MY LIFE STORY

I was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin on January 22, 1953, I did not breath for twenty minutes. From birth the doctor and my family had known I had brain damage resulting in cerebral palsy. When I was six weeks old, my parents moved from Wisconsin, to Springfield, Illinois. There my mother met a physical therapist who a pioneer of early intervention for high risk infants. At six weeks of age I started therapy. Each time my mom would change my diapers she would do range of motion exercises with my arms and legs.

I was eighteen months old, when I started to attend to the Easter's Seals School for children with disabilities. There, I began to learn how to walk and talk. While going to there, my father built a one-of-a-kind walker out of plumber pipe. When I was about three, my father got another job in Chicago. Just before we moved, my sister, Susan was born. When we moved, my parents sent me to St. John's Hospital School in Springfield, Illinois, where I learned how to walked.

The school closed so I went back to live with my family in Elmhurst, Illinois. I gained the ability to walk without full length braces. I preferred to walk on my knees until I developed a staff infection in one of my knees. After that I began to walk on my feet. I attended a regular kindergarten, but placed in a special education class when I started first grade. There brother, Pete was born.

Two weeks after starting second grade we moved we moved to back to Milwaukee. I had to wait four months to start second grade because my birthday was in January. The public school I attended was just for children with disabilities. Besides going to class, I had physical, occupational, and speech therapies. The best thing I like to do was being able to go swimming twice a week even in the winters.

My mother threatens my father with a divorce if he didn't get a transfer to Florida. For the first nine years of my life my father was on the road most of the time. She was home alone with three small children and was sick of shoveling snow allowing the school bus into the driveway to pick me up. At first, it was like a dream, SINCE moving to Florida because it happened so fast. It all happened within two weeks. On the Sunday after selling the house, we were on a plane to Orlando. My grandparents had just moved into their retirement dream home in Kissimmee. Sue, Pete, and I had to stay with them until my parents found a home in Miami.

My parents found a house within a week. My mother found out the schools in Florida were not like the schools up north. In Dade County I was place in a regular school with several special education classes. In these classes there were 15 - 20 children with multiple types of disabilities. Although by fifth grade I was "fused" into regular science that was held in the cafetorum, the school didn't offer the curriculum or the therapy I needed. Starting the sixth grade, I went to a school closer to my house where new a special education class opened. On the advice of the classroom teacher my mother searched for a school that would fit my special needs.

A week before my thirteenth birthday my mother, Pete, and I border a plane to Wichita to visit the Institute of Logopedics. We arrived in Wichita about midnight. The next morning they started the intake, testing, and evaluations on my brother and me. I was cold, scared, exhausted, and was in no shape to be evaluated and tested. It turned out that my brother was bright, but he dyslexia. However, I was mildly mentally retarded. My mother tries inform the staff that the previous testing showed I had normal or above normal intelligence. But nobody listened.

During the three years at the Institute my speaking ability improved. My parents could understand me on the first try. The counselor changed her professional opinion that I was not retarded when I wrote the Governor of Florida, Hugh Downs, Barbara Walters, and wrote an editorial for the school paper complaining about the increase in fees. One Christmas while in Miami, my parents said they could only afford to send me to the Institute until June. I never went back. Also, at the Institute I gained four grade levels my school work in two years. I went far beyond the expectations of anybody. I was "fused" into English, Math, and History eighth grade class in a Junior High. In the three years I went to public school I was making A's and B's in all my classes.

While at the Institute I began to realize my mother was an alcoholic. For the most part I was living in a fantasy. Reality struck when I came back home. My home life led much to be desire. My mother drinking became much worse. I realized my father was an alcoholic too. I needed and wanted to talk to somebody, but there wasn't anybody. Then a special person came into my life named Lee Grant. Lee was contracted by the Office of Vocation Rehabilitation (VR) to be my speech therapist. He was much more than that. He came to my house five days a week. So he saw what was going on. Mr. Grant listened to me and saw my potential.

When the Grant started a school for children with disabilities, I decided to drop out of high school and attended the Grant School of Miami. There I got a tutor for the GED and passed. Mr. Grant fought with VR who wanted me to go fold clothes at Goodwill. He convinces VR that to become employable the state should paid my way through college. In 1971 I began attending Miami-Dade Community College. I was not ready for college. A new program there helped eases me into academic life. It had a great impact on my psycho social development. I was given the Outstanding Student Award the first year. At the end of my second year I transferred to the University of South Florida in Tampa.

