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I have spastic bilateral quadriplegia, also known as cerebral palsy. It limits my body, but not my mind.
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Atheneum Books for Young Readers (Out of My Mind (The Out of My Mind Series))
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My left leg is clumsy and about to give way, but I mentally threaten to cut it off if it doesn't get me out of here. It listens.
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Brigid Kemmerer (A Curse So Dark and Lonely (Cursebreakers, #1))
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She was now drowning in that pool of desires without having any idea about the depth of it.
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Viraj Mahajan (Derivation of Life)
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I Have a Dream... someday my son, Zyon and ALL individuals with disabilities will be seen as HUMAN beings.
I Have a Dream... someday the human & civil rights of individuals with disabilities are honored and they are treated as equals.
I Have a Dream... someday ALL parents who have children with disabilities see their child as a blessing and not a burden.
I Have a Dream... someday there will be more jobs and opportunities for individuals with disabilities.
I Have a Dream... someday there will be UNITY "within" the disabled community.
I HAVE A DREAM!!!
”
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Yvonne Pierre (The Day My Soul Cried: A Memoir)
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Words.
I’m surrounded by thousands of words. Maybe millions.
Cathedral. Mayonnaise. Pomegranate.
Mississippi. Neapolitan. Hippopotamus.
Silky. Terrifying. Iridescent.
Tickle. Sneeze. Wish. Worry.
Words have always swirled around me like snowflakes—each one delicate and different, each one melting untouched in my hands.
Deep within me, words pile up in huge drifts. Mountains of phrases and sentences and connected ideas. Clever expressions. Jokes. Love songs.
From the time I was really little—maybe just a few months old—words were like sweet, liquid gifts, and I drank them like lemonade. I could almost taste them. They made my jumbled thoughts and feelings have substance. My parents have always blanketed me with conversation. They chattered and babbled. They verbalized and vocalized. My father sang to me. My mother whispered her strength into my ear.
Every word my parents spoke to me or about me I absorbed and kept and remembered. All of them.
I have no idea how I untangled the complicated process of words and thought, but it happened quickly and naturally. By the time I was two, all my memories had words, and all my words had meanings.
But only in my head.
I have never spoken one single word. I am almost eleven years old.
”
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Sharon M. Draper (Out of My Mind (Out of My Mind, #1))
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There are so many moments in our life which we cannot describe with mere words. There are not enough adjectives to justify the emotions behind such moments. Those moments are your life- they define who you truly are
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Viraj Mahajan (Derivation of Life)
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It was a myth you couldn't function on opiates: shooting up was one thing but for someone like me-jumping at pigeons beating from the sidewalk, afflicted with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder practically to the point of spasticity and cerebral palsy-pills were the key to being not only competent, but high-functioning.
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Donna Tartt (The Goldfinch)
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She was few inches taller than him and when for the first time her promising eyes met with his, he knew it would be more than friendship. He was too young to name that feeling then. But love...above all relationships knows no age.
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Viraj Mahajan (Derivation of Life)
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These stories always take us to some far away places which we can never visit in real life.
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Viraj Mahajan (Derivation of Life)
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Most kids grow sullen and angry when they’re working through issues, but Thanet mustered up another kind of bull-headed strength. The kind that sees beyond circumstances to what really matters. How could anyone hurt a soul that lovely?
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Laura Anderson Kurk (Glass Girl (Glass Girl, #1))
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The only thing to do with tears is water your flowers with them, so that there is something to show the world when the sun comes out.
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Fran Macilvey (Trapped: My Life with Cerebral Palsy)
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We have a choice in our lives. We can be content with where we are, or we can set goals and continue to push ourselves beyond our limits. I’m ready to keep doing that. I want to be the first person with cerebral palsy to climb the tallest free-standing mountain in the world.
