Defying the odds of being blindBy Sharmain CornetteEngulfed in a world of blackness, but yet so brilliantly illuminated by her radiant personality, 10-year-old Ruth Baveghems has been able to defy the odds and has learnt to live an almost normal life though blind.The young child, who is capable of doing just about everything for herself, is a student of the Resource Unit for Blind and Visually Impaired Students, located at the St Agnes Primary School.There, with the assistance of teachers, particularly Ms Vanessa King, Ruth has over the past eight years of her life been learning to identify letters so that she could read using a Braille typewriter (a machine to help blind persons read).According to an outspoken Ruth during a recent interview with this newspaper, she does not intend to limit herself to just learning to read, pointing out that she plans on becoming a doctor when she is older.Emphasising on the fact that medical officials were unable to fix her eyes, Ruth says that she will work earnestly towards ensuring that she is capable of relieving ailing persons of their pains and deformity so that they would not have to live with a disability as in her case.But if only things had gone differently on that fateful day Ruth could have been just as normal as the average child.It was the 10th day of March, 1998 and Abigail Baveghems was just about seven months along in her pregnancy; nonetheless it felt as though labour pains were upon her.Ruth and her classmate Makala during a reading session.Taking no chances she requested to be taken to the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation (GPHC) where indeed her first daughter and second child was forced into the world prematurely.According to Abigail, an attending medical doctor had informed her that the child who she later named Ruth might have been birthed prematurely because of a hypertensive problem she (Abigail) had.The tiny infant was so unprepared for the world at the time that she had to be placed in an incubator for a few days.However, on the fifth day Abigail was able to take home her newborn baby to her 564 East Ruimveldt, Georgetown, home.But little did Abigail know that her troubles were far from over.Two weeks had passed since she had brought baby home but for some reason the young child would not open her eyes.Abigail, from time to time,Jerseys From China, would attempt to assist the child to open her eyes which appeared to have an abnormal colour.That, however, did not worry the young mother at the time since she had given birth to a son seven years earlier and had a similar experience.At that time, she had rushed him to the hospital fearing that he was going blind with the unusual green and grey colours she had seen in his eyes. Her fears were appeased by a doctor who informed her that that was the colour of the child’s eye and indeed every thing would turn out fine.And so she accepted at first that Ruth’s eyes would probably be just like her brother’s.But the constant refusal of the child to open her eyes begun to nudge at Abigail’s motherly instinct which resulted in her taking the child back to the GPHC to have her eyes examined.According to Abigail, a doctor informed her that due to the premature birth, the child’s cornea did not develop thus she would not be able to see.Though distraught by the revelation,Wholesale China Jerseys, Abigail said that she was not prepared at the time to have a blind child and therefore visited a specialist to get a second opinion, in hopes of hearing that something could be done to fix the problem.And indeed the specialist gave a similar report as that from the public hospital but added that it was possible for the child to have a cornea transplant.Before Abigail knew what was going on, plans were being streamlined by the doctor to have the child be sent overseas to have the operation. But the arrangements would end abruptly when the doctor died a few months later under mysterious circumstances,Wholesale Jerseys, leaving Abigail in a quandary.Reality would then set in and she was forced to come to terms with the fact that she would have to raise a blind child.Her world got even more difficult when the child’s father decided to leave her to rear the child alone, though he kept sending money from time to time but however stopped in 2006.And it was no easy task raising Ruth since,jerseys nfl wholesale, according to Abigail, she had no idea how to teach her to walk, eat or do anything that a normal child could.However,Wholesale Jerseys China, she would soon learn of the Resource Unit at St Agnes Primary School.Grateful that there was a way that her daughter could gain an education, at the age of two she took her to the school.There Abigail said that she