Kymani Nichols, the sickler whose plight was highlighted in the Jamaica Observer last Sunday, has seen the genesis of his recovery.

With assistance from eMedia Interactive Group Limited and the Rotary Club of St Andrew, the 10-year-old has received a wheelchair and a long-term commitment to see to his medical improvement.

His mother Kayon Bowen beamed with joy last Thursday as she saw her son sit in his new chair.

“I’m speechless,” a smiling Bowen told the Sunday Observer.

“I’m just very thankful. This has been a very tremendous help and I’m glad there are still great people out there. Thank you everybody,” she continued.

Kymani was born with sickle cell disease — a blood disorder that affects the haemoglobin molecule that transports oxygen throughout the body.

At age five he suffered two strokes and he regressed terribly after the latter.

“The only thing different with the first one (stroke) is he used to use the right hand to write and then him start use the left. But when him get the second one everything just gone — speech, him cannot walk, him cyaan do nothing for himself, him affi go back to pampers, baby bottles — nothing at all him can do for himself,” Bowen told the Sunday Observer in an interview two weeks ago.

“Nothing at all, not even fi sit up by himself. And even if him sit up and you try kotch him up, him kick kick till him just slide right back down,” she said at the time.

Moved by Nichol’s story, President and Chief Executive Officer of eMedia Interactive Group Limited, Tyrone Wilson, “a fellow sickler”, was intent on getting a wheelchair to the lad. Wasting no time, he sought the chair.

Having learnt of the service club’s wheelchair project, he contacted Dr Lloyd Eubank-Green, past president of the club and chairman of its wheelchair project that supplies reasonably priced wheelchairs to the physically challenged. When he learnt of Kymani, the chairman instead donated the implement to the young sickler.

“As a fellow sickler I just see it (sickle cell) as my way of helping,” Wilson stated. “He’s too young to be restrained with it, so we want to really provide more support [for him].

“We appreciate the support from the Rotary Club and we want to take it a step further in getting some speech therapy and some physio [-therapy] to really help and supplies. So we want, we’re gonna take it further. The wheelchair is a big help for him and I think we just want to help him recover and live his dream,” Wilson added.

The digital media professional is optimistic that Nichols will recover.

“I met a youngster probably two years older than him (Kymani) at the Sickle Cell Clinic who…suffered from strokes to, but now he is walking by himself. So I think there is a lot of time for him (Kymani) to be rehabilitated,” he noted.

“He’s still young; he has a lot of years ahead of him to recover,” Wilson stated.

The wheelchair project, according to Eubank-Green, started 14 years ago when he headed the Rotary Club of St Andrew division.

Since then the club has distributed “over 113 million dollars worth of wheelchairs” to disabled Jamaicans.

“Normally, we do a project for a year then we give it up, but because of the constant demand throughout Jamaica I’ve kept it going,” Eubank-Green noted.

“Can’t give it up, can’t give it up,” the chairman stressed. “Ten per cent of the Jamaican population is disabled, and out of that 280,000 there are 30,000 who need wheelchairs, but only 5,000 are registered.”