FOURTEEN-year-old Rickoy Jones tries hard not to let his deformed legs prevent him from living a normal life. But even his positive attitude is becoming harder and harder to sustain as his disability seems to get worse with every step he takes.

His family says instead of growing taller, as most teenage boys do, Rickoy seems to be getting shorter as the weight of his body causes his underdeveloped legs and feet to buckle and bend even more out of alignment.

A resident doctor at the Kingston Public Hospital (KPH), who did not wish to be named, said the child has what is termed a congenital shortening of the Achilles tendon.

This, he explained, is a condition where the tendon at the back of the leg is shorter than normal, forcing the child to walk tip-toed or with his feet bent. To remedy this, another tendon has to be found in the body that is not used much, or a graft or substitute purchased and surgically implanted inside the leg to lengthen it.

But despite his condition, Rickoy maintains a constant smile which only fades when he speaks about his inability to do simple things other children take for granted, like taking part in physical education and wearing shorts.

Rickoy, who is a student at the Rosemont Primary and Junior High School in Linstead, said his crooked legs make him ‘feel a way’, especially when he is jeered by his peers.

“I feel upset about it,” Rickoy told the Sunday Observer when we sat with him recently in his family’s one-room board house in Commodore, Linstead.

“Sometimes the children laugh at me and it mek me feel a way,” he said. “Sometimes they tease and mock me and show other children how I walk. That mek me feel bad.”

But his disability not only makes him the easy target of cruel schoolmates, it also prevents him from playing his favourite sport, cricket.

“I love cricket, and I would love to play, but at school they don’t allow me to go on the ball field,” said an obviously dejected Rickoy, explaining that he wants to try even though his legs hurt when he walks.

According to his stepmother, Michelle Henry-Jones — who shares the home with Rickoy’s father and two-year-old brother — his knees are getting bigger and his ankles weaker.

“If you look at it (his legs) you see that his knees are getting bigger and sometimes him ankle sprain. One time it was just one foot that was affected, but because he has to put all the pressure on the good foot, you find that it get bad now too.”

She is equally hurt by other children’s unkindness toward her stepson.

“Sometimes I hear other children teasing him and I have to run them away,” Henry-Jones said.

His stepmother said Rickoy — who has been living with her since he was a year old, after his father and his biological mother split up — was born with the condition.

“His father said he was born with it. He was born prematurely before seven months. But as him get older it get worse,” she explained.

As a result of his condition, coupled with his parents inability to properly care for him financially, Rickoy ended up dropping out of the school system after basic school. He did not return to the classroom until 2009 when he started at his present school. Although he is in eighth grade in high school, Rickoy is unable to read well and, according to his stepmother, he can only ‘read a little word’.

Three years ago, Rickoy received an appointment to have surgery on his crooked lower limbs at the University Hospital of the West Indies.

Doctors planned to perform a procedure called Achilles Tendon Lengthening to correct this deformity. However, this remained just a dream as the cost of the surgery was a whopping $82,000 (at the time).

Rickoy’s stepmother sells ripe bananas at the nearby school and to community members, while his father is a cabinetmaker whose jobs are irregular and whose pay is less than substantial.

Rickoy’s aunt, Anna-Kay Jones said he visited the Kingston Public Hospital (KPH) on a number of occasions for various treatments, but without any major success. Without the money, the operation is impossible. According to the resident doctor, while the operation is free, the tendon graft needs to be bought.

“We tried to get help from family members but it wasn’t forthcoming,” Jones said. “He is really a wonderful boy and I really want to see him get help.” It has been a year since Rickoy has been back to the KPH.

Jones, who lives nearby in the same community admits her nephew’s condition was not dealt with as it should have been when he was very young.

“But now we are really trying,” she said. “Right now I would really like to see surgery done on his feet to see him able to walk normally. It’s getting worse and worse and as he gets older he will have to be dependent on someone to help him around. I really don’t want to see that. I want to see him able to be independent.”

But while his family is worried that the young boy may never get the chance to live a normal life, Rickoy is determined to do just that, and pushes himself to cope, even walking to school like other children his age.

“Sometimes if we don’t have the money to give him, he will walk to school,” Henry-Jones said.

“When I am walking to school I walk fast,” Rickoy chimed in with a proud wide smile, although school is almost a mile from home and even longer for him because of his disability.

After careful thinking, the 14-year-old told the Sunday Observer his dream is to be a farmer; planting tomatoes, bananas, yams and mangoes.

It’s a dream that his family tries to support as they struggle to acquire the money for the critical and potentially life-changing surgery on his legs.

“We would love to see anyone who is able to, to help Rickoy get this surgery,” Rickoy’s aunt said in a desperate plea. “We would be very grateful. We try, but we are still not able to come up with the money.”