I had success in my academic life, but at home life was hell. My mother's drinking was getting worse. There was a lot of violence between her and my father. The only comfort I had was the companionship of the animals we inhered. At one time we had one bassist, my dog, a big black cat, a racing greyhound, a rabbit, a hen, a rooster and a pony. At the time we live on an acre. The animals helped distracted from the pain of a dysfunctional family and the deep dark hole of depression.

Also, I made some friends at Miami-Dade. My closes friend was a guy name Don. Don listened me. He took me places especially to Seminars sponsored by a "NEW AGE" church. I met Debbie, his faience. Soon I joined the "NEW AGE" church they went to. We became great friends. Since all three of us ended up going to the University of South Florida (USF) we lived together with another friend named Linda. At first, I had a hard time adjusting. I wanted to go home, but if I did go back I would end up being the mediator between my parents.

I finally cut the ties with my parents when I took off to California with Debbie to go to the yearly conference of the "NEW AGE" church. I learned what being independent really was. Especially when we had to make back from San Francisco to Alexandria, Louisiana on $200.00 in a beat up U-DRIVE-IT Car. It was hard, but I loved it.

While going to the USF, a new experimental device called a "neurostimulator" was developed. My mother called the doctor in Miami who helped invent the simulator. As it turned out six weeks later I went into the hospital for surgery. Besides the huge headache I had coming out of the anthesia, the stimulator did make some improvements in my speech and the ability to stand up straight. However, after the second battery ran down, I did not have the $10,000 to replace the battery. I requested that the old one to be removed.

Although I was determined not to move back home, that was not the case. After graduating from USF with a BA in Liberal Studies I had to move back home because I didn't have enough money to get my own place. Even through I learned a lot living with Don and Debbie and had a 3.35 average in school, the bouts with depression were getting worst. At times I could stay in bed for three months at a time. There were other times where I could stay up for three or four days in a row and could not do anything. But nobody ever saw the depression. I was crying for help but nobody came to help.

My first job out of college was an Assistant Researcher at Miami-Dade Community College. It was the only job that VR got me. It was some boring job doing library searches. After college I finally gave in to them and had vocational testing and the testing showed that I was "unemployable." So they did not help me find a better job.

It was hard living at home. By the time I moved back, my mother had been in and out of five or six alcohol treatment centers. Once when my parents were fighting over my mom drinking my father gave her a black eye. After that she moved out. Before my sister graduated high school she moved out and went to live as well as work at the new Grant School. Since my brother was going to graduate high school, my father decided to sell the house. Just before the house went on the market my mom moved back home.

One afternoon a week before selling the house, I came home and found out that my mom was taken to the ER because she had diverticulitis. She was operated on and was an intensive care unit. The next day I got off the bus and walked to the bank to get money. But before I got to the bank I fell and heard a crunch. I asked myself did I break my leg. The next week was pure hell. My father had to care of my personal needs.

After we moved, my sister quit her job and help my mother and me. During this period, I got an acceptance letter from Barry College School of Social Work. It took an act of God and the help of some very special people to get me into the Master's Program at Barry. There were some professors in the School of Social Work said, I could not complete the degree let alone find a job in the field of Social Work. Out of three disabled students I was the only one that was handed my degree.

It was during my course work at Barry my mother's life was fading. With the Student Loan I was able to move out of the house into a studio apartment. Even through there was a lot of paper work from the first year social work course work, I passed. Then I started my first year field placement at an agency for the developmentally disabled the following year. Between the school advisor, the agency supervisor, and my VR counselor, saying to be a social worker was not a realistic goal, I wanted to quit. If it wasn't for one friend who I called ever other night, I wouldn't become a social worker. She talked me out of quitting each time.

During my first year placement my life was really beginning to fall apart. I felt like I was going crazy . . . Something inside was eating away at my sanity. At the request of my advisor at school, I went to the mental health clinic at the county hospital for my first psychiatrist evaluation. I knew from the beginning the third year residence psychiatrist was not sensitively. He only saw the physical disability and not the mental pain I was in. He referred me to group therapy and never took my suicidal letter seriously that I wrote to him. So after I finished the first year field placement I took a whole bottle of Valium went to bed hoping to never to wake up. But I did, the next morning with a whopper of a hangover.