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Bonner Paddock (One More Step: My Story of Living with Cerebral Palsy, Climbing Kilimanjaro, and Surviving the Hardest Race on Earth)
“
Izzy, sit up straight,” she would say at the dinner table, thinking: Scoliosis. Cerebral palsy. “Izzy, calm down.” Though she would never quite articulate it this way, resentment began to sheathe concern. ANGER IS FEAR’S BODYGUARD,
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Celeste Ng (Little Fires Everywhere)
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But the Esquire passage I found most poignant and revealing was this one: Mister Rogers' visit to a teenage boy severely afflicted with cerebral palsy and terrible anger. One of the boys' few consolations in life, Junod wrote, was watching Mister Rogers Neighborhood.
'At first, the boy was made very nervous by the thought that Mister Rogers was visiting him. He was so nervous, in fact, that when Mister Rogers did visit, he got mad at himself and began hating himself and hitting himself, and his mother had to take him to another room and talk to him. Mister Rogers didn't leave, though. He wanted something from the boy, and Mister Rogers never leaves when he wants something from somebody. He just waited patiently, and when the boy came back, Mister Rogers talked to him, and then he made his request. He said, 'I would like you to do something for me. Would you do something for me?' On his computer, the boy answered yes, of course, he would do anything for Mister Rogers, so then Mister Rogers said: I would like you to pray for me. Will you pray for me?' And now the boy didn't know how to respond. He was thunderstruck... because nobody had ever asked him for something like that, ever. The boy had always been prayed for. The boy had always been the object of prayer, and now he was being asked to pray for Mister Rogers, and although at first he didn't know how to do it, he said he would, he said he'd try, and ever since then he keeps Mister Rogers in his prayers and doesn't talk about wanting to die anymore, because he figures if Mister Rogers likes him, that must mean that God likes him, too.
As for Mister Rogers himself... he doesn't look at the story the same way the boy did or I did. In fact, when Mister Rogers first told me the story, I complimented him on being smart - for knowing that asking the boy for his prayers would make the boy feel better about himself - and Mister Rogers responded by looking at me first with puzzlement and then with surprise. 'Oh heavens no, Tom! I didn't ask him for his prayers for him; I asked for me. I asked him because I think that anyone who has gone through challenges like that must be very close to God. I asked him because I wanted his intercession.
”
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Tim Madigan (I'm Proud of You: My Friendship with Fred Rogers)
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Our family was starting. We kept on moving with our young lives, shortly afterward and took Ben Young with us everywhere. But pretty soon Pegi started noticing that Ben was not doing the things some other babies were doing. Pegi was wondering if something was wrong. She was young, and nothing had ever gone wrong in her life. People told us kids grow at different rates and do things at different times.
But as Ben reached six months old, we found ourselves sitting in a doctor's office. He glanced at us and offhandedly said, "Of course. Ben has cerebral palsy."
I was in shock. I walked around in a for for weeks. I couldn't fathom how I had fathered two children with a rare condition that was not supposed to be hereditary, with tow different mothers. I was so angry and confused inside, projecting scenarios in my mind where people said something bad about Ben or Zeke and I would just attack them, going wild. Luckily that never did happen, but there was a root of instability inside me for a while. Although it mellowed with time, I carried that feeling around for years.
Eventually Pegi and I, wanting to have another child after Ben, went to se an expert of the subject. That was Pegi's idea. Always organized and methodical in her approach to problems, Pegi planned an approach to our dilemma with her very high intelligence. We both loved children but were a little gun-shy about having another, to say the least. After evaluating our situation and our children, the doctor told us that probably Zeke dis not actually have CP-he likely had suffered a stroke in utero. The symptoms are very similar. Pegi and I weighed this information. To know someone like her and to make a decision about a subject as important as this with her was a gift beyond anything I have ever experienced. It was her idea, and she had guided us to this point. We made a decision together to go forward and have another child.
”
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Neil Young (Waging Heavy Peace: A Hippie Dream)
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[Kinsey's studies included] stutterers, amputees, paraplegics, even those with cerebral palsy were observed. Kinsey wanted to document the full spectrum of human sexuality, but it was more than that. He believed these people might have things to teach us about the physiology of sex. And he was right. These groups alerted Kinsey--and the scientific community as a whole--to the complicated and crucial role of the central nervous system in sex and reproduction. Kinsey had noted that a stutterer in the throes of sexual abandon may temporarily lose his stutter. Similarly, the phantom limb pain some amputees feel temporarily disappears. Even the muscle spasticity of cerebral palsy may be briefly quieted. The body's limiting factors seem to get shut off. The organism is driven toward nature's singular goal--conception, the passing on of one's genes--and anything that stands in the way is pushed into the background.
