Help raise funds for Keta’s medical trip to Italy

DESPITE the life-altering challenges thrown at Keta-Lea Wright, she has taken it in her stride.

She has picked herself up and is a positive, strong-willed and determined young woman.

She now needs your help to make a large difference as she has to see a specialist in Italy to help her with her auto-immune disease, scleroderma.

At two years old, Keta developed boils on her right hip, which took a long and painful time to heal.

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Doctors believe this was the cause of her rare auto-immune disease, linear scleroderma.

After four years of numerous specialist consultations, spanning from Durban to New York, Keta’s condition was finally diagnosed.

“From the age of seven, she has had methotrexate injections once a week, which we had to give her. This almost broke us as parents as it was excruciatingly painful for her,” said Keta’s loving mom, Kirsty.

Keta’s scleroderma started with a little patch on her lower back, which spread across her body over the years. This restricted the growth of the right hand side of her body.

Another form of scleroderma is an aggressive atrophying syndrome, called Parry Romberg Syndrome, which has severely affected her face and neck.

“This disease is so cruel, it causes the skin to dry and shrink, losing all elasticity and changing colour, eventually degenerating muscle and affecting bone formation. We are so grateful that Keta’s Scleroderma has stayed localised and has not gone internal. It has stayed on a skin and muscle level mainly and has not affected her lungs or caused her internal organs to harden,” said a concerned Kirsty.

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Keta is back on injectable methotrexate and five other pills weekly.

It was initially thought the disease would burn out by the time she became a teenager, buit it was sadly not the case.

“After fighting for so many years we have decided that we cannot give up now and have been told by Keta’s current specialist in Pretoria that the best specialist focusing entirely on scleroderma is in Italy. We have to take our child there, making sure we are doing everything in our power to get the best care possible for her,” said her dad, John.

While the disease has cruelly ravaged her body, it has not touched her soul, spirit or mind.

Keta is a positive, well adjusted, confident and outgoing person. She has not allowed this disease to define her or stop her in anyway.

In addition to scleroderma, Keta was diagnosed with dystonia, a hereditary disease that causes involuntary muscle spasms.

“At the time of this discovery, we were completely devastated and overwhelmed as parents, but not Keta. She kept saying, ‘God’s got me’.”

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Family friend, Bonnie Hayman de Beer, will host an elegant fund-raiser dinner at Butlers in Hillcrest on Thursday, 28 September from 6.30pm.

The cost is R500 per person or R5 000 per table of 10.

This includes a three-course dinner and live entertainment. There will also be an auction with a host of wonderful prizes.

Contact Bonnie on 082 782 9717 or e-mail bonnie@kzndance.com.

You can also follow Keta’s story on Facebook.

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