ST. ANN, JAMAICA: Mother needs help with disabled son...RICHARD Christie is 11 years old but does not go to school and has to be carried around in a stroller...."Sometimes mi feel like fi cry because mi have him normal," the mother said.

BY RENAE DIXON Sunday Observer staff reporter dixonr@jamaicaobserver.com  Sunday, March 22, 2015    

RICHARD Christie is 11 years old but does not go to school and has to be carried around in a stroller.

It is his mother's dream for him to get an education. However, Juelitte Brady is not able to make this a reality because her son has not been accepted into the education system due to his disability.

JUELITTE Brady and son Richard Christie.
 (PHOTO: RENAE DIXON)

"Sometimes mi feel like fi cry because mi have him normal," the mother said.

Brady, from Orange Hill, Brown's Town, said that her son was born at the Alexandria Hospital in 2004.

"Before I took him home, the nurse told me she is going to visit me, but I didn't take it for anything," the mother recalled.

About five days after leaving the hospital, her son's feet, face and abdomen became swollen and he was crying constantly.

The concerned mother took her child to the St Ann's Bay Regional Hospital. That was when she received the disturbing diagnosis.

"They told me he has a heart problem. They had him on treatment but the swelling was not going down", she stated.

Analyses later revealed that young Richard had a hole in the heart.

"Tests showed that apart from the hole in the heart, the valve was twisted," she revealed.

When he was about three weeks old, heart surgery was done on Richard at the Bustamante Hospital for Children. However, it was not 100 per cent successful, Brady said. more