Finally all my mom's support disappeared when my parents moved to the Florida's Keys and rented an apartment with thirty steps straight up to it. I visited my parents not as often as they would like but those stairs up to their apartment made me their prisoner. It was in the Keys was the last time my father got drunk and went bed with me. The next morning I went to my mother and told her. My mother's mouth dropped open and she said, "Oh!" The only other time IT was mention was during one of the first television specials on incest.

My second year of graduate school went more smoothly. To my surprise I was able to complete 15 papers in 16 weeks. I got my choice of field placements at HOSPICE. The founders of Hospice helped me get into the Program at Barry. Two weeks after I started my field placement my mother died of liver failure due to alcoholism. I finally got my M.S.W. in December 1981. I continued to work at Hospice after I finished my field placement. A year later I got a part time job at the Grant Center Hospital (Grant School) in the Medical Records Department after working there for a year I was promoted to an assistant researcher to the Medical Director. By then I was working a thirty hours a week, moved into my own one bedroom apartment.

I looked like I was very successful on the outside, but inside I felt like I was a failure. While working at HOSPICE I went to two or three counselors but they did not even understand what was the problem. Then through a neurologist I got hook up with Dr. D. He was patience and understood what was going on. Even when I got angry while writing my feeling out and made a serious suicide attempt which ended me up in a coma in AN ICU, Dr. D did not get angry. He just was there for me. It was then I just began to remember the past. Part of me wanted to deny what had happened but, I knew it did.

After Dr. D couldn't see me anymore I went to the clinic my sister went to. Although the doctor I saw was very good, he did not understand what I was going through. Once, he told me I should go live in a nursing home. I got so mad at him I went home and throughout everything in my kitchen. Before I lost my job at Grant Center, the doctor couldn't see me anymore and turned me over to a psychologist. It was more like a friendship then a therapeutic relationship. I needed that at that time.

The psychologist gave me enough confidence to apply for a state job as a social worker at the State Institution for the severely/profoundly retarded. VR did not help in finding or supplying the computer in order to keep the job. So in the end I got fired from that job because of my disability. I ended up filing an EEOC job discrimination complaint against the state.

After my lease was up, I moved into this one room efficiency for $250 a month. Then lives really begin to fall a part. Shelly stopped seeing me. So I went to the mental health clinic close to my house. I was lucky because the case worker was good. He saw the pain. The worker knew I was sexual exploited by many men besides my father. He tried to begin work with me, but I wasn't ready. Instead I became very self destructed.

I was not very popular with VR because of the complaint I filed. So after seeing a VR counselor I OD on pills because I was in a rage over being labeled "unemployable." That landed me up in the psych ward for five weeks. The doctor on my case was had no patience working with a person with C.P. He wouldn't take the time to listen to me. He was afraid of my cerebral palsy. I began to have flashback of the past. I remembered my father going to bed with me. I needed to talk. There was no one to listen.

After five weeks in a psych. ward, IT was decided that I could live by myself. So, I went to live in an Adult Congregate Living Facility (ACLF). Living at the ACLF was helpful. The people who owned it and ran it was my age. I could talk to them. While living at the ACLF I saw a social worker by the name of Joe Romance. Because VR was paying for the sessions, I saw him once since I thought Joe would be on VR side. I didn't realize Joe thought I was employable. So I went to the community mental health center. I found out that they did not know what they were doing. So I took another chance and went back to Joe.

After a few months living at the ACLF I got a job at the Florida Easter Seals Camp. At first I was supposed to be the Evening/Special Events Program Specialist, but became the Night Security person. Camp is a special place where disability didn't exist. Where I could grow and be myself. It was the first time I could admit to myself that an incestuous relationship with my father did happen. I did this by writing a letter that was read to a convention on Sexual Exploitation and the Handicapped. After I wrote the letter, I wanted to die. But at camp I could hold it together.

I went back to live in the ACLF. Things were different, one of the owners left and there was new help. By the time I saw Joe I was in pretty bad shape emotionally. I wanted to hurt myself and didn't want to live. Joe and I decided I was too depressed to stay at the ACLF so we decided I needed to be hospitalized. I spent a month in the hospital because the owner of the ACLF asked me not to come back. A friend changed jobs and became the Mental Health Regional Planner for the State. He got me one of the few placements in a residential facility for the mentally ill in Dade County. I decided it was time to finally work on the incest issue. I was working on the incest issue with Joe while living at the Group Home. The staff wasn't sensitive to my needs as an incest survivor nor as a disabled person. In fact they were not sensitive to the people there who were really mentally ill. At times things got so bad I had flashbacks of my dad abusing me and the staff was not even aware of the pain I was in.

