Jordan is well known and loved around Mbombela for being the most beautiful boy with severely spastic cerebral palsy.
Jordan was diagnosed with cerebral palsy, at the age of six months after he stayed in NICU for three months. This is where he contracted septicaemia and meningitis. These two infections caused hydrocephalus and he developed brain damage because of meningitis that was unattended to for four weeks.
Jordan had six operations up to date, starting with implantation of a draining tube in his head to drain excess brain fluid or CF fluid, into his abdominal area. His first operation was done when he was only three months old, which was supposed to be his birth date due to him being born three months earlier than expected.
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It didn’t end there as another five more totally different operations followed, that included the placing of another tube inside his little body. Jordan was only two years old when his feeding tube was implanted directly into his stomach so his mother could feed him without him choking.
After multiple operations, Teresa Coertzen was scared and overwhelmed. She needed a safe place. A place where she could stay and be educated on how to properly care for her severely ill son. She soon learned that there was no such place in South Africa.
You have a choice of, either leaving your sickly and severely disabled child at a government institution, where the child will die within a week or two, or you can go home and hope that you will be able to cope with, keep it together, and manage to care for a leaking, infected newly cut wound while feeding your child through a new, foreign tube and still remain sane, said Coertzen.
Coertzen said that children who are discharged are completely different to what they were when they arrived at the hospital. Mothers are now left with incapable children and they have no idea how to take care of and manage the feeding and the still bleeding wound of such a severely special needs child. According to Coertzen these mothers then begin to feel overwhelmed with guilt, shock, depression, being overtired all the time.
This is the reason why she decided to step up and help these mothers who are unable to cope and care for themselves and their special needs children. The planned Jordan Home will be a clean, healthy environment where mothers of these special children can go once they are discharged to receive some guidance and education on how to cope and take care of these kids.
Jordan Homes needs to be placed in every province to assist these mothers. If members of the public can help her with any donations or any help please phone her on 060 719 1947.
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