Thirteen-year-old Stephen Phillips still has a rough road ahead of him in his quest to learn to walk again but he is not letting this prevent him from getting back into the classroom.
Phillips who became wheelchair-bound last year after a tumour growing at the top of his spine left him paralyzed from the waist down, has not been able to attend school for over a year now.
On Monday without fear the lad returned to school.
Speaking to Stabroek News at his Charlestown home last week, Stephen smiling brightly and clad in his khaki and white uniform said that he had always wanted to return to school because staying at home was boring.
He is attending the Charlestown Secondary School and is enrolled in Form One.
Stephen had on several occasions indicated his yearning to return to school but his mother only took him seriously when one of his therapists advised her to let him go back to school.
After that his mother started putting arrangements in place and he was accepted into the secondary school.
He told this newspaper that when he arrives at school in the mornings either his aunt or uncle would carry him up the stairs and then bring up the wheelchair to his classroom.
Stephen who loves mathematics said that he sits in his wheelchair in class and all his fellow students treat him like a normal child. He said too that he has been put back a class but that doesn’t matter to him.
“It’s not difficult going back to school at all,” he said confidently.
Stephen attends a full day of school without any problem.
After undergoing the surgery in Trinidad, Stephen and his mother were told that he will have to go to therapy to learn to walk again. He currently does five days of therapy every week lasting between 30 minutes and an hour.
He goes for free therapy at the Ptolemy Reid Rehabilitation Centre twice each week and a private therapist comes to his home three times a week for an hour. That private therapist has to be paid $2,000 per session.
Stephen told Stabroek News that he finds the sessions difficult because he had not been exercising for a while. He said that during the sessions he would do exercises on his hands and knees and even lift weights.
He recalled that when the doctor told him in Trinidad that he was going into surgery he was scared. However that was delayed after the nurses at the Mount Hope Hospital where he was hospitalized went on strike. As time passed, Stephen said, the fear went away.
Meanwhile the lad’s grandmother Ingrid Charles said that when he was diagnosed she was worried and his condition was even hidden from her for a while.
She said that she returned from abroad recently and is here to look after her grandson.
“I thank God that he came through the surgery successfully,” she said with a smile.
Stephen and his relatives said that they would like to thank all those in the business community and other members of the public who helped to make his surgery a reality.
Although the tumour has been removed, finance is still an issue because Stephen has various challenges and money has to be found to pay the private therapist.
Anyone who is desirous of helping Stephen can contact his mother Samantha Charles on 225-4188 or 642-0939.
Reports of Stephen’s plight reached this newspaper in May. While he was a Grade Six student at St Gabriel’s Primary School, the lad began experiencing severe pain in his neck. He was taken to two doctors but they couldn’t find a problem. Several x-rays of his neck were done but nothing out of the ordinary was discovered. However, one doctor told Stephen’s mother that he wasn’t seeing a particular area clearly in an x-ray and that this indicated that something was there.
Stephen was diagnosed in October last year and since that time the lad’s condition deteriorated rapidly. He needed $4M in order to undergo the operation in Trinidad but his single parent mother did not have the money and was forced to go on a public campaign to solicit funds.
She managed to raise just over $2M and with that sum a doctor at the hospital in Trinidad told her to take the child to get the operation done. The health ministry led the list of donors with $1M.
A huge hump was visible on the back of his neck and to compound the situation fluid that has been leaking from the growth caused damage to a rib.
Towards the end of August, the tumour was successfully removed.