With­in the walls of a neat­ly kept home in Farm Road, St He­le­na, you will find Mar­garet Ram­char­i­tar, a spir­it­ed 65-year-old woman whose heart thrums with a very hope­ful de­sire for the im­prove­ment of her son’s life.

Ri­az, 47, has al­ways been the light of Mar­garet’s life and now her on­ly boy needs her in ways she had nev­er imag­ined.

“Ap­prox­i­mate­ly 10 years ago, when Ri­az was about  37 years old he start­ed to com­plain that he is not feel­ing him­self, that he is un­com­fort­able with his neck and shoul­ders and he can­not ex­plain what is go­ing wrong with him,” the moth­er ex­plained.

Dur­ing an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia, Mar­garet de­tailed that af­ter nu­mer­ous med­ical tests and ex­am­i­na­tions doc­tors fi­nal­ly di­ag­nosed Ri­az with an ear­ly on­set of Parkin­son’s dis­ease.

“He would get weak­ness in the neck, the body es­pe­cial­ly. On the left side, he feels like it will shut down and as the years pro­gressed his body start­ed get­ting stiff. We did all the tests, even­tu­al­ly Dr Pan­day di­ag­nosed him with ear­ly stages of Parkin­son’s dis­ease.”

Parkin­son’s dis­ease is a brain dis­or­der that caus­es un­in­tend­ed or un­con­trol­lable move­ments, such as shak­ing, stiff­ness, and dif­fi­cul­ty with bal­ance and co­or­di­na­tion. Symp­toms usu­al­ly be­gin grad­u­al­ly and wors­en over time. Mar­garet ex­plained that the news of her son’s con­di­tion hung in the air like heavy stormy clouds.

“This was very heart­break­ing, to see my son like this, if he does not get his med­ica­tions in time he clams up, his mo­bil­i­ty is af­fect­ed as he suf­fers from tremors and dysk­i­ne­sia (er­rat­ic, in­vol­un­tary move­ments of body), he be­gins to move like a ro­bot. If he tries to walk he has no con­trol and he can fall over,” she lament­ed.

As the fa­ther of two strug­gles to com­plete dai­ly tasks, cost­ly med­ica­tions of­fer lit­tle re­prieve to the for­mer weld­ing fab­ri­ca­tor who now leans on his loved ones for sup­port.

Mar­garet said just as she would have guid­ed her son’s first steps when he was a ba­by many years ago, she stood ready to steady his shaky ones now.

“To be hon­est it is very dif­fi­cult, some­times I hold back my emo­tions. I do not want him to see and know how I would feel be­cause I know that will af­fect him al­so see­ing his moth­er in this con­di­tion. So, I let him know every­thing will be okay and we will do this and we will get this done and you will be okay. I re­mind him that we will get through this to­geth­er.” 

Re­cent­ly, doc­tors in Colom­bia gave Ri­az the green light for a brain surgery that will help re­store some of his mo­bil­i­ty and help him re­gain some of his in­de­pen­dence.

“They see he is a suit­able can­di­date as he is not too old. If you are too old they don’t take the risk. The surgery is US$65,000. It has been re­al­ly tough we have been try­ing to pool funds to­geth­er. Ri­az has a wife and two chil­dren and we all are try­ing to raise the funds,” she said.

With fundrais­ers be­ing pre­pared and sched­uled to come off, and do­na­tion sheets in cir­cu­la­tion, both Mar­garet and Ri­az are ap­peal­ing to the pub­lic to as­sist where they can.

Any­one wish­ing to as­sist can con­tact 776 8044 or make do­na­tions to Ri­az Ram­char­i­tar Sco­tia­bank Tu­na­puna’s branch ac­count num­ber 42135001202428.