Sep­tem­ber is Cere­bral Pal­sy Aware­ness Month. This is a con­di­tion marked by im­paired mus­cle co­or­di­na­tion and/or oth­er dis­abil­i­ties and is typ­i­cal­ly caused be­fore birth. To bring aware­ness to the cause, the pres­i­dent of the Cere­bral Pal­sy So­ci­ety of Trinidad and To­ba­go Mr Phillip Meteivi­er, had a chat with us to give us some more in­for­ma­tion on Cere­bral Pal­sy (CP) and give us some re­al life sto­ries as par­ents of chil­dren with CP.

What is this dis­ease and how does some­one on the in­side de­scribe it? “It's not a dis­ease - it's not hered­i­tary and it's not pro­gres­sive. It's not a dis­ease in the sense that it can be de­vel­oped," Meteivi­er ex­plained. "When you have it, you are born with it. It's not some­thing that can be pro­gres­sive as it can­not get worse, but through phys­i­cal and oc­cu­pa­tion­al ther­a­py, these peo­ple can achieve so much.” There are many dif­fer­ent stages when look­ing at the ef­fects that CP can have on per­sons through­out their life. Re­search shows that there are four ma­jor types of cere­bral pal­sy, spas­tic, athetoid, ataxic and mixed type.

Spas­tic is the most com­mon type of cere­bral pal­sy, ac­count­ing for 70 to 80 per­cent of the stud­ies world­wide. Peo­ple with this type usu­al­ly ex­pe­ri­ence spas­tic of jerky mus­cles, which is caused by dam­age to the brain's mo­tor cor­tex. Com­mon signs for this type of CP are awk­ward re­flex­es, stiff­ness on one part of the body, con­trac­tures and an ab­nor­mal gait. Gait ab­nor­mal­i­ty can be clas­si­fied as a de­vi­a­tion from nor­mal walk­ing.

Ataxic CP is a type that caus­es prob­lems with bal­ance and co­or­di­na­tion and makes up a small per­cent­age of the world­wide sta­tis­tic. Peo­ple with this case usu­al­ly have is­sues with any type of vol­un­tary move­ment. Some com­mon symp­toms are dif­fi­cul­ty speak­ing, prob­lems with depth per­cep­tion, shak­i­ness and tremors.

Athetoid CP amounts for on­ly 10 per­cent of the cas­es world­wide and is char­ac­ter­ized by a fluc­tu­a­tion in mus­cle tone. The main trait of this type of CP is in­vol­un­tary move­ment in the face tor­so and limbs. Some oth­er com­mon symp­toms are a stiff or rigid body, flop­pi­ness in the limbs, prob­lems with pos­ture and trou­ble feed­ing.

Mixed CP speaks for it­self; it's when dam­age to the de­vel­op­ing brain is not nec­es­sar­i­ly con­fined to one lo­ca­tion in the brain. This means it is more than pos­si­ble for a child with CP to de­vel­op the char­ac­ter­is­tics of mul­ti­ple types of brain in­juries. In this case, chil­dren born with mixed CP are usu­al­ly deal­ing with two or more dif­fer­ent clas­si­fi­ca­tions of the dis­ease, all at once.

In Trinidad and To­ba­go, there are more fam­i­lies than we know, who have had a child di­ag­nosed with CP. The CP So­ci­ety of Trinidad and To­ba­go strives to pro­vide sup­port for many of these fam­i­lies who have no idea what di­rec­tion to go in. Mr. Meteivi­er and an­oth­er par­ent in­volved in the as­so­ci­a­tion Ruheni Mooti­lal gave us some in­sight on what it's like to be par­ents of chil­dren liv­ing with CP.

Meteivi­er is the fa­ther of a 25-year-old son liv­ing with CP. Hav­ing the sup­port of an­oth­er par­ent for quite some time, his fam­i­ly faced tough times quite a while back that left him to do this alone. “My son's mom died about eight years ago and I am a sin­gle par­ent be­ing as­sist­ed by an­oth­er par­ent whose child al­so has CP,” he said. And with­out the help, he would not have been able to take the time off to do this in­ter­view. “It's a 24/7 job. The gov­ern­ment took away my stipend, which led me to have to re­sign from my job as my son needs full time care. It's a heart-rend­ing sit­u­a­tion to hear the sto­ries of some of these par­ents. And it's the poor­er pop­u­la­tion that suf­fers the most.”

The CP So­ci­ety of Trinidad and To­ba­go is hav­ing a fundrais­ing crick­et com­pe­ti­tion at the Bri­an Lara Sta­di­um in Tarou­ba on the 29th of Sep­tem­ber. Gates are open­ing at 4 pm and the event will start around 6 pm. Tick­ets can be pur­chased through the CP So­ci­ety.