Government Bureaucrats Took This Disabled Girl’s Wheelchair
“Her body is now tired, twisted, and weak.”
B. Christopher Agee — April 25, 2014
The first few weeks of her life were filled with more trauma and pain than any human should be forced to endure, Michelle’s adoptive mother recounted. The now-18-year-old girl was born significantly premature and, once home, was suffocated, starved, and eventually shaken nearly to death by the man tasked with her care – her own father.
A 12-week-old Michelle lay in a hospital, having suffered a paralyzing stroke and irreversible brain damage in addition to multiple broken bones and other physical injuries. She would never walk – or even sit up by herself – doctors determined. At the age of three, her new family decided to look into the possibility of equipping her with a motorized wheelchair. Heartbroken, they were reportedly told she would never be able to operate one on her own.
Undeterred, they bought her a $10,000 wheelchair; and Michelle proved the experts wrong by “driving like a Boss within weeks,” her mother wrote.
Fast-forward a decade and a half later; and, though she is still largely immobile, Michelle has bravely undergone numerous surgeries and, according to her mother, maintains a positive spirit that inspires everyone with whom she comes in contact.
Her family, complete with three new big brothers, treated her like a normal kid, she said.
“She went everywhere we went and did everything we did,” her mother explained.
Though she is exceedingly content, her one enduring wish is to be able to walk. Though that would quite literally require a miracle, she was able to secure a technological advancement that provided the next best thing.
“She had a special wheelchair that she could independently stand up and drive in,” her mother wrote, “but she lost it.”
After ordering the contraption through her husband’s Army healthcare plan, Michelle’s mother said they anxiously awaited the new acquisition.
“We started the process of getting her chair about a year before my husband retired from the Army,” she wrote. The delivery, however, was made a scant two days after his retirement was effective.
For that reason, she recalled, the insurer refused to pay for it.
The chair, which not only gave Michelle greater mobility and the option to “interact on the same level as others,” also provided great health benefits, her mother wrote
“Her body is now tired, twisted, and weak,” she concluded, though she – along with her family – refuses to give up.
The family is now seeking private donations to finally provide her with “the only thing she has ever asked for.”
Click here to read more about Michelle’s struggle or to donate to her cause.
Read more at
http://www.westernjournalism.com/government-bureaucrats-took-disabled-girls-wheelchair/#Fu4miuC7jBBaH2by.99
