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(Matthew wrote this in 2001 for a school essay & I thought it was worth sharing with everyone)
His name is David, he is my little brother, and he is 11 years old. I chose to tell about him because I thought it would be an interesting topic because of his many medical conditions (disabilities) that prevent him from being like a normal 11 year old and his constant trips to the Royal Children's Hospital
David was born on the 12th June 1990. Ever since I can remember David has not been well and has had these various disabilities (there are too many to name) but I can name some of them, like cerebral palsy and epilepsy these alone affect his day to day life and make him unable to even walk or talk properly. As mentioned earlier David is constantly at hospital because of minor things like odd sodium levels (low or high) or minor viruses, but even small things like these can be very serious for David, he is known well at the royal children's hospital because he is there so often especially on the 8th floor in ward 8 west.
David does go to school for the regular times (about 9:00 - 3:00) but goes there by his schools own bus. He cant go to a normal school like a primary/secondary school so he goes to a special school . This is a school for seriously disabled kids. Most people do school work there but as mentioned above David cannot even walk or talk yet and he is 11 years old so he cannot do any work and I'm not sure what he does do. As for dressing and cleaning he has to have all that stuff done for him because he can't do it himself. He cant eat anything orally either so he is fed with a thing called "gastrostomy" which is a button in his stomach which is connected to a tube and a bottle containing a liquid food called jevity. The jevity comes out of the bottle and down through the tube directly into David's stomach.
As mentioned earlier David needs various things done for him because he can't do them himself. Things like the gastrostomy tube for feeding, his special school because he can't go to a regular one etc.
Once when David was younger he could walk, but he couldn't do it alone, he had to have someone holding him up or he would eventually fall over but he could walk a short distance but he would eventually fall over but the usual reason for that was for having an epileptic seizure (it is like unconsciousness) these seizures used to happen a lot as a symptom of his epilepsy. So it is clear that his disabilities and conditions have steadily gotten worse over time because now he can't walk at all and has to get around in his wheel chair which he can't operate and needs someone else to push him around in it.
In conclusion I think David may go back into hospital soon (I hope he doesn't though) because he goes there quite often getting sick with something
Written By 'Big Brother' Matthew
(for an English Essay),
September 2001
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