Showing titles in People with Disabilities

While most people meet their child for the first time in a delivery room, some parents have to meet their child in the reception area of an administrative building. Not Always Happy is a humorous and sharp chronicle about adopting and raising a son with Down syndrome from the Maine foster care system. The author quickly learns that life is best lived by expecting the unplanned when she makes the decision to become a parent in her late forties.

After two decades of suffering with the mental disorder known as obsessive-compulsive disorder, Derek has reached his breaking point. His past attempts to find inner peace had lead him astray. At last he longs for a life of ease and tolerance without the handicap his illness brings. Enter the next phase of his life as he copes with obstacles ahead in this true story. Follow his path to recovery as he seeks help, wisdom, and clarity to rise above what has grounded him for so long.

Gradually going blind in his 20s, Rich Ruffalo refused to face reality. And then, one rainy evening, unable to make sense of the road before him, he suddenly felt his car thud against a little girl. Jolted into reality, Ruffalo refused to be knocked down and, instead, put his all into achieving. As a teacher he excelled, winning the Princeton University Distinguished Secondary School Teacher of the Year Award and Disney's Outstanding Teacher of the Year Award. Then, he set the bar even higher.

"Ich bin einer derer, die die Jahreskarte gezogen haben. Wenn ich abrutsche oder hochfliege, dann für eine lange Zeit. Dann bin ich nicht mehr zu halten, ob im Flug oder im Fall." Die fesselnde Chronik einer manisch-depressiven Erkrankung: ein autobiografisch radikales Werk von höchster literarischer Kraft.

When adventurous overseas traveler, Amy, is diagnosed with retinitis pigmentosa, she has no idea what difficulties lie ahead. After finishing mobility training from the Bureau of Blindness, she thinks her problems are solved, but when Amy tackles the streets with her white cane, the real fun begins. Determinedly sweeping away her fears, she starts to celebrate the reality of vision-impaired independence. Join the chaos and laughter in this series of uplifting anecdotes as Amy looks to the lighter side of mobility.

In August 2007 Dianne Woodford woke up to find that she had lost her sight overnight at the age of 38. A type one diabetic since the age of 13 and a single mother of three, Dianne was determined not just to accept it and let people care for her. Instead she set up her own charity to help others in a similar situation and began her own journey to independence with a little help from Hattie, her guide dog.

My name is Linda Buchan, and when I was 18 years old I died. It was Saturday, June 27, 1998, when my young life ended and my new life began. A life that was to be so completely different to the one that I had envisaged, the one that I had expected.... In Linda Buchan's raw and powerful memoir, she shares her journey from the terrible night when the life and future she thought lay ahead of her was shattered.

Die sechzehnjährige Nujeen erzählt, wie der syrische Krieg eine stolze Nation zerstört, Familien auseinanderreißt und Menschen zur Flucht zwingt. In Nujeens Fall zu einer Reise durch neun Länder, in einem Rollstuhl. Doch es ist auch die Geschichte einer willensstarken jungen Frau, die in Aleppo durch eine Krankheit ans Haus gefesselt ist und sich mit amerikanischen Seifenopern Englisch beibringt, weil sie die starke Hoffnung auf ein besseres Leben hat.

The GIs called her Joey. Hundreds owed their lives to the tiny Filipina who stashed explosives in spare tires, tracked Japanese troop movements, and smuggled maps of fortifications across enemy lines. As the Battle of Manila raged, Josefina Guerrero walked through gunfire to bandage wounds and close the eyes of the dead. Her valor earned her the Medal of Freedom, but what made her a good spy was also destroying her: leprosy, which so horrified the Japanese they refused to search her.

Published in 1996, Life as We Know It introduced Jamie Bérubé to the world as a sweet, bright, gregarious little boy who loves The Beatles, pizza, and making lists. At four he is like many young people his age, but his Down syndrome leads most people to see him only in terms of his disability. Twenty years later Michael Bérubé chronicles his son's growth and his growing love of the world, writing as both a disability studies scholar and as a father.

Starting at the age of 12, Derek's life began to get much more complicated. An internal struggle was about to take hold. Its grip would cause unimaginable anxiety. The normal thoughts and feelings he had prior were a distant memory. This had to be dealt with using irrational methods. Over time he had to manage and cope the best way he could. This is a true account of one Northwest man's experiences living with the mental disorder known as OCD (obsessive-compulsive disorder).

My name is Joseph A. Peragine, and I am a paranoid schizophrenic. On October 22, 2000, I tried to kill myself in a severely hallucinogenic state due to undiagnosed paranoid schizophrenia. I was suffering from this illness for many years leading up to that day. Every October since I started my recovery in 2000, I reflect on my life and am extremely thankful that I was fortunate enough to have been given a second chance. Every October, I especially make it a priority to tell my family and loved ones how much I love them.

In the spring of 1974, as the last American troops were being pulled out of Vietnam, Ron Kovic and a small group of other severely injured veterans in a California VA hospital launched the American Veterans Movement. In a phenomenal feat of political organizing, Kovic corralled his fellow AVM members into staging a sit-in, and then a hunger strike, in the Los Angeles office of Senator Alan Cranston, demanding better treatment of injured and disabled veterans.

A Rocky Start feels like a potential classic: an authentic treatise on the state of America's mental health establishment and the help or damage it metes out to people who desperately need its services, written by someone who knows that world intimately, from inside both its real and perceived walls. Fisher describes A Rocky Start as "a candid and rare look into one particularly complex life." It is that and more. Fisher's natural intelligence drives the narrative.

La tarde no habiacute;a comenzado de esta manera.

Texas governor and rising star in the Republican Party - one of the first prominent politicians to govern from a wheelchair since Franklin D. Roosevelt - Governor Greg Abbott pens his deeply personal and inspiring life story and proposes a plan to restore America to greatness in what Newt Gingrich calls a "bold and compelling" read. Texas Governor Greg Abbott lost his ability to walk when a huge oak tree crashed down on his back, fracturing vertebrae into his spinal cord, leaving him forever paralyzed.

Don entered the workforce as a young man barely out of high school, full of enthusiasm and idealism. He soon received a reality check about corporate America. Raised in the middle class, he believed in the value system of an honest day's work for an honest wage. That by doing what was "right" and working hard, he would succeed. The Company Store, however, had other plans for him and his coworkers - the American working class.

¿Por qué contentarnos con vivir a rastras cuando sentimos el anhelo de volar? En el maravilloso reino de la mente he de ser libre como los demás. Helen Keller nació en Alabama, Estados Unidos de América, en 1880. Por una grave enfermedad, antes de los dos años de edad, perdió la vista y el oído, lo que le impidió también aprender a hablar.

The Underdogs tells the story of Karen Shirk, felled at age 24 by a neuromuscular disease and facing life as a ventilator-dependent, immobile patient, who was turned down by every service dog agency in the country because she was "too disabled". Her nurse encouraged her to tone down the suicidal thoughts, find a puppy, and raise her own service dog. Karen did this, and Ben, a German shepherd, dragged her back into life.

The autobiography of Nymphus Coridon (N. C.) Hanks with notes by John Hanks, great nephew; Joseph E. (Jay) Hanks, brother; and Lori K. Hanks Hill, grandniece. Cory tells how he rose from the depths of hell to the pinnacle of human experience, sharing his victory with the world. You will never look at your troubles the same way again.