So, what is Cerebral Palsy, anyway?

It was always pretty easy for me to tell that I was a different kid growing up. Start with the fact that I attended kindergarten in a specialized school and that most of my classmates had special needs [though I was entirely too young to understand what that meant at the time], and you have the beginning of what sounds like a pretty boring autobiography.

My “special needs” condition is Cerebral Palsy. Called CP for short, Cerebral Palsy is an umbrella term for a group of movement disorders that stem from a lack of oxygen to the brain at birth. Most people affected were also born prematurely.

I have been told that one day I should write my own story. That’s a tale I believe I’ll leave to my mom, though. I’ve convinced myself through the years that she has more to tell about it. From her upbringing in a small town in the Eastern Panhandle of West Virginia to meeting my father at a church camp, there’s a whole world of narratives there that she can spin better than I could ever dream.

This much, I should tell for you to have some context of my disability. I was born in February 1990. That wouldn’t be remarkable except for the fact that I entered the world two months ahead of my expected due date. My dad, then a pastor of his own small Assemblies of God congregation in Greensboro North Carolina, was in the middle of a revival when my mom went into labor. (He, of course, left the meeting to get my mother, who was on bed rest, to the hospital.)

I’m told that my mother’s doctor shoved the doctors at the hospital where I was born out of the way to deliver me himself. One can’t blame him when you understand the context of the situation. I was my mother’s seventh and final pregnancy, her eighth child. I would also become the only one of her children to live longer than a day and a half. That was nearly thirty-two years ago.

I was also ten weeks early. It wasn’t until I got to my specialized school that my parents really began hearing what was wrong. I had suffered a lack of oxygen to my brain at birth. When I got to the school, I wasn’t even able to sit up on my own. As I practiced, things got better.

At age 2, my parents were given a formal diagnosis. Cerebral Palsy; specifically Spastic Ataxic Diplegia. I’ll explain more about what that means in a later post. In a nutshell for now: those words describe how and where Cerebral Palsy (CP, for short) affects my body.

I was fortunate to be attending Gateway Education Center in Greensboro, North Carolina at the time of my diagnosis. Gateway still exists today, though if I were a potential student, my diagnosis would now be considered too mild to attend.

When I got to Gateway, I couldn’t even sit up. By the time I left, I was using a walker. I would continue to do so through being mainstreamed into a local public school.

There are people I know with CP who can walk without any assistance. Some use crutches. Some are nearly paralyzed. It all depends on your type and severity.

One word keeps coming back to me as I think through all of this with assistance from my dad, who remembers all of it: blessed. I’m so fortunate that I made it, that my condition wasn’t worse, that it hasn’t gotten too much worse. God’s hand has seen me through so much.

If my mom never gets around to publishing that book, maybe I will. I know I’ve got lots of stories to tell. I hope you’ll stick around to learn more.

God bless!