Valdeen Shears-Nep­tune

Gabriel­la Ce­lene Biswah's huge, beau­ti­ful eyes are what caught my at­ten­tion the first time I met her.She got on­to the hos­pi­tal bed, took out her mo­bile phone, looked around the ward, shrugged her pe­tite shoul­ders and re­signed her­self to her to the stay at the in­sti­tu­tion. It would be one of 20-plus stays since she was 13 and di­ag­nosed with vi­tili­go.

Vi­tili­go is a con­di­tion in which the pig­ment is lost from ar­eas of the skin, caus­ing whitish patch­es across the body, of­ten with no clear cause.While the last sev­en years have been more down­hill than up for this 20-year-old woman, her con­di­tion has now come to rep­re­sent her fate in life.

"I am an­gry now, but for dif­fer­ent rea­sons. I am mad when I see peo­ple tak­ing their or­gans for grant­ed.

"It irks me to see young peo­ple smok­ing and drink­ing, when there are sick peo­ple out there who would lit­er­al­ly die for a clean lung or al­co­hol-free liv­er," she said shak­ing her head.

But wait, how does one go from hav­ing vi­tili­go, which is not chron­ic or life-threat­en­ing, to be­ing hos­pi­talised on so many oc­ca­sions?Biswah's health strug­gles be­gan when as a stu­dent of As­ja Girls' Col­lege she saw the first spot on her body.In a pan­ic, Biswah said her par­ents, Nigel and Han­isha, took her to a pri­vate doc­tor.

"I re­searched the hell out of the con­di­tion and be­came even more scared find­ing out how pro­gres­sive it could be­come.

"Then we sought a sec­ond opin­ion," she re­called.

It was this sec­ond opin­ion and the doc­tor's pre­scrip­tion which the fam­i­ly be­lieves led to Biswah's con­di­tion wors­en­ing.Biswah was pre­scribed a heavy dose of steroids by the well-known doc­tor, whom her fam­i­ly trust­ed "100 per cent." She claimed the phar­ma­cist ques­tioned that it was too much for her small body struc­ture and age, but the drug was ad­min­is­tered any­way. She took the drugs, her health wors­ened.

Coun­selling was rec­om­mend­ed and Biswah was lat­er in­tro­duced to a young woman whose whole body was a whitish colour.The meet­ing, she said, was meant to in­spire her to ac­cept the con­di­tion, but it did quite the op­po­site.Added to this were the bouts of ill­ness­es and days which she missed from school.

"I be­gun feel­ing sick, weak, hav­ing headaches, vom­it­ing and los­ing weight even though I was al­ways hun­gry.

"I had nu­mer­ous trips to the bath­room. Even­tu­al­ly it was my grand­mom, Rad­hi­ka, a di­a­bet­ic, who saw it for what it is," she re­called.

A blood sug­ar test was done and she was tak­en to a pri­vate doc­tor, then rushed to San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal.Biswah was even­tu­al­ly di­ag­nosed with Graves' Dis­ease, Type 1 di­a­betes and hy­per­thy­roidism.She now had to take four shots of in­sulin dai­ly.

De­spite this, the sup­port of teach­ers and class­mates at school saw her at­tain a full cer­tifi­cate at CXC, with sev­er­al grade ones and dis­tinc­tions among the sev­en sub­jects passed.Even­tu­al­ly, Biswah's or­gans be­came af­fect­ed and she al­so de­vel­oped heart dis­ease and poly­cys­tic ovaries.By 17, she would have her first surgery for a rup­tured ap­pen­dix and cyst.

Last year, she sur­vived a sec­ond pro­ce­dure for an in­fect­ed ab­scess on her body.Biswah ad­mit­ted that bat­tling the many dis­eases which af­flict­ed her emo­tion­al­ly and phys­i­cal­ly caused her to have sui­ci­dal thoughts.She wres­tled dai­ly with thoughts of nev­er be­com­ing bet­ter or find­ing some­one to love and ac­cept her.

Then she met Ishaan Poon­wassie."It's been three years since I re­al­ly found love and it's like he makes me feel like he does not see the spots. He sees me for who I am. I can be my­self around him, and he just ac­cepts my mo­ments and moves on," she said.She al­so found in­spi­ra­tion from the sto­ry of Chantelle Brown-Young, a mod­el on Cy­cle 21 of Amer­i­ca's Next Top­Mod­el, who was dis­cov­ered by pro­duc­er Tyra Banks on In­sta­gram.

Brown-Young, who was just four when di­ag­nosed with vi­tili­go, was bul­lied at school be­cause of her con­di­tion.While she didn't win the cov­et­ed ti­tle on Tyra's show, she was sub­se­quent­ly signed to front the top Barcelona-brand, De­sigual, fol­low­ing her stint on ANTM.With new-found love and a pos­i­tive out­look on life, it is still no smooth sail­ing for Biswah who con­tin­ues to strug­gle with the ef­fects of di­a­betes which have tak­en a toll on her body.

The sup­port, love and care of her friends, fam­i­ly and nu­mer­ous med­ical staff, she said, helps to cush­ion the blows.

"Now an ad­vo­cate for liv­ing well and tak­ing care of your body, Biswah tells every­one who would lis­ten:

"Take care of your­self, don't take your body for grant­ed.

"Don't ill-treat it be­cause you feel you are as strong as an ox, fit as a fid­dle or can over in­dulge in drink­ing, smok­ing to­day and feel fine the next day.

"Stop tak­ing for grant­ed what oth­ers can on­ly pray and hope for."

Biswah said "there will al­ways be a ques­tion mark on my life, but I have fi­nal­ly be­come com­fort­able with me and in­tend to live life to the fullest, once God al­lows me to."

Kar­la Ramoo: I look in the mir­ror and see a beau­ti­ful woman

The me­dia's own, Kar­la Ramoo, for­mer Guardian se­nior pho­tog­ra­ph­er, has been liv­ing with vi­tili­go for the last ten years.She ad­mit­ted that ini­tial­ly she felt fear which led her take a lot of dras­tic ac­tions like not wash­ing her clothes in the wash­ing ma­chine us­ing cer­tain de­ter­gents and chang­ing her dress code.

A wife and moth­er of three, Ramoo said she wore clothes to cov­er up as much of her skin as pos­si­ble and drank every con­coc­tion sug­gest­ed.

"I tried to gauge peo­ple's re­ac­tion to see­ing the spots. I would joke a lot and tell fam­i­ly and friends I would soon be a white woman. I thought at first it would mess with my beau­ty, but I don't feel the need to of­fer an ex­pla­na­tion any­more when I see some­one I haven't seen in a long time," she said.

Life, she said, con­tin­ues as nor­mal, with the on­ly ma­jor change be­ing the way the sun af­fects her.

"It burns dif­fer­ent­ly, my eyes get red and my lips feel swollen and ten­der if I am out too long.

"But time has made me coura­geous. Now I look in the mir­ror and I see a beau­ti­ful woman with some white added in," she joked.