RD Reflection: Running For His Life (June Issue)

After reading the article, I feel that Ryan is a very strong person. Although he had dystonia, a rare condition similar to Parkinson’s disease, he is still able to run. The disease affected him in a negative way; he could not do things that a healthy five or six year old child can do. It must have been a depressing experience for him whenever he see children playing happily, while he is almost immobile and cannot join them. It is saddening to hear that his dystonia may worsen when he gets older. This caused him to fall down the stairs regularly at home, when his left leg would collapse under him. His jaw would also lock sometimes that he could barely speak. The convulsions became so frequent that he had a permanent space in the hospital.

If it was me who had dystonia, I cannot imagine how life would be for me. As a child, my days were spent playing with my cousins, and I would be running after them or vice versa whenever there is a chance. Like any other typical child, I would not know what is right or wrong to do and needless to say, sensitive to the feelings of others. Due to that, perhaps I’ll feel scared and would not want to be anywhere near if I see someone go into spasms. So if I were the one with dystonia, I guess I would be discriminated by the other children. If I am already thinking this way, Ryan must have felt a million times worse. He is such an innocent kid; he shouldn’t have been the one to have this disease. However, life is not always fair and my heart goes out for him.

Not defeated by his disease, he’d rather suffer the frequent seizures than have a painkiller injected to his spine. Although Ryan seemed better for weeks at a time, it would suddenly flare up and cripple him. In spite of that, he was still a fighter. I suppose he wanted others to see himself as any other normal boy instead of letting them know his condition and be treated differently. Even his friends had no idea when they first got to know about his condition.

He is now one of Britain’s top ten sprinters for his age group. Not knowing what will happen to him in the future, he hurries to keep on competing. I take my hat off to him for his determination to compete in spite of dystonia.

- HUIMEI