By Guest Blogger, Stephen Wampler, Founder, The Wampler Foundation
My name is Steve Wampler. When I was born in 1968, I got stuck in my mother’s birth canal and was deprived of oxygen for a time. As a result, I have cerebral palsy. Having said that, I was the first-born child of parents who, after absorbing the initial blow, educated themselves about my condition and its severity and worked with doctors to try to understand all that I would face. They also got very thorough evaluations from medical establishments to determine what my life would be like, physically and mentally.
Once my parents had all the answers they needed, they were armed with information and ready to educate me. What they were told was that I would need to use a wheelchair my entire life, but that my brain function had not been impaired – basically I would have no balance or coordination, but I could be educated “normally.”
I would say that, given that knowledge, my first memories of my parents were both the love they had for me, as well as the expectation that in spite of my physical limitations, I would excel in my life and make the most of it in every imaginable way. Fast forward to today. I’m 44, have been married to my wife Elizabeth for 17 years, and we have a 13-year-old daughter and a 12-year-old son. Life is good.
By Guest Blogger John Quinn, retired Navy Senior Chief Petty Officer and Author of Someone Like Me – An Unlikely Story of Challenge and Triumph Over Cerebral Palsy
