A teenaged girl writes about her little sister, Jamie, who has spina bifida. This is a report she did for her English class.
I have a special little sister named Jamie Faith.
Jamie, whose real name is Jameela, was born in India, and we adopted her into our family when she was four. She is now seven years of age. She came to us from a town near New Delhi, India.
Jamie is a very pretty little girl. She has short, wavy black hair and very dark eyes, and her skin is a lot darker than mine. She can wear just about any color, and it will look great on her. She is also disabled, and because of it, she is paralyzed from the waist on down, and she has no feeling from her waist on down. She does walk, but she wears leg braces on her legs, and she uses forearm crutches to get around easier. She was born this way; she was born with spina bifida, which means that her spine didn't form right as she was being born. She has had several surgeries in her life, but she has emerged to be a very strong-spirited, happy child who lives for the moment. Not much can slow her down, and she refuses to give in to her handicap.
Besides being paralyzed, Jamie also is incontinent, meaning that she is unable to go to the bathroom. She wears diapers because she is unable to control her urine or her defication, and she also wears a catheter tube in her bladder. She changes the tube every few hours, and she is very meticulous about it because if she isn't careful, she can get a very nasty bladder or kidney infection that could make her very sick or even kill her. She also has a shunt in her head, and most of the time we don't even know it because her hair hides the scars from the shunt surgery; but last year, she ended up in the hospital when her shunt became blocked, and she was a very sick little girl. She was having blinding headaches, and she was having one seizure after another; but ever since her shunt was replaced, she has been doing fantastically well.
Jamie is a doer. She wants to be involved in whatever anyone else is doing, and she is definitely a "people person". She has many friends at school and at church, and she loves to sing, color, spend time outside, ride her special bike (she can ride a bike, but she turns the bike with her hands instead of her feet), watch "Spongebob SquarePants", "Rugrats", and "The Wild Thornberrys" on Nickolodeon (she also loves the shows "America's Most Talented Kid"--which just ended yesterday, but it will be back later this year--, "Dora The Explorer", and "Franklin"), read (she is a very good reader), and draw. She also loves to write poetry. Below is one of her poems:
The Bird (by Jamie, aged 7)
The bird loves to fly
Up high in the big, blue sky.
The bird loves to sing its happy song,
And when I hear it, I do want to sing along.
The bird builds its nest in a high tree,
And when it rains, I am sure that's where he wants to be!
I wish I were a bird, I could go anywhere,
And I would just fly for hours and wouldn't give a care!
Jamie is really a one in a million. She is quick to smile and laugh, and nothing pleases her more than to bring a smile to our face or to others. She has such a pleasant attitude around her, it doesn't take long before people forget that she is handicapped; they forget about her crutches or leg braces, and they soon see her for the happy child that she is.
That is the way it should be, not only for Jamie, but for ALL handicapped children!
Karen you never cease to amaze me with your azbility to write such wonderful stories. P.S Glad to have a face to go with the names:D
God Bless
~Michelle~
ohhhh, karen...this one is so tender! very well written...your great big heart is showing again...it is displayed in your wonderful writes...you have a soft spot for disabled people, it shows...(((((HUGS))))) and continue to be a voice for them...love, karla. :)
Let this coming of age story of a boy named Bean take you back to a simple time. Set in a small southern town in the 1960's, encircled by a river and gleaming white cotton fields.
