Casey’s Story Of all the statements that Casey said, one will remain forever engraved in my heart-‘it could have been worse’. It is indeed remarkable that anyone can use those words after becoming paralyzed from the shoulders down, Yet, this is what Casey said and that is what makes her an amazing and inspirational young woman. After completing her O level education at Alliance Girls High School in year 2000, Casey joined the rest of her family in Kampala, Uganda where her father was working.  She continued with her education and sat for her A levels in 2002.Upon completion, she decided to pursue her further studies in the UK.

After being accepted by a London university, she decided to travel back to Kenya and begin the process of obtaining the necessary documents needed for her journey. While here, she reacquainted herself with her friends and former schoolmates who were now studying at Daystar University.

On Friday September 26th2003, Casey met with her friends to go out for the night.  They had a good time and left for home at about two a.m. The excitement and events of the day finally had their toll on Casey and she dozed off upon entering the car. When she woke up, it was Saturday early morning and she was lying on a bed at the Intensive Care Unit of the M.P. Shah Hospital. Little did she know that she had been in a horrific accident that had stolen away the lives of two of her friends who were passengers in the car and one that would ultimately alter the course of her life forever.

She spent six weeks at the MP Shah hospital in the ICU section. She had no voice, due to the breathing and feeeding tubes inserted down her throat, and all she could do was whisper to family and friends by her bedside. Cold metal tongs of traction were bolted into the sides of her head with eight kilograms of weights suspended on a pulley to keep the pressure off her broken neck. She endured a battery of tests and injections and was all the while fully dependent on the hyper ventilator for breathing. She remembers one incident when she tried to move her hands only for her arms to fail.  She did not realize the full implications of this and dozed off considering it an effect of all the drugs that she was taking. 

Due to the magnitude of the injury that Casey sustained and also the limitations available here for the treatment of spinal cord injury, the family sought expert medical advice from the Consulting Surgeons who then concurred on the decision to evacuate Casey to a hospital in Cape Town, South Africa for specialized treatment. After critical preparations and fundraisings, through an AMREF air-plane, Casey was then flown to Southern Cross Hospital in Cape Town.

Upon arrival, the head of the Spinal Rehabilitation Centre Dr. Ed Baalbergen began immediate medical care of Casey. Dr. Baalbergen, who was later to bond soclosely with this cheerful Kenyan girl, for the very first time laid out calmly the hard facts to Casey about the extent of the injury to her spine. Once again, it did not sink in due to the effects of the sedatives. When she woke up after a long drug induced sleep, she imagined that the doctor’s words were an unreal dream.  She somehow believed   that God would take control and make her walk. In fact, she kept telling her physiotherapists and doctors that her God wanted to and would make her walk again.

Soon after, she was on the operating table in a six hour operation to strengthen and stabilize her neck. Bone from her hip was extracted to be used as graft on her neck to aid the stabilization process. To date, Casey recalls the intense pain she was in from the operation. A mix-up of instructions caused Casey to receive a double dose of morphine. This made her delirious and sent her temperatures to the forties. Her mother watched in helpless agony as her first daughter’s body struggled with the pain and suffering. A second operation would follow to correct her respiratory system. She had to go through a number of exercises that would push the diaphragm up in order to revive her collapsed lungs. She started being weaned off the hyper ventilator and all the while having to endure the discomfort of feeding tube through her nose to the stomach. 

On 18th December, Casey was finally off the hyper ventilator and a few days after she was moved from the ICU to the general ward. Even then, she could not breathe on her own and had to have an oxygen mask attached to her at all times. Subconsciously, Casey wanted to remain dependent on the machines to breath. This would cause panic attacks where she would demand to be put back on the machine. These attacks lessened when the rest of her family came to visit in mid-December. The first step of the healing miracle in Casey’s condition happened at this time when she was transferred from the ICU after a stay of eleven weeks in both Nairobi and Cape Town and moved to a normal ward room. This was indeed a welcome gift for the family who had just arrived in Cape Town to be together with her. Her younger sister’s Penny and Jessy were a calming influence especially when Casey’s legs would have intense spasms.

She soon began her physiotherapy sessions and through counselling psychology she began accepting her fate.  She attributes this to the wonderful and supportive team of nurses and physiotherapists. A major milestone was on January 19th when Casey’s voice came back following a final operation around her throat which enabled the breathing tube removed. Even then pain was never far away. The constant insertion of suction catheters to her lungs to assist in coughing was a painful exercise that she had to withstand time and time again.

Her mother, Lucy meanwhile had undertaken a course in home care nursing at a training institution in Cape Town to equip her with the necessary skills of taking care of her daughter in this new life. And so the preparations to bring Casey home started. Casey did not want to leave the ‘comfort’ zone of hospital. Here everyone knew her as a quadriplegic. She worried about coming home and having to be viewed by friends and family as a helpless invalid. At certain times she felt scared and felt that her fate was far worse than of her friends who had passed on. To some of her friends, she described her condition as death in slow motion.

She found courage and strength in a South African girl who is a midget with no arms. This girl uses her shoulders to drive among other activities, and a few weeks before Casey met this girl, she had just graduated and gotten her Masters degree in psychology. Casey felt challenged to make something out of her situation. She then began lessons teaching her how to use voice activated computer software that enables her to carry out all functions of a computer giving her hope that she could now complete her studies and make something out of her life.

Despite all this, Casey has come out courageous and more ambitious than ever.  Through the years she has meant many in her condition, and it is through "Chariots of destiny" that she hopes to bring about a change in the lives of people living with disabilities and share as she calls it her "God sent" strength.