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Mary Roach (Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex)
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I felt ridiculously self-conscious, like the stick of celery at a luxurious buffet.
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Fran Macilvey (Trapped: My Life with Cerebral Palsy)
“
When Tito was born, I was writing my fifth novel.
That was how I saw my future: living in Venice and jumping from novel to novel.
Tito's birth changed all that.
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Diogo Mainardi (The Fall: A Father's Memoir in 424 Steps)
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My words to Anna, as we stood contemplating the Scuola Grande di San Marco, moments before entering Venice Hospital, came true: 'With a façade like that, I could even accept having a deformed child.'
I accepted Tito's cerebral palsy.
I accepted it as if it were the most natural thing in the world. I accepted it with delight. I accepted it with enthusiasm. I accepted it with love.
”
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Diogo Mainardi (The Fall: A Father's Memoir in 424 Steps)
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First, if you participate in Movember, fuck you. Second, if you want to raise money for prostate cancer (a noble cause), do it the old-fashioned way, by either begging for it or exerting yourself physically for donations. Sitting on your ass and letting nature take its course above your upper lip is not the same thing as running a 10K at a local high school or breaking out the set of power tools your dad gave you as a housewarming present collecting dust in your garage and using them to go out and build a habitat for humanity.
Maybe I can raise money for rectal cancer by getting people to pledge a dollar every time I take a shit.
And third no one wants to see that horrific seventies pornstache growing like a caterpillar with cerebral palsy zigzagging across your face; you look like you're about to go door to door informing people that you're a registered sex offender who's just moved in next door and would their kids like to come out and was your windowless van for a dollar?
Fuck Movember. And November.
”
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Ari Gold (The Gold Standard: Rules to Rule By)
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how she’d ended up in Sanborn Place. That was when she told me about her son Wayne. Wayne was a twin born without enough oxygen. He developed cerebral palsy—he had trouble with spasticity when he walked—and was mentally delayed, as well. In adulthood, he could handle basic aspects of his life, but he needed some degree of structure and supervision. When he was in his thirties, Sanborn Place opened as a place offering just that and he was its first resident. Over the three decades since, she visited him almost every day for most of the day. But when her fall put her in a nursing home, she was no longer permitted to visit him, and he wasn’t cognitively developed enough to seek to visit her. They were all but completely separated. There seemed no way around the situation. Despairing, she thought their time together was over. Carson, however, had a flash of brilliance and worked out how to take them both in. They now had apartments almost next to each other.
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Atul Gawande (Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End)
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Cerebral palsy is any disability caused by damage to the cerebrum before birth, just afterward, or in the first three years of life.
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Andrew Solomon (Far from the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity)
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The victory feels hollow—not because I don’t believe that Peter is sincere in granting me this concession, but because of the dreadful circumstances that sparked the battle. If Diana had a visible handicap such as cerebral palsy or muscular dystrophy, or if she was missing an arm or a leg—even if she had a better-understood psychological condition such as schizophrenia or if she was bipolar, it’d be different. There are support groups for families dealing with these issues. People would understand. They’d offer help. But no one is sympathetic to the mother of a psychopath. To the mother of a girl who tried to kill her infant sister. A girl who let a toddler drown in a swimming pool. Or did Diana push the boy in?
”
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Karen Dionne (The Wicked Sister)
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God is raising up a worldwide army that is rallying together for a simple reason— that the Lamb of God receive the reward for which He suffered at the whipping post in the lives of every person, especially those who were born with birth defects. An avalanche of miracles is beginning to rumble through the earth as children diagnosed with down syndrome, autism, cerebral palsy, and other birth defects are being healed before our eyes.
