DIMITRI ROSS JAGROO takes life one step at a time. He knows he has come a long way. He doesn’t think about the tough times or talk about them – except to remember how his mother, Camille and father, Sahadeo "Bona" Jagroo, helped him to walk and talk again.

Jagroo, now 32, doesn’t recall the illness that left him without speech or mobility, but his father said, “He had a high fever, extreme congestion and was on antibiotics. There was so much pressure in his head, his eyes were bulging.”

When Jagroo’s parents took him to Mt Hope hospital, doctors operated to reduce the pressure on his brain.

“Ross had a stroke and suffered brain damage from a lack of oxygen,” said his aunt, Sue Lalchan, a physics teacher at Hillview College.

Jagroo was 14.

“Doctors said the brain can find new pathways when it’s damaged, and much of his progress would be up to him,” said Lalchan.

With no physical therapist in the hospital and no money for a private one, Ross’s parents lifted him from the bed, draped one of his arms around each of their shoulders and began the long journey to teach him to walk again.

His illness had occurred during the school vacation between forms one and two. His parents worked to get Jagroo back in school.

“The students in El Dorado Secondary School were kind and supportive when he returned,” said Lalchan. “The school wanted to help, but had no programmes to fit his educational needs.”

Ross’s parents enrolled him in Adult Literacy Tutors Association (ALTA) classes in Warrenville, Cunupia with Miss Yvonne so he could learn to pronounce words again. He attended Eshe’s Learning Centre, a school in Port of Spain for students with learning challenges, and remained there until he was 16.

[caption id="attachment_1132270" align="alignnone" width="1024"] Dimitri Ross Jagroo with his aunt and supporter Sue Lalchan at the Evolution Fitness Laboratory on Pentecostal Road, Tunapuna on January 5.[/caption]

Slowly, Jagroo progressed and returned to what he loved best: helping his father fix friends’ cars at their home in Warrenville and later in Caroni. He can’t remember a time when he wasn’t helping his father in their garage.

“Since small,” he said. “From the time I could walk."

Like a nurse assisting a surgeon, Ross hands his father the tools he needs while fixing cars.

Each shaky step he takes looks difficult and frustrating to an onlooker, but the effort goes unnoticed by Jagroo. He never stops moving. He describes a typical day as “happy” – especially since 2019.

His life took an unexpected turn when Lalchan joined Evofitlab, a gym in Tunapuna, to lose weight.

“Gerard Nicholas, a trained physiotherapist working there, agreed to take on Ross as a community service project. I would pay my fees and Ross would come free, but he said Ross could only come if I trained too. It was his way of motivating me to keep up with the gym,” she said.

And it worked. Lalchan lost weight; Jagroo got stronger.

In the first video taken in the gym, Jagroo sits on a bench, his hands trembling as he struggles t