There have probably been children with Cerebral Palsy in the country since the beginning of human existence. Cerebral Palsy is a brain injury often associated with premature birth, poor blood circulation in the brain and low oxygen tension. This condition can manifest itself by a delay in physical development with high muscle tone (spasticity), low muscle tone (hypotonia), or both. Likewise, we have a case of Cerebral Palsy with elicitation of paraplegia, hypotonia, dysarthria in NDF.

A 4 years old girl named Gracy Chaudhary is also one of the individual with Cerebral Palsy including intellectual disability. She is a child born with PDA (heart problem) followed by Juvenile jaundice after 3 days of birth. Simultaneously, she also suffered from pneumonia. The heart surgery was conducted in Shahid Ganga Lal hospital after 2 years. Though it is doubtful, her developmental milestones was also delayed as she developed her sitting posture after 2 years. Her mobility is possible only by buttock dragging and that is mainly because of weakness of bilateral lower limbs. As per the physiotherapy treatment, she had taken the service in various hospitals of Kathmandu. As the progression was not seen even in a year, her parents brought the child to National Disabled Fund on 29/04/11 when she turned 4 years. From that day onwards, she has been taking mainly physiotherapy and P&O service in our centre.

When she first entered our centre, she was carried by her mother on her hip. She barely could use walker for the mobility purpose despite maximum support. On the other hand, her only strength was her upper extremity as it was strong enough to use it appropriately for activities of daily living. But, the sad part was that she didn’t know how to utilize her hands for activities like brushing teeth, putting on and off her clothes, etc. The major challenge was to develop the strength on her hip and lower limbs making her able to stand independently and walk with the support of a walker. The other obstacles was to deal with her intellectual disability and dysarthria as well to treat her regularly.

With good support from her parents and thorough physiotherapy sessions for continuous 7 months, Gracy is now able to stand independently for 30 seconds and with minimal support for more than 1 minute. She is able to grip and grasp the objects properly enabling her to open her AFO and shoes, put off her clothes. Also, she is now able to kneel independently and perform the assigned task. Furthermore, the major achievement till date is her ability to stand independently and take few steps with support of a walker on the plain surface. The attempt of making her walk with support of walker is still going on and hopefully she will walk independently in the years to come.