Resh­ma Ra­goonath

While many wish for the lat­est gad­get to make their Christ­mas bright, Tim­o­thy James has one sim­ple wish this year: To get a pros­thet­ic leg.James, 52, of Alexan­der Street, La Ro­maine, lost his left leg eight years ago and now has to use a skate­board to get around.He said all he want­ed for Christ­mas was to be able to walk and jog like he used to do be­fore he lost his limb."My Christ­mas wish is for a foot. Once I could get a pros­thet­ic foot like where you see them run­ning and jump­ing.

"Peo­ple get­ting this foot and they run­ning, they jump­ing, climb­ing every­thing. That is what I want to be able to do," he said.On Fri­day the T&T Guardian spot­ted James on his skate­board on the South­ern Main Road, La Ro­maine, as busy shop­pers walked past him.James, who said he was "free, sin­gle and dis­en­gaged," said he pre­ferred to use a skate­board for its easy mo­bil­i­ty when he had to move around.He said he did not have a wheel­chair nor did he want one.

"I have re­al clothes to wear, but I do not want to wear it to ride no skate­board or wheel­chair. I like to dress, I like to walk. I like to look good," he said.James said eight years ago he lost his leg un­der sus­pi­cious cir­cum­stances and be­lieved it was the re­sult of "obeah". He said he was fed a meal by a fe­male rel­a­tive and with­in min­utes his leg start­ed to twist and went limp.

The woman, he said, called the am­bu­lance when he be­gan groan­ing with pain and when the emer­gency med­ical tech­ni­cians came they stabbed his leg to de­ter­mine if he could feel pain.He said he had lost feel­ing be­neath his knee and was rushed to the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal."When we reach in Ca­su­al­ty, they car­ry me to surgery. When I wake up the next day, that is when I re­alise they cut it," he said.

James said his leg was in­fect­ed with gan­grene, a con­di­tion that oc­curs when body tis­sue dies.He said his right leg was healthy and could hold his body weight and he dreams of be­ing able to walk and run like he used to do be­fore his loss.James said a char­i­ty group of­fered him a mo­torised wheel­chair but he turned them down."I do not want that. I want a foot, be­cause I want to jog. I could move the oth­er foot, I could put weight on it. It have a long pin in it and so I could move around," he said.