By Thompson ABISOLA
Toyin Kareem, 34, cannot move both legs and the lower part of her trunk due to an injury of the spine arising from a seeming minor back pain that later developed to severe spinal cord injury 20 years ago.
But Toyin is presently a doctoral student at the University of Ibadan, irrespective of the challenge she faced since her circumstance confined her to the use of a wheel chair in 1999 after a surgery.
“It was a little bit confusing and hazy back then as I didn’t have anybody to relate my experience with and I remember asking my consultant if there were people who had gone through the exact thing.
“He said what happened to me could happen to anybody. It wasn’t like I fell; the first time I noticed the back pain was when I bent to pick something and I felt a dull pain,’’ she said.
This health condition notwithstanding, Toyin finished with a second class upper degree in Mass Communication at Babcock University Ilisan, Ogun.
She later had her post-graduate degree in the Department of Communication and Language Arts, Faculty of Arts, University of Ibadan, where she is hope to obtain a doctorate.
“Nigerian universities were not well equipped to accommodate people in wheel chairs as at the time I became paraplegic.
“This meant furthering my education was going to be very challenging, however with the support of my family and friend, I was able to cope.
“My personality helped a lot; I am a vivacious person. I think people are used to seeing gloomy-looking people on the wheel chair.
“Or maybe they just expect that once you are in the wheelchair, you just have to be sad, unhappy and that’s usually not the case.
“Most people focus on the wheelchair and not the person using the wheelchair; some may think being on the wheel chair is the worst thing that can ever happen to a person in life.
“But life happens to us all and worst things than this happen to people around the world; my disability is physical, others have theirs.
“People are dealing with lots of things that are not physical like mine, may be emotional, financial, spiritual, psychological or otherwise.’’ Toyin explained.
The paraplegic, who drives herself around in a saloon car, said “driving is a thing that I have always wanted to do because it’s quite easier when you are not dependent on people to get around.
“I got a friend to teach me how to drive though my parents were worried about my safety and did not want me to do such a daunting task but I went ahead.
“I found a guy on YouTube who was also paraplegic and builds portable removable hand controls but only available in the U.S.
“I got it through a chain of friends who ensured it got to my house in Ibadan; it was a surprise to my father because I didn’t tell him my plans until he saw me move the car around the compound one evening’’.
Toyin enjoined people to always support persons living with disability and not look down on them by just giving them money.
“People in wheelchairs don’t need just handouts, they want to be seen, supported, accepted and loved.
“Give them opportunities; let them work if they have the qualifications. The focus should be on the person and their skills not how they get around.
“Help them cross the road, use the facilities. Ramps should be everywhere and the disability bill should be passed into law to stop discrimination against them’’, she said.
Toyin further said that she helped others through volunteering, speaking engagements, counselling and teaching people how to drive, soliciting social inclusion and responsibility for persons with disability.
A neurosurgeon, Prof. Adefolarin Malomo, observed that said “maximising life for Toyin is worth celebrating considering the state of Nigeria in medical development.
“When it happens to people and it is severe; the first understanding is this is a big problem but the second aspect is human beings can overcome anything.
“It is not just overcoming it alone; usually in Nigeria spinal cord injury occurs from road crash accident.
“Occasionally it occurs from other injuries such as robbery, social violence and occasionally from injuries at work.
“People fall and sometimes people climb things like the bricklayers, carpenters and also sometimes people who jack vehicles go under it and it falls on their back.
Also people who carry heavy load on their head, when they swerve or missed their steps instead of throwing the load away even if it falls on their back, it ruins everything,’’ Malomo explained.
Malomo noted that there ought to be more collaboration and concerted efforts to care for patients with spinal cord injury in all the nation’s tertiary hospitals.
“Spinal cord injury that is severe in its outcome mostly occurs to people in their active and productive life; it is a condition that is not affecting just a part of the body but the entire body.
“90 per cent of neurological injuries occur in the poorest, developing countries of the world that can barely look after itself and why is this so because they lack the medical, scientific and technological advancement.
“They have resources that are meagre such as when 180 million people want to share resources that for 50 million people.
“It is amazing what we can achieve together as a people; caring for patients with spinal injury is a multidisciplinary thing that involves physiotherapists, pharmacists, social workers and psychologists, among others.
“Even religion has its place and is very useful in the care of spinal cord injury; but because we are educationally immature society; our environment has not learnt to cater for people.
“This adds to the difficulty people with spinal cord injury face and people with other disabilities,’’ he said.
Malomo, therefore, said that the life of Toyin has proved that people with disabilities could live a normal life and excel in their endeavours.
