Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardain.co.tt

Just over a year ago, 11-year-old Sky­lar Wait­he was a live­ly, en­er­getic stu­dent with a pas­sion for singing. Then, al­most overnight, Sky­lar’s life changed. Ac­cord­ing to her moth­er, Leigh Kirk, it be­gan last Sep­tem­ber when Sky­lar start­ed hav­ing fre­quent headaches and vom­it­ing.

“Two days be­fore [her] birth­day, we took her to see a movie,” she said, adding, “The next morn­ing she was vom­it­ing.” On the day of her birth­day, they took her to the doc­tor, who di­ag­nosed her with a gas­tro in­fec­tion, but the vom­it­ing per­sist­ed. Sky­lar be­gan to lose her bal­ance—strug­gling to walk short dis­tances and bump­ing in­to door­ways.

She was even­tu­al­ly re­ferred to the Neu­rol­o­gy Clin­ic at Mount Hope Hos­pi­tal, where an MRI on Jan­u­ary 21 re­vealed she had a brain tu­mour and a buildup of flu­id in her brain.

In Jan­u­ary, she un­der­went a pro­ce­dure to in­sert a shunt to drain the flu­id. Then, on Feb­ru­ary 4, Sky­lar en­dured an eight-hour ma­jor surgery to re­move the tu­mour.

“The tu­mour was rest­ing on the cere­bel­lum — the part of the brain that is re­spon­si­ble for move­ment, co-or­di­na­tion and speech,” Kirk ex­plained.

“We did not re­alise at the time it would take this long for her to be back on her feet. As of this mo­ment, she still has no bal­ance or co-or­di­na­tion, so she can walk with as­sis­tance. The speech is still a lit­tle slow, but her speech is com­ing back.”

Al­though Sky­lar has been med­ical­ly cleared as “fit to re­turn to school,” her re­cov­ery re­mains on­go­ing. She cur­rent­ly us­es a wheel­chair and con­tin­ues to un­der­go phys­io­ther­a­py to re­build her strength, bal­ance, and co-or­di­na­tion.

Un­for­tu­nate­ly, her for­mer school, based in Port-of-Spain, was un­able to ac­com­mo­date her phys­i­cal needs and of­fered on­line school­ing. But with no one at home to su­per­vise her, Kirk trans­ferred her to Es­he’s Learn­ing Cen­tre, which has wheel­chair-ac­ces­si­ble fa­cil­i­ties and can bet­ter sup­port her needs.

Sky­lar dreams of re­turn­ing to the nor­mal rou­tines she loved —go­ing to class­es, vis­it­ing the mall, and be­com­ing a singer. Her moth­er said their main pur­pose for mak­ing her daugh­ter’s con­di­tion pub­lic was to thank the STRA Shoot­ing Sports Club, which ded­i­cat­ed funds raised in its 5th an­nu­al Run and Gun char­i­ty event on Sat­ur­day to help Sky­lar.

“We would just like to ex­press our heart­felt thanks to Mr Ali and STRA for their gen­er­ous con­tri­bu­tion to­ward Sky­lar’s re­cov­ery. We are tru­ly grate­ful and deeply ap­pre­cia­tive. We are not seek­ing any­thing from the pub­lic; this mes­sage is sim­ply to recog­nise Mr. Ali and STRA for all they do to sup­port chil­dren like Sky­lar, as well as the many oth­ers they con­tin­ue to help.”

Match di­rec­tor and fran­chise hold­er of Muhammed Ali’s Run and Gun, Muhammed Ali, said that through the com­pe­ti­tion, they were hop­ing to raise $30,000 to $40,000 to as­sist with her on­go­ing med­ical and re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion ex­pens­es.