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Andy Hayner (God Heals Birth Defects: First Fruits)
“
6. CHRISTIAN REFORMED CHURCH Nor is this movement confined to liberal denominations. The Christian Reformed Church (CRC) is still thought to be largely evangelical, and it was only in 1995 that the CRC approved the ordination of women. But now the First Christian Reformed Church in Toronto has “opened church leadership to practicing homosexual members ‘living in committed relationships,’ a move that the denomination expressly prohibits.”24 In addition, Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan, the college of the Christian Reformed Church, has increasingly allowed expressions of support for homosexuals to be evident on its campus. World magazine reports: Calvin has since 2002 observed something called “Ribbon Week,” during which heterosexual students wear ribbons to show their support for those who desire to sleep with people of the same sex. Calvin President Gaylen Byker . . . [said], “. . . homosexuality is qualitatively different from other sexual sin. It is a disorder,” not chosen by the person. Having Ribbon Week, he said, “is like having cerebral palsy week.” Pro-homosexuality material has crept into Calvin’s curriculum. . . . At least some Calvin students have internalized the school’s thinking on homosexuality. . . . In January, campus newspaper editor Christian Bell crossed swords with Gary Glenn, president of the American Family Association’s Michigan chapter, and an ardent foe of legislation that gives special rights to homosexuals. . . . In an e-mail exchange with Mr. Glenn before his visit, Mr. Bell called him “a hate-mongering, homophobic bigot . . . from a documented hate group.” Mr. Bell later issued a public apology.25 This article on Calvin College in World generated a barrage of pro and con letters to the editor in the following weeks, all of which can still be read online.26 Many writers expressed appreciation for a college like Calvin that is open to the expression of different viewpoints but still maintains a clear Christian commitment. No one claimed the quotes in the article were inaccurate, but some claimed they did not give a balanced view. Some letters from current and recent students confirmed the essential accuracy of the World article, such as this one: I commend Lynn Vincent for writing “Shifting sand?” (May 10). As a sophomore at Calvin, I have been exposed firsthand to the changing of Calvin’s foundation. Being a transfer student, I was not fully aware of the special events like “Ribbon Week.” I asked a classmate what her purple ribbon meant and she said it’s a sign of acceptance of all people. I later found out that “all people” meant gays, lesbians, and bisexuals. I have been appalled by posters advertising a support group for GLBs (as they are called) around campus. God condemned the practice, so why cannot God’s judgment against GLB be proclaimed at Calvin? I am glad Calvin’s lack of the morals it was founded on is being made known to the Christian community outside of Calvin. Much prayer and action is needed if a change is to take place.—Katie Wagenmaker, Coopersville, Mich.27 Then in June 2004, the Christian Reformed Church named as the editor of Banner, its denominational magazine, the Rev. Robert De Moor, who had earlier written an editorial supporting legal recognition for homosexuals as “domestic partners.” The CRC’s position paper on homosexuality states, “Christian homosexuals, like all Christians, are called to discipleship, to holy obedience, and to the use of their gifts in the cause of the kingdom. Opportunities to serve within the offices and the life of the congregation should be afforded to them as they are to heterosexual Christians.”28 This does not indicate that the Christian Reformed Church has approved of homosexual activity (it has not), but it does indicate the existence of a significant struggle within the denomination, and the likelihood of more to come.
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Wayne Grudem (Evangelical Feminism: A New Path to Liberalism?)
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Decades after little Colleen’s death, my sister Kathy still loves her daughter dearly. Colleen was born with cerebral palsy. She died in Kath’s arms in a rocking chair at the age of six. They were listening to a music box that looked very much like a smiling pink bunny.
The opening quote in this book, “I will love you forever, but I’ll only miss you for the rest of my life,” is from Kath’s nightly prayers to her child.
Colleen couldn’t really talk or walk very well, but loved untying my mother’s tennis shoes and then laughing. When Mom died decades later we sent her off in tennis shoes so Colleen would have something to untie in Heaven.
In the meantime, Dad had probably been taking really good care of her up there. He must have been aching to hug her for all of her six years on earth.
