Cerebral Palsy Story

Our second cerebral palsy story is from the Times of Zambia of 5th June 2010 titled ”Coping with cerebral palsy”. This was written by Miriam Zimba. The story goes……Mrs Rose Mwewa, thought her third pregnancy would go like the others, smooth with a beautiful baby at the end of it all. She never dreamed that this was the beginning of years of struggle with a condition she had never heard of-cerebral palsy.

Mrs Mwewa’s cerebral palsy story began nine years ago when she was expecting her third born son. “My pregnancy was characterised by hypertension, that seemed to be getting worse, as the pregnancy progressed”, she narrated in her cerebral palsy story.

As Mrs. Mwewa’s pregnancy advanced towards its last trimester, she was advised by an expatriate doctor at the University Teaching Hospital (UTH) to urgently terminate the pregnancy in order to save her own life.

But when she sought a second opinion from a Zambian doctor, he said all she needed was bed rest until delivery. This meant she had to call in her aged mother to take care of her in hospital .“While taking care of me at UTH, she also fell ill, her blood sugar levels rose, giving rise to her already existing hypertension, and she died, before I delivered”, Mrs Mwewa said.

With her mother’s unexpected death, Mrs Mwewa’s blood pressure also rose, worsening her condition. Mrs. Mwewa received yet another blow. The doctor said he could no longer detect a heartbeat which probably meant the baby had died. Mrs. Mwewa needed an emergency operation of ceasarian section as her own life was in danger.

The emergency caesarean section was carried out successfully, and to everyone’s shock the baby was alive. The only issue the doctors had to battle with, was the low heartbeat of the baby due to hypertension and obstructed labour.

“At this point, the doctors worked tirelessly to resuscitate the baby’s life and he was immediately evacuated to the nursery ward, for incubation,” she remembers.

While her baby was at the nursery ward, she could not breast feed him and he became weak, he also developed malaria, due to cross infection from other babies in the nursery.

Mrs. Mwewa in her cerebral palsy story narrated that “from malaria, he had complications that resulted in jaundice, cerebral malaria and shockingly again, he was certified dead by one doctor. When I was told that my baby had died for the second time, I decided to pray before any preparation of the body could be made”.

“As I prayed the doctor noticed that my son was making slight movements, and again he was rushed for resuscitation by the doctor” she added.

After three week of continued monitoring in hospital, Mrs Mwewa and her son were finally discharged from hospital, and with a great sigh of relief, the tired mother and son whom she named Emmanuel, were ready to go home and lead normal lives.Visits to under-five clinic showed that Emmanuel was making good progress. Then the next blow struck when he was nine months old. He could not sit or crawl. Mrs. Mwewa thought he was just delayed. A nurse advised her to go to a physiotherapist.

“Not suspecting anything could possibly be wrong with my son, I went into the physiotherapy room, I was amazed at what I saw, children unable to walk, talk or stand unaided. I could not believe that my son would suffer the same fate”, she narrated in her cerebral palsy story.

With her difficult pregnancy, the death of her mother and her long stay in hospital due to her son’s illness, Mrs Mwewa went into denial when she was doctors in physiotherapy told her that Emmanuel had all symptoms of cerebral palsy.

“When I was told of this I went into a period of self blame and denial. Was it something I did or failed to do? Could it have been the death of my mother, did someone do something to my son, or was it because of my hypertension?”. These were among the numerous questions racing through the mind of Mrs. Mwewa.

After a period of denial, Mrs. Mwewa realised that she was doing neither her son nor herself a favour, and with the support of her husband and family members, coupled with prayer, she decided she was going to make the best out of the situation.

She underwent a series of psychosocial counselling sessions herself, before she began to take Emmanuel for physiotherapy. After only two weeks of intensive physiotherapy, Emmanuel was able to sit unaided.

This should have been good news, but yet again, during one of the visits to the hospital, one doctor noticed that Emmanuel’s sight was not right. He began to wear spectacles at eleven months.

The sight of an eleven month baby wearing spectacles caused much whispering in the community,

But this only encouraged Mrs. Mwewa to forge ahead and increase the physiotherapy sessions and include private session at home with the aid of a trained physiotherapist.

With the increased need for physiotherapy sessions twice weekly at the UTH and the many medical appointments she had to fulfil, the working mother had to make a difficult decision about whether to continue to working as a banker or stay at home and give undivided attention to her son. She quit her job.

For four years without missing a single session, Mrs. Mwewa took Emmanuel for bi-weekly physiotherapy sessions. She began to see results. He started crawling at four and talking at five.

Today, Emmanuel is nine, goes to an ordinary school and lives the life of a normal boy of his age. Her involvement at both parental level and community participation in activities to enhance the living conditions of affected children, has seen Mrs. Mwewa become elected as chairperson of the Cerebral Palsy Association of Zambia (CPAZ), founded in 2003.

Mrs Mwewa in her cerebral palsy story narrates that her son’s condition, is one of many that should serve as encouragement for parents and care givers not to relent in physiotherapy and medical reviews.

She encourages expectant mothers to seek early antenatal care in order to prevent some of the possible causes of cerebral palsy during pregnancy.

The cerebral palsy story ends with Mrs. Mwewa advising that “Cerebral Palsy can be managed by adhering to medial advice and commitment to physiotherapy sessions, it can also be prevented if one seeks antenatal care early, because some of the factors that could cause the condition can be detected early enough and be controlled”.

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