Editorial - Of love, hope, and triumph

ONE OF the more engaging stories of recent times is about Kristina Williams. Kristina graduated from the Hydel Special Education Centre and expects to enter high school in September. This in itself is not exceptional but for the fact that Kristina was diagnosed at age five months with cerebral palsy, a debilitating paralysis of a part of the brain.

Her story is one of love and hope and triumph, of parents who were willing to defy the odds; and of a young lady, now aged 15, of uncommon will and determination.

The medical prognosis was not good; people with cerebral palsy are not expected to live a full life. In Kristina's case her parents were told that she would develop epilepsy in later life. That has not happened. In the interview with this newspaper, her parents, Noel and Barbara Williams, told of the struggles of teaching their daughter to co-ordinate her movements and to talk. Now, her mother says of the voluble teenager, "sometimes you can't get a word in."

Kristina got top grades in her 14 subjects at the special school and is not awed by the challenges of high school. She has goals that she hopes to accomplish: to walk, she is now confined to a wheel chair; to write for The Gleaner; to see her face on television; and to get married to "a very handsome man" - dreams which we have no doubt that she will realise because, as her father says, "she's a great girl."

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