Mom’s spirit comes back to play with great grandchildren she’d never met or had a chance to love while she was still – I almost said “among the living.” In my family, though, the dead don’t always stay that way. You can be among the living without technically being alive. Mom comes back to play, but Dad shows up only in emergencies. They are both watching over their loved ones.
“The Mourning After” is dedicated to all those we have had the joy of loving before they’ve slipped away to the other side.
It then celebrates the joy of re-unions.
”
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Edward Fahey (The Mourning After)
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the Bridge School, which Neil and his wife Pegi had recently founded for kids stricken with cerebral palsy, from which both of Neil’s sons suffered.
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Graham Nash (Wild Tales: A Rock & Roll Life)
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With Fred’s death came the eventual carving up of his estate by his children and the squeezing out of Freddie’s kids, Mary and Fred III, by Fred Trump’s surviving children. When Freddie’s children went to court to argue for a greater share of the estate, Donald and his siblings cut off medical funding for Fred III’s son, William, who had cerebral palsy. Donald Trump and his siblings would later be accused of misrepresenting how much the estate was worth during that court fight, which had paved the way for a toxic family dispute that haunted Trump nearly two decades later.
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Maggie Haberman (Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America)
“
Three months after he received the cells, the boy’s father noticed his son’s eyes tracking a ball that his brother was bouncing. Suddenly the boy could see! There had been nothing wrong with his eyes. Instead, his blindness was caused by damage to his cerebral cortex. After several more treatments, the boy started to hear and talk, and could eventually walk with the aid of a walker. His parents were ecstatic. What I believe happened with our cultured cells is that they moved through the bloodstream to the damaged area, homing in on the site of the injury. Once there, the cells stimulated the formation of new blood vessels and secreted trophic factors, or bioactive molecules that encouraged new cell growth. Because the boy was so young and his system was so responsive, when blood started to flow to these areas, it jumpstarted his neural development and stimulated it to continue on a normal path, repairing some of the functions that had been damaged by his cerebral palsy.
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Neil H. Riordan (Stem Cell Therapy: A Rising Tide: How Stem Cells Are Disrupting Medicine and Transforming Lives)
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Despite his disability he is a man I already admire, am connected with; there’s nothing wrong with his mind or his desire... I see his disability but feel his wholeness more.
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Soulla Christodoulou (Alexander and Maria)
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What is Cerebral Palsy? A wheelchair, a woman, windswept legs, stiffness. And through one side of my body, lack of mobility, and tightness in my knees. That’s all causes by a condition called Cerebral Palsy according to the CDC Cerebral Palsy (CP)- is a group of disorders that affect a person's ability to move and maintain balance and posture. CP is the most common motor disability in childhood. Cerebral means having to do with the brain. Palsy means weakness or problems with using the muscles. But that’s not my definition of Cerebral Palsy my definition of cerebral palsy ce·re·bral pal·sy A condition that makes life more interesting, more of an adventure and more of a journey. You see I could have started this off by stating the old boring medical terms of Cerebral Palsy, but in my personal opinion it would be continuing the stigma’s that I’ve been trying to debunk since I was 18 years old and wouldn’t that be a boring book to read. To be frank, I’m tired of seeing books that don’t focus on the positive side of Cerebral Palsy. Well, OK at least some do, but there’s not very much, so I’ve decided to write this full of stories to explain how I overcome each obstacle with Cerebral Palsy. My name is Tylia L Flores. I’m Handi-capable!
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Tylia L. Flores (HANDI-CAPABLE: “STOMPING THE BARRIERS THAT COMES MY WAY”.)
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cerebral palsy kids,
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Courtney Vail (Angels Club (One Kid, One Horse, Can Change the World))
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Cerebral Palsy in Children – Motherhood Chaitanya Hospital
In the journey of childhood, every step, every milestone, holds significance. But for children with
cerebral palsy, these steps can be accompanied by unique challenges. Cerebral palsy, a condition
affecting movement and muscle coordination, requires specialized care and support. With the
expertise of the best paediatric neurology & physiotherapy centre in Chandigarh at Motherhood
Chaitanya Hospital, let’s delve into the world of cerebral palsy in children, understanding the
condition, its impact, and the avenues of expert care.