In November 1988, I won the discrimination suit from HRS. It was determining that HRS couldn't fire me because of my speech nor did they make the job accessible. After I receive the settlement money, I was going to move out of the Group Home. But before I could find an apartment I fell and broke my right ankle, twelve days before Christmas. I spent 20 hours in emergency room as well as spending ten days in the hospital because I needed surgery. The resident who set my ankle did not listen to me when I told him about my special needs. It would have been so frustrating, if not for a professor at University of Miami. He introduced me to a fourth year Family Medicine Resident who made sure that my needs were met.

Since I had no health insurance, I had to go back to the Group Home. Before I broke my ankle, things were more accessible. When I came back, the client's phone was not accessible because it was on the second floor with no elevator. So if the staff didn't let me use the phone in the store room, I had to use a pay phone at a gas station on the corner. Before I broke my ankle I went to a day treatment program, but the staff wouldn't let me go to the day program after I came back. The computer I just bought was at the program. After eight weeks of being driven up the wall by the crazy staff and insane patients, my friend step in and got the District Administrator of Mental Health involved. The next day I was allowed to attend the day program. Neither he nor I was popular at the mental health center.

By April I was on my feet enough to walk around a house, so Joe found a family who had an extra room. I moved out of the Group Home to a nice not so quite home with teenagers. I still went to the Day Program at the Community Mental Health Center to use my computer because there wasn't enough space in my room. On a whim I called Healthsouth Regional Rehabilitation Center (HSRC) to say I wanted to volunteer. I volunteered there for two years.

Then in November I was asked to leave, so I found another room with a single mother and her son. Because of the holidays, I ran out of medication and the freezing weather, I became very depressed. Killing myself was an option that crossed my mind. But I was too depressed to do it. So, out of desperation I called the priest at church and told him I wanted to talk with him. The day after Christmas I ended up riding my bike in the freezing cold six miles church. We talked and what he said made a lot sense. Even after coming home, I was still very depressed. All I could do was lye in bed all day looking at the wall.

The next day I went to the Day Treatment Program. The director took one look at me and I broke out in tears. I couldn't get up off the ground. She took me to the Mental Health Center, where the doctor took one look at me and hospitalized me. I was in the hospital for a month. The staff didn't understand about being disabled. The building was new and should have had a disabled patient bathroom on each unit. It didn't. Although the psychiatrist was nice and kind when I saw him, he only spent five minutes with me at a time. My old medication wasn't working, so the doctor tried Prozac.

The night before I was to be discharge I fell and broke my left ankle (Thirteen months year before I broke the right ankle). People tried to get me up while I was crying and told them I broke my ankle. They didn't believe me. But then they didn't hear the crunch, crunch, crunch of the bones. It took three hours for an ambulance to take me to a medical emergency room. First, the doctor said I didn't break the ankle. Then they recheck the x-ray and said I did break my ankle.

This time when I broke my right ankle I had MEDICARE, so I when I saw the orthopedic surgeon the next morning all I said was, I want to be transfer to another Hospital as soon as possible and I felt more comfortable with my doctor. The doctor understood, and respected my wishes. I knew Dr. K before when I had insurance. I really like and respect him. Although he is a good doctor, by his own word, he doesn't know that much about cp. In fact he had to set the bone twice because he put it in a typical cast and told me I could put partial weight on it.

I went to HSRRC after spending a week at Baptist. I spent three months there. My stay at HSRRC was a very positive experience. It was my stay at HSRRC that I become aware I am a productive part of society. Besides I did increase my ability to function, I came to accept my disability a lot more. From years of rehabilitation professionals having told me be satisfied with your life you can't hold down a job. My feeling was that if I couldn't contribute to society I shouldn't live. But at HSRRC learned that I am helping others by just being myself.

I was discharged from HSRRC the last week in April. When I was discharge, I had two A.F.O.s on both feet. The medical director. He wanted me to go to an ACLF. I looked at many boarding homes. They either were too, expense or were not fit to live in. The social worker agreed with me and sent me home with Visiting Nurses. Before I was discharged, out of pure frustration I asked the social worker to make a referral for me to become a client of Developmental Services. (A state agency.) When on the follow-up visit to see the Doctor, I told him . . . He wasn't too happy.

