Oh! For a pair of hands again
View(s):Life has not been very kind to Jeevantha de Silva, an STF policeman. Now battling the biggest blow of his life, he awaits assistance at the Police Hospital in Narahenpita
By Kumudini Hettiarachchi
Twenty-seven-year-old Kurukulasuriya Patabendige Viraj Jeevantha de Silva from Kuda Maskeliya is on a desperate search.
He is looking and longing for a pair of hands. Although this policeman of the Special Task Force has also been blinded in his left eye, he has come to accept that with stoic resignation, but agonises over a future without his hands.
Let alone, taking food to the mouth, holding a cup to drink water, washing not only the face or body but also after going to the toilet, have any of us pondered what life would be like if we did not have the use of our hands………..writing and signing documents, scratching, chasing away flies and mosquitoes, dusting off ants from the body, the list goes on.
Life is a daily struggle for Jeevantha. Pic by Hasitha Kulasekera
It is unthinkable to live without one’s hands, but that is what Jeevantha in the prime of his youth has been doing since that fateful day of September 24, last year (2012) more than three months ago.
Jeevantha had been performing routine duty, clearing out a barrel from a storage room at the 10th milepost STF camp in Pottuvil, when the tragedy that would change his young life forever took place.
“There were pieces of old uniforms in the barrel and I was taking all this stuff out when I heard a sound like a cracker,” he says, recalling how he got thrown to a side.
Momentarily there was no pain and then an explosion of excruciating agony as he looked aghast at his hands – they were like two bloody flowers, with the shattered bones protruding from a mangled mass of flesh. Blinking through blood and tears and also a searing heat on his face, he had not realised that his left eye was also badly injured.
The barrel had a pressure mine, he says simply and sadly. Thereafter it was a flurry of activity, although he never lost consciousness. Rushed from the STF camp to the Lahugala Hospital and later to the Moneragala Hospital, he remembers like yesterday how he kept spitting blood that was collecting in his mouth.
Two operations later, it was a sip of water that he longed for, he recalls and also in-between operations how he urged his weeping friend to sign the documents for the removal of his left eye.
Two days later on September 26, he had been brought to the Police Hospital in Narahenpita where he still is.
Even earlier, life had not been easy for Jeevantha and his family since his father was diagnosed with cancer. The eldest in a family of five, with three sisters and a brother after him, he was a promising student. Studying at Saman Eliya Vidayalaya, it was to St. Sylvester’s College in Kandy that he went after scoring at the Grade 5 Scholarship Examination. But fate, karma or destiny, whatever one may call it had other heartrending plans for him.
When his father was diagnosed with cancer, the family’s comfortable life collapsed around them. Jeevantha was compelled to go back to the Sri Pada Vidyalaya in Hatton to do his Ordinary Level, for his mother was frantically running around getting the treatment his father needed. By the time Jeevantha got into the Advanced Level class, the family business of a small hotel and bakery had been so neglected and the three vehicles they owned put up for sale that he had to give up his studies.
The family kitty had nothing. His father was being treated at the Maharagama Cancer Hospital with his mother at his bedside and his younger siblings were still small. After his father’s death, he became the breadwinner, working at menial odd-jobs to keep the family from starving — selling apples in the Pettah, joining a mason as a helper and taking up a temporary driving post at the Ceylon Electricity Board. It was then that he got the opportunity to join the STF in 2008, being posted to the operations area of Lahugala, after training.
The war was not over then and he was in a camp at Karanda Oya, about four km in the jungle off the Pottuvil-Moneragala Road providing security to the villages of Hulan Nuge and Lahugala. When the war ended, it was to the 10th milepost camp that he went after a three-month special duty in Colombo, which he declines to comment on.
Back at the camp little did Jeevantha know that cruel fate was to give him another terrible blow – this time a lifelong disability at the peak of his youth.
Desperate search for Rs. 4 m.
Lend a helping hand to Jeevantha, is the urgent plea of Dr. Dissanayake, to each and every person, for he needs Rs. 4 million to get two hands. This would change his life for the better and prevent him from becoming a burden on his aging mother.
Kind donors may send their contributions to the Joint Account No. 178200280008337 at the Maskeliya People’s Bank, K.P.V. Jeevantha de Silva has with his mother, S.P. Lalitha. A joint account has been necessitated as Jeevantha cannot sign any documents.
For more information, please call courageous Jeevantha on Phone: 0775271237. He answers the phone by pressing the buttons with a toothpick held between his teeth.
Remedy for the disability
All hope is not lost yet. While Jeevantha is to go before a Medical Board which will decide on his status, his doctor has come up with an answer to his severe disability.
A prosthetic eye has been fixed and Consultant Plastic Surgeon, Dhammika Dissanayake attached to the National Hospital in Colombo has searched for affordable as well as functional limbs for Jeevantha.
Jeevantha would be able to get functional hands in the form of artificial prosthetics at a reasonable cost in Coimbatore, India, Dr. Dissanayake has found which would allow him to flex and extend his fingers. When he feels like moving his muscle, the sensor in the artificial limb would react. He would be able to hold a cup, cut something with a knife, pour liquid into cups and more importantly travel alone by bus because he would be able to hold the pole or overhead bar.
The limbs available in Sri Lanka, the Sunday Times learns, are mechanical and allow only minor movements, unlike the ones Jeevantha would be able to get fixed in Coimbatore.
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