”
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Dr. Monika Chhajed
“
Can it really be true that one letter in our 3-billion-letter books of human life could be equally important? Well, yes. Boys with just a single letter change in a specific gene6 develop a devastating condition characterised by gout, cerebral palsy, mental retardation and self-mutilation of lips and fingers.7
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Nessa Carey (Hacking the Code of Life: How gene editing will rewrite our futures)
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Mia was proud to advertise herself as a mom willing to adopt a child with cerebral palsy, but the dedication and work involved fell to the other kids.
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Woody Allen (Apropos of Nothing)
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While we sat at the bar, Dave told me the most important advice about talking to women I had ever received, and that was to be as relaxed as possible and not fear rejection. Dave then began hooking up with some girl who looked like a hybrid of Rosie O’Donnell and Miss Piggy, leaving me alone to ponder his words.”
“When I was in 8th grade, there was this girl named Sandra who I used to ride the school bus with. Sandra was about 5’2, 120 lbs, and looked like the Hamburglar. She was the prettiest girl in my class.”
“In my mind I was the life of the party and felt as though I could do no wrong when it came to interacting with the opposite sex. That was until Marissa caught me red handed hooking up with some girl who looked like a combination of John Madden and Andre the Giant, tapping me on the shoulder and kicking me square in the nuts.”
“I was starting to feel bad about how I treated women. Oh wait, no I wasn’t. The girls at Binghamton were nothing more than a bunch of dumb sluts that just wanted to get drunk and suck dick, and besides, they were all going to make a lot more money than me in the future. So I may as well catch brains while these bitches were dumb enough to blow me.”
“Out of all the people I could’ve stumbled into blackout drunk, why did it have to be THE MOOSE? As son as she saw me her 300 lb frame waddled over, and she jammed her tongue down my throat, devouring me as though I were a Big Mac. This was embarrassing. Here I was making out with some girl who looked like Eric Cartman in a dress, and everybody was watching. My life was effectively over.”
“After annihilating Ruben’s toilet, I looked over my shoulder for some much-needed toilet paper, when to my shock and dismay there was not a single sheet of paper in sight. There’s no way in hell I was rejoining the party covered in poop and I would have wiped my ass with anything. That’s when I noticed his New York Yankees bath towel.”
“I spent the rest of my week off getting completely shitfaced with Chris, and that’s when I realized I might be developing a drinking problem. At Bar None, hooking up with some girl who looked like the Loch Ness Monster; this shit had to stop. Alcohol was turning me into a drunken mess, and I vowed right then and there to quit drinking and start smoking more weed immediately.”
“I got a new roommate. His name was Erick and he was an ex-marine. Erick and I didn’t know each other, but he knew Kevin, and he also knew that I didn’t shower and that last semester I left a used condom on the floor for two weeks without throwing it away. Eric therefore did not want to live with me.”
“Believe it or not, I got another job working with the disabled. See, Manny was nice enough to hook me up with a position as a job coach at the Lavelle School for the Blind. The kid’s name was Fred and he was blind with cerebral palsy. Fred loved dogs and I loved smoking week. Bad combination, and I was fired with 3 days left in the program after allowing Fred to run across the street into oncoming traffic, because I had smoked a bowl an hour earlier. Manny and I never spoke again.”
“My life was a dream and a nightmare rolled into one. Here I was living this carefree existence, getting drunk, boning bitches, and playing Sega Genesis in between. Oh wait, what am I talking about? My life was awesome. It’s the rest of my life that’s going to suck.
”
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Alexander Strenger
“
Having cerebral palsy basically means that because of a brain injury I got from being born too early, my brain is extra about everything: extra-tight muscles, extra sensitivity to startles like loud noises or, like now, Wilder touching my shoulder. It’s like having those bang snap fireworks that you throw on the ground explode inside you when you most want to keep your cool.
”
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Claire Forrest (Where You See Yourself)