Maybe there are people out there who do not know what Down Syndrome is, although at 1 per 691 births it is the most common of chromosomal abnormaities.
I still remember my next door neighbor, little “Stevie,” who was the youngest in a large family (seven children as I recall) so mother may have been a bit advanced in age when she had him. I thought of him then (I was not over six or seven) as a sort of human stuffed animal, as he loved hugging and was profoundly retarded, able to do little on his own. I learned even then that people said what such children lacked in intelligence (and muscle tone and
Read more on Down Syndrome — Human Choice Doesn’t Catch Up With Technology…
Filed under Down Syndrome by on May 27th, 2013. Comment. 
Down the hall she came making sounds of distress and physical effort. When she got to my door, it didn’t get any easier. She had to push her way through the narrow doorway, one of those doors designed for thinner people of years past.
I saw a wildly obese 23 year old, with suicidal ideation, who told me her life was worthless. Doctors had found a rare uterine cancer and done a total hysterectomy. She was told that she could have no hormone replacement. So she was dealing with some symptomatic treatments of hot flashes that weren’t doing very much.
I was pretty much impressed by the doctors who had made a rare save. She seemed to be cancer-free now, although she was not “crazy” about the abdominal wall hernia repair that had been necessary to hold her stomach together. Also, she was not enthusiastic about the bimonthly pap smears. But she was alive, and granted, she could not have hormone replacement. She sat in front of me telling me all about how the doctors had taken care of her.
She was crying and depressed. It was not hard to figure out why.
“I will never have children. I will never be a mommy.” Read more on What Can You Do With Your Life?…
Filed under Self-esteem by on Nov 8th, 2011. Comment.
I am old enough to remember having briefly met then-senator from Massachusetts, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, at a synagogue breakfast in my hometown – a suburb of Boston. He had donned a skull cap, and shook hands with my parents as well as with me. I talked little in those days, which is a testament to how young I was. I could stand unaided, and the senator shook hands with me.
Bill Clinton courts the Jewish vote
Years later, his was one of the first presidential elections I tried to follow. People were very worried that he was Catholic. In our neighborhood, anybody I knew who was not Jewish seemed to be Catholic. It had never bothered me. I remember seeing on television some news-reporting-human asked him about his need to be obedient on the Pope, being a Catholic and all, and how that could limit his ability to serve. He gave what I thought then was a good answer, about not being obliged to do anything the Pope happened to say, but saying his service to the people of the United States came first. I had thought that a good answer at the time.
My parents had all kinds of concerns, as did many Jews of their generation, even though they habitually voted Democrat. Read more on Whose Beliefs Do You Follow? Your Own!…
Filed under Religion by on May 12th, 2011. Comment.