I wasn't that crazy either moving back to my room. But looking at other places, my place was the best option I had at the time. I began to volunteer again at HSRRC. I brought my computer home, so I could write more. I began to have the runs. I couldn't make it to the toilet. Also, the spasms I was getting in the psych hospital were coming back. I had to wear the braces to bed because the spasms were getting painful and my legs were going into contraction.

The diarrhea I had was getting to me. The doctor who took care of me in the hospital wouldn't return phone calls. I went back to the mental health center in South Dade. They were useless. Joe referred me to Dr. F. He was going on vacation. But he did give me an appointment in a month. In between time I saw an internist. The internist agreed with me. It was Prozac. So I stopped the Prozac because I had an appointment with Dr. F in three weeks. A week after I stopped the Prozac the diarrhea and the spasms went away. I was really high and felt really well. I got two or three hours sleep per twenty-four hours. I was so happy the spasms went away and begun to walk again.

One day after I call, Debbie and told her that I stopped taking the medication, she was at the front door, ready to take me to crisis. Debbie know that soon I I was going to hit bottom. She was right I ended up spending the weekend trying to control suicidal and self-destructive thoughts. I was able to keep in control and not end up in the hospital. Monday I went and got medication at the mental health clinic. The doctor gave me Elival, told me to come back in two months. I took the Elival and ended in bed until my helper came back two days later. I was so doppie, I could not even sit up. Although she was a sophomore in college, she had common sense to know something was wrong. She called the doctor and told him what was happening. He said it was normal and bring me back in two months.

When Dr.F came back, although I was doing some what better, he decided to hospitalized me with the diagnosis of manic depressive. Since I was on Lithium, I was doing much better emotionally. But It created more side effects then I could handle. Six months later, I was hospitalized again because I stopped taking Lithium. I could not handle the side effect. I was restarted Lithium and gained 50 pounds in six months and the diarrhea was uncontrollable. I tried too impressed upon Dr. F the diarrhea was intorrabble and that I wanted to try Tregatol. But Dr. F wouldn't prescribe Tregatol because of a risk of me getting "Aplastic Anemia." So, I found another doctor who uses Tegretol to control Bipolar Illness.

After a year Joe helped me fine my own apartment. It was felt so good to live in my own place. I rented a two bedroom, two bath condo with a washer and dryer. He though he had a roommate to move in with me. As it turned it out the lady was very psychotic and had to be asked to leave. Two weeks later, I found that I was a client of Developmental Services. I was one of the 21 clients that were placed in a new program called "Supported Living." Being a client of this new program changed my life. It was the first time in my life that I had someone (a supported living coach) to help me live independently.

Although there were some rough times living in my own apartment again, things were looking up. For the first time in three years I got a six hours per week a part-time job as a data entry clerk for an attorney. In three years I became the researcher/libarain for the company. Once I was frustrated on how slow I was producing work, my boss saw how upset I was. Being in the rehab field for twenty years, he knew that I was caught up in being labeled "unemployable." He told me that I wasn't hire for my speed, but for my mind. It was then, I realized I was employable!

By February 1992, I gained over 80 lbs. in three years. So Joe and my supported living coach finally convened me I had an "eating disorder" and urged me to go into an inpatient program. The 28-day program was a waste of my time in many ways. However, I did find out after 15 year's thing that I was not crazy, that I had post traumatic stress disorder, particularly disassociation identity disorder. It was a shock, but everything I had went through in life began to make sense. Because of the physical pain of having cerebral palsy and a survivor of many types of abuse I had developed a unique coping skill of being able to separate myself from the physical and emotional pain. This is known as disassociation. Soon after the correct diagnosis was made, and under a doctor supervision I stopped taking Tregatol. But I still took medication for depression.

Hurricane Andrew was another event that changed my life for the better. However, the night that the storm hit and for nine months life was hell. Luckily I was not hurt, but the apartment complex was destroyed. Since there was not any apartment left in the path of the hurricane I moved to my sister's for a month. Then to an apartment on the Dade Boward County line. Then, Joe helped me buy my condo.

After moving in, I began to become more stable. I got the personal care help I needed through Supported Living. Also, since I was not moving every six to twelve months I began to work in therapy to put the past abuse behind me and become a survivor. After a few years working for the attorney, I had a chance to the second employee of the Center for Independent Living. I have been there for four years. Every day I learn something. Although life has been hard, the people in my life and the situations I have experienced have made me a stronger and a independent person.

Martha Sheldon, M.S.W.