Kamila Alexander is a bright, friendly, jovial 14-year-old girl and a form two student of St Charles High School, who lives on 17 th Street, Beetham Gardens. Her one wish as school reopened was to go back to school to meet with her friends and learn more in the subjects that she enjoyed such as math.
But she is now unable to go to school – not because of the rest and reflection of teachers or because of strikes but because of a physical condition that has left her scalp covered in sores.
The girl’s mother is now asking for help, either to assist with her condition, or to assist with costly medication to treat the girl’s affliction, so that she can go back to school.
The disease is called Dissecting Cellulitis of the Scalp or Hoffman’s Disease. It is a chronic inflammatory disorder of the scalp characterised mainly by inflammation and swelling around the hair follicles. In most cases Cellulitis is caused by an infection of the deeper layers in the skin caused by bacteria on the skin’s surface. In Kamila’s case, the disease has left her with inflamed sores all over her scalp, which oozes a form of discharge, and gives off an odour. Nicole Alexander, Kamila’s mother, told Newsday that she first started seeing signs of the disease when Alexander was just a baby.
[caption id="attachment_975770" align="alignnone" width="1024"] Kamila Alexander shows her afflicted scalp as she talks to Newsday at her home at Beetham Garden's, Port of Spain, last Friday. - ROGER JACOB[/caption]
“At first I thought it was Cradle Cap (another skin disease which causes scaly patches on a baby’s scalp). We had it treated and it went away for a while,” the mother told Newsday.
“As she grew older I started noticing small buttons on her scalp whenever I combed her hair. Now, it is so bad that she has to put a towel over her head. The sores ooze puss and blood. It is so bad that we have to put a towel over her head and when we do that, the towel gets wet with all the discharge.”
The disease has left Alexander, an otherwise friendly and outgoing girl, afraid to go out. She stays at home with her uncle, niece and nephew.
“Sometimes I can’t even get her to go to the shop,” the mother said. “She doesn’t like to go out at all. She mostly stays inside looking at tik tocks on her cell phone. I know she does it so she could take her mind off what is happening with her.”
Despite her condition Alexander was still described as a jovial child. Her mother said Alexander is still able to joke about the condition with family.
“We would sometimes joke with her and say ‘ah smelling cheese,’ and she would laugh about it,” the mother said.
The mother said that she was unable to go to school because of the disease, although it is not contagious. She told Newsday that she went to the school to ask them to give her a hiatus so that she could get treatment. At this point, the teenaged girl is unable to attend and is not recieving any kind of lessons.
“She is very sad about not being able to go to school. We told her that because of her scalp sh
