With
the GiveDirect credit card processing service, no fees are taken on your
Visa or Mastercard donation. We receive 100% of your gift. A low fee of
2.85% is deducted from American Express donations.
So give with
confidence to GiveDirect,
disABLEDperson Inc. is looking for Corporate Sponsors, would you like to be one and support the disability community? If so, please contact us at 760-420-1269. Click here for suggested rates!
Community for the disABLED
|
Job Opportunities for Disabled American Veterans
|
Lets pretend for a minute….Melissa Moore
You are a survivor of cancer at 24; you have two miss-carries at 18-21. At 30 you and your husband have to travel to Wisconsin, for him to work on a tunneling job, and you are also suffering from diabetes. You and your husband desperately want a child, so, you adopt a baby girl 2 ½ yrs. old, the doctors say she is known as a “failure to thrive baby” but you don’t seem to pay any attention to it. Your husband is let go from the tunneling agency and you, him, and baby girl come back home to Bryson City, the church you attended gives you a welcome home/baby shower. Everything seems perfect until you notice the baby girl you now have is constantly getting choked on food, has a hard time keeping up with other children her age, and she is a little bit under weight, and you think that its just a growing stage so you keep her doctors visits up-to-date but these things still bother you. When baby girl gets to be in kindergarten, she can’t see the blackboard very well, you then take her to a eye specialist named Dr. Wiggins and he takes one look at your daughter and he does a series of tests on your baby girl, and seems to notice something more than just an ordinary eye problem. He tells you that he thinks your daughter has a neuromuscular disorder and refers you to a neurologist in Ashville. The same day your darling daughter sees neurologist Dr. Huffstutter. He confirms what Dr. Wiggins diagnosed her with - Myasthenia Gravis they tell you that this kind of disorder in incurable and it can cause some major mal-functions in her tiny body. Dr. Huffstutter then puts your darling daughter on a medication called Mestinon. During her life time between the ages of 5 and 17 you and your husband try to find out everything about this disorder by having went to Chapel Hill three times, Ashville Specialists at St. Joseph’s hospital several times, many neurology departments in Ashville which all seem to have the same diagnoses. When your darling daughter is in the sixth grade, her teacher tells you she’s noticed her not being able to concentrate and keep on task, so, you see her regular doctor for a second opinion, and sadly he confirms that she has Attention Deficient Disorder (ADD), so she is put on the medication known as Stratera. While at St. Joseph’s hospital, in Ashville, they seem to find a tumor on her pituitary gland and it is vital to her health b/c the gland has a major role-play in the reproductive system. St Joseph’s hospital then refers you to yet another doctor named Jonathan D. Sherman from Mountain Neurology, who then wants to see you back every six months to do a cat scan on the gland to make sure the tumor isn’t growing too largely to cause any harm to you and your reproductive system. Dr. Sherman and another doctor named Dr. James Speed co-inheres about the tumor and agrees that it will not be removed unless it is absolutely necessary! Your darling daughter now being of an adult age now has to switch neurologists and she no more sees a pediatrician so now she sees Dr. Michelle Mangum the new neurologist and Dr. Gallinger a family Doctor. Years later the next time you have to go to Chapel Hill was during Christmas break 2004. You spend Christmas in a hotel being visited by family and exchanging presents, while for the past week-and-a-half your darling daughter now 16 yrs. old, has been poked and prodded in the fore-arm, and back of the arm, the back and front of her leg, in her temple, and also in her forehead all of which is a procedure called single fiber electromyography. (EMG) All which are clues how to find out how her nerves and muscles actually communicate and then going thru a process called plasma aphaeresis which drains her blood from her whole body, takes out her natural anti-bodies and re-placing them with man made anti-body substitutes, the reasoning for doing this process is because the doctors need to find out if the Myasthenia Gravis is congenital or acquired. Going thru this process makes her very weak, and she sleeps for two to three hours at a time after each process for about six days. You and your husband are very tired of traveling so you spend the night in a hotel while your daughter tries to sleep in the hospital, but the nurses wake her up every 4 hrs. to take her temperature, and her blood pressure. After a couple of days your daughter is released from the hospital but you and her still have to come back every other day to have more treatments done. After all is said and done, the head physician Dr. Howard says that now he has to replace the medication your daughter has been on for eleven years with another medication that might possibly help reduce her symptoms because they have found that her disease is congenital (meaning from birth). You haven’t heard from Dr. Howard after the diagnoses and you still wonder what lies ahead for you, your husband and your darling daughter, but you do know you are leaving it in God’s hands.
Think this story is impossible? Think it is too cruel of a story to be true? Has this story been stretched beyond imagine? My name is Melissa Moore and welcome to my life! I am that baby girl, darling daughter, and now I am 17 yrs. old, but, thru it all God has blessed me greatly with a family that I love very greatly and has given me a home to live in. Thank you, Melissa Moore |
