Parent Cerebral Palsy Quotes

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!!!

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.

Cerebral palsy is any disability caused by damage to the cerebrum before birth, just afterward, or in the first three years of life.

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.

The thing about cerebral palsy is that I’ve lived with it every day of my life, so I’m used to it. But to the rest of the world, it’s a surprise. And not usually a good one. It’s like if you were really hoping for a bike for your birthday, but got a thousand-piece puzzle instead. Your parents really want you to be open-minded about the puzzle, so you fake a smile. All you can think about, though, is how fast you could be going on your bike right now.