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Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

Nine years af­ter un­der­go­ing open-heart surgery, 26-year-old Ra­keesh Roodal is now bat­tling new med­ical prob­lems that have left him de­pen­dent on oth­ers for ba­sic mo­bil­i­ty and dai­ly care.

Roodal was 17 years old when doc­tors di­ag­nosed him with a hole in the wall be­tween the low­er cham­bers of his heart, a con­di­tion called a ven­tric­u­lar sep­tal de­fect.