RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Sev­en months af­ter he was in­jured when his par­ents’ home col­lapsed dur­ing heavy rain­fall, ba­by Christo­pher Sa­hadeo Pooni­lal has suf­fered a seizure at home.

His par­ents Cur­tis Pooni­lal and Chris­tine Sa­hadeo are now fran­ti­cal­ly try­ing to raise $5,000 to do an elec­troen­cephalog­ra­phy scan on his brain at a pri­vate med­ical hos­pi­tal. Elec­troen­cephalog­ra­phy is an elec­tro-phys­i­o­log­i­cal mon­i­tor­ing method used to record the elec­tri­cal ac­tiv­i­ty of the brain.

Christo­pher has been treat­ed at the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal and has since been dis­charged, but Pooni­lal said he was told by hos­pi­tal staff that the elec­troen­cephalog­ra­phy ma­chine has not been work­ing for the past two years so the scan could not be done at the hos­pi­tal.

Say­ing his son des­per­ate­ly need­ed the scan, Pooni­lal said he was now in the process of go­ing door to door to get as­sis­tance.

“Things are hard at home be­cause I am not get­ting work. I stay home to care for him and we are bare­ly man­ag­ing, so find­ing $5,000 now to do the scan is dif­fi­cult,” Pooni­lal said.

Ceil­ing tiles fell on top of Christo­pher’s head when their wood­en home at Enid Vil­lage, Rio Claro col­lapsed. Af­ter the T&T Guardian high­light­ed their sto­ry in Jan­u­ary, mem­bers of the pub­lic came for­ward and do­nat­ed build­ing ma­te­ri­als for Pooni­lal to re­build their home. Since then, Pooni­lal said Christo­pher has been grow­ing well.

“He is say­ing words, he is grow­ing so nice and when he got the seizure on Sat­ur­day I thought he would die in my arms,” Pooni­lal cried, adding Christo­pher’s eyes be­gan rolling up in his head and he start­ed to stretch out.

“His body start­ed to stiff­en. It was worse than we ever saw. We took him to the health cen­tre and the am­bu­lance car­ried him to the hos­pi­tal.”

Pooni­lal said al­though his son had an emer­gency card it took al­most a day be­fore he was fi­nal­ly ad­mit­ted to the ward. Dur­ing this time, Pooni­lal said his son start­ed to lose his sight.

“I was snap­ping my fin­ger in front of his eyes and call­ing him and he was turn­ing around and look­ing for me even though I was right in front of him,” Pooni­lal said. He said a team of doc­tors led by Dr Ra­jin­dra Parag even­tu­al­ly took charge of Christo­pher and saved his life.

“I am so thank­ful to Dr Parag. He ex­plained every­thing to us and he was very kind and com­pas­sion­ate,” Pooni­lal said.

He added that once the elec­troen­cephalog­ra­phy scan is done doc­tors will be able to mon­i­tor the elec­tri­cal ac­tiv­i­ty of Christo­pher’s brain. Any­one want­i­ng to as­sist Pooni­lal can con­tact him at 380-3606.

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, South­west Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty CEO Dr Al­bert Per­saud con­firmed the hos­pi­tal did not have an elec­troen­cephalog­ra­phy ma­chine.

“We need to pro­cure a new ma­chine as the old one has run its life. We are look­ing in­to it and a ma­chine has al­ready been or­dered,” Per­saud said.

He could not say when the ma­chine will be brought in or what was the cost.