is not giving up. Her hope is that he will get an education.

“They say they cannot take him because he cannot walk,” the mother said in expressing her disappointment that there is no institution in which her son can be enrolled in St Ann.

“He talks and he understands. There is nothing that you do that him no see fi talk,” she continued, insisting that her son is alert and remembers things.

Brady said that her son also gets along well with other children at home and in his community. He always wants to be placed in an area where children are playing so he can sit in his stroller and watch, or be a part of the action. He constantly asks when he will be able to go to school, the mother said.

“He would say ‘Mommy when you going make me go school. You a go buy mi bag,” Brady said.

She is appealing for help to get her son that elusive education.

“If I can just get the help for him to go to school…I feel if he goes to school he will be able to learn. That is my priority now”, she stated.

Brady too has the challenge of her son seeking answers about his condition. She said he constantly asks about the reason for his disability and even blames her sometimes.

“Him say, ‘mommy, a you carry mi make the doctor do mi so?” Brady said.

She also recalled some of the early pain that her son endured following the heart surgery. She said that at four months old, he went blind.

“When he cried, you only saw the expression on his face… no sound. A just the grace of God bring him back to this,” she said.

She said that when she returned from the hospital with the baby, her mother was afraid to hold him because he looked fragile.

Getting regular checks for the youth by doctors is also something that is lacking.

“He is supposed to go to the clinic at the hospital but mi can’t manage,” she said.

She is appealing for a reclining wheelchair and a mattress for her son, who is also asthmatic and has to use a pump, and misses out on basic medicines due to lack of money.

“Right now mi have his prescription to fill,” said the worried mother who tries to support her son by selling bag juices at a nearby school whenever it is possible to do so.

Richard likes watching television and playing educational games, his mother said. When the Jamaica Observer tried to talk to the lad, the ever smiling, yet shy Richard said he did not want to talk. He, however, took the time to state his love for cornflakes.

Shortly after, he could be heard talking with a younger child around his home or asking his mother questions.