Disability Memoir

What would you do if it happened to you? If you awoke one day when you were twelve years old to be informed that your life was suddenly over? Well . . . Here is what I did. If you became the wealthiest person you would ever know just three and a half years later? What would that be like? Well, this is what it was like when it happened to me.

Born deaf and discovering encroaching blindness at the age of 16, Anthony Lawton’s future appeared to be full of locked doors. Prejudice. Delayed education. Distorted speech. Limited sight. But when benign strangers intercede and inner gifts reveal themselves the opportunity to pursue a childhood dream of speaking and participating in mainstream society become a realisable vision. He would need to do this before the consequences of dual sensory loss would again close the doors.

At the age of thirty-one, Dave Kelly lost his eyesight to a rare disease called retinitis pigmentosa (RP). Up until then, he had lived a life like any other young man, albeit one blessed to be growing up in Liverpool during the heyday of The Beatles and Liverpool FCs win against Leeds in the 1965 FA Cup. But then, one day everything changed. Dave was faced with a choice. He could either let blindness defeat him or he could face it head-on and live as fulfilling a life as he possibly could.

Join Onya Page as she gently guides you through the struggles of living with bipolar disorder II, helping you better understand mental health. This book explores a world of emotions through simple yet powerful poetry. With heartfelt verses, this collection offers comfort and companionship to those going through the process of their inner struggles. Through each poem, discover the courage to confront the shadows and embrace the light within.

Left partially paralysed below the rib cage by polio, Anne Wafula Strike was forced to flee her native Kenyan village, moving across the country with her family. After overcoming additional adversity, including the loss of her mother and ableist prejudice, Anne moved to the UK, where she discovered her talent for wheelchair racing. The first East African to compete in her sport, representing Kenya in the 2004 Paralympics before joining Paralympics GB, Anne is now a fierce advocate for the promotion of the games around the world, and a champion of disabled rights.

This is a guide for anyone going into a mental asylum or institution for the first time, or if you have a delusional loved one, with a mental illness, this will help you relate to them better in understanding insanity. Now, join me, in the asylum, as together we go on a very odd journey of discovery in my first mental institution experience. Enter a strange world, before I was diagnosed with schizophrenia, as I compete against other game show contestants in a battle to win genetic traits for my family tree.

Sumérgete en la extraordinaria vida de Gerardo Schmedling, un hombre cuyo poder espiritual inquebrantable desafió las adversidades de la parálisis de Guillain-Barré en su juventud y las secuelas que afectaron su movilidad de por vida. Este relato, narrado por su prima María Mercedes Olivares Schmedling, conocida como Mechas, quien compartió con él desde su infancia, revela cómo Gerardo se convirtió en el arquitecto de un movimiento global de transformación personal y social.

Elaine, What Happened? A History follows the thirty year life of Elaine who was born without eyes and had other deformities. Besides trying to find out what caused her defects, it is a history of the changes that took place in the medical field, in public education and most notably in society's customs and attitudes regarding people with disabilities.

When I was six years old, I started wearing glasses. My view of my low vision quickly changed when I was twenty years old and found out that my brother had suddenly gone blind. He was told that he was suffering from Retinitis Pigmentosa (RP), a disorder that slowly destroys the pigment cells in the eyes. So far, there are no known cures. At the tender age of twenty-one, I was also diagnosed with RP. Since then, I have been slowly going blind, not knowing when my world would finally fade away forever. Battling against such a crippling disease led me through a labyrinth of challenges.

Sugar Mamas is a book of personal stories of women who have a condition called lipedema, which affects 11% of women in the world and results in often debilitating fat deposits in the legs, thighs, hips, arms and other areas. While lipedema is primarily a woman's disease, the research on the condition has only in the last five years really taken off, so the causes and treatments are still in early research stages.

See how, throughout her life, she became a believer, and even with Kerry and Kaylynn's love and support, she had to find the strength elsewhere to get up each and every day to be the best mom she could be for Austin. Listen to how still, to this day, she struggles with negative emotions and guilt and needs to be reminded often that God is in control, and he will never forsake her, even when she feels she is alone.

This book is a reflection of a mother’s experience when her daughter, after a sudden severe headache, was diagnosed with a torn brain aneurysm and arteriovenous malformation in the cerebellum. TJ, Evie’s brother, also shares his experience.

Our aim with this narrative is to share our journey through the labyrinth of cancer treatment—the decisions we faced, the paths we chose, and, most importantly, the lessons we learned. We hope to offer guidance, support, and perhaps a sense of solidarity to others who find themselves on a similar journey. This is not your typical medical guide; it is a well-researched companion for every aspect of your cancer journey and a deeply personal account of battling cancer from the perspective of a spouse.

Martin Hibbert was left paralysed from the waist down by the Manchester Arena bombing which killed twenty-two people on 22 May 2017. Martin’s teenage daughter Eve was one of the 940 injured, in Eve’s case, gravely. The dad from Bolton has since become a leading campaigner both for victims of the atrocity and those with spinal cord injuries. Determined to make a difference he took on the ultimate challenge, scaling Kilimanjaro in a wheelchair, becoming the second paraplegic to do so, and raising a million pounds for charity.

Always With Me is a true story about the life of Moses Macias as he grew up in and out of the hospital for twenty-one years. He was born with spina bifida and cleft lip. As a result, he would have to endure dozens of surgeries as he would fight for his life growing up. Always With Me also details other struggles of growing up disabled such as bullying, depression, suicide, medical abuse, sexual abuse, and pain of receiving medical treatment throughout his life. Despite all the trauma he endures in life, he finds his faith in God.

How a mechanic rose above poverty and chronic anxiety to build a national enterprise and found peace with himself and his past in the process. Prepare to embark on a journey of emotions. This must-listen memoir explores the resilience of the human spirit. I literally could not stop reading From Turmoil to Triumph.

I wanted to write a book to uplift mentally ill people of the harshest variety, schizophrenic or schizoaffective like I have. I wanted to tell the story of my own life, like some people see me. I am not a pitiable sad case. I am a hero who’s gone on adventures. Sometimes I was unstable, but that is not the purpose of my story.

What if you found out in mid-life that you were autistic? Kathleen was diagnosed in midlife with autism, and in her new book, U Don’t Seem Autistic, she bravely shares her personal story. This is a story of empowerment by the discovery of autistic identity, at last! By sharing the pitfalls she has experienced up to mid-life and their relationship to autism, she hopes to help others to seek a diagnosis, as she states women are missed or misdiagnosed due to the gender inequities of diagnosis.

Nujeen Mustafa ha sedici anni e soffre di una grave forma di paralisi cerebrale che l'ha costretta su una sedia a rotelle e le ha impedito di frequentare la scuola pubblica. Ma questo non l'ha fermata: ha imparato l'inglese guardando le soap opera americane trasmesse dalla tv del suo paese e nello stesso modo ha studiato storia, letteratura, scienze.

In this intimate story of relationship resilience, marine biologist Beth Mathews’s adventurous life as a professor and mother in Alaska is upended when her healthy husband is slammed by a rare type of stroke. Jim’s radical approach to recovery clashes with Beth’s instinct to keep him safe at home and sets them on a collision course as he insists on ambitious sailing expeditions with Beth and their young son in Alaska’s magnificent yet unforgiving waters.