Ot­to Car­ring­ton

Imag­ine hav­ing plans and great as­pi­ra­tions for your life and all of this dis­ap­pears in the blink of an eye due to ill­ness.

It is a sto­ry that David Shi­w­al knows all too well.

The 19-year-old, a for­mer stu­dent of the SWA­HA Hin­du Col­lege and the hold­er of eight CSEC pass­es, is suf­fer­ing from sco­l­io­sis and os­teo­poro­sis.

David needs two surg­eries at the cost of $17,000.

Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed David at his Swan Quar­ry Set­tle­ment home in Va­len­cia. David was in a jovial mood but in a lot of pain.

“Things for me got bad in 2017. The ill­ness of sco­l­io­sis start­ed to af­fect me bad­ly from 2017 to 2020 and it start­ed to show on my back, as it twist­ed my spine. I need surgery to low­er my risk of paral­y­sis,” he said.

The two surg­eries re­quire one to stretch David’s spine be­fore the ma­jor op­er­a­tion to re­duce the risk of paral­y­sis and the ma­jor surgery is to im­plant iron rods.

The first surgery will cost Shi­w­al and his fam­i­ly $2,500, and the sec­ond pro­ce­dure is es­ti­mat­ed to be $15,000 and they will be done at the Princess Eliz­a­beth Clin­ic, in Port-of-Spain.

The sad thing is that Shi­w­al is not the on­ly per­son in his fam­i­ly with sco­l­io­sis his fa­ther and un­cle both suf­fer from the same ill­ness.

“The surgery I am card­ed to have my un­cle did it be­fore. Sco­l­io­sis is ge­net­ic, so my un­cle did the surgery and my dad al­so had sco­l­io­sis but he did not do the surgery. The pro­ce­dure sup­posed to be 50 per cent cor­rect, so they would cut open my back and put met­al rods at the side of the spine to straight­en it, but I need two surg­eries. The first one I have to stretch my spine from the top and bot­tom to re­duce the risk of paral­y­sis and this will be done be­fore the one I im­plant the rods,” he added.

At this ac­tive stage in his life, Shi­w­al lament­ed, “Be­ing sick was okay, to a point I could have still get up and walk and go some­where on my own, but now for the past two years, I have not left my home, it was on­ly last month in De­cem­ber that I went with my sis­ter to the su­per­mar­ket and that was a trip for me in two years due to my ill­ness.”

Shi­w­al is hop­ing that af­ter his surgery he can do one thing.

“All I want to do is go to the mall with my friends,” he said.

Any­one will­ing to as­sist Shi­w­al can call 722-7825/318-7018 or do­nate to First Cit­i­zens Bank ac­count 2340304.