Mainstreaming Kathleen
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Mainstreaming was not in anybody’s vocabulary in the early sixties. It would be more than a decade before
I never heard of a neonatologist when Kathleen was born in 1954, and it would be several years before the term became more commonplace. Kathleen’s own pediatrician, Dr. Joseph Dugan, monitored her progress in the
It would be 1955 before it was proved that the concentration of oxygen given to the premature baby was causing the massive eye hemorrhages and leaving the baby blind. Kathleen had excessive damage in her right eye, but did not lose her sight in that eye. At
Kathleen was born at the beginning of numerous changes in medical practices, as well as new ideas in dealing with handicapped children in the school system when she first started public school. Like all new procedures, it took time to find out what worked and what didn’t. I didn’t know it at the time, but we were part of that process.
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About the Book
At the age of 28 I had my first child, a big, strong, beautiful boy, Johnny. The pregnancy had been normal, uneventful, and the birth, following an easy, quick labor, also uneventful. There was no reason to expect anything different with a second pregnancy. But it was different. Within 2 months I had a small hemorrhage. By the time the baby was born I had had 4 or 5 more. The baby, a girl, was born at 26 weeks, so small the doctor could hold her in his hands. At first I worked just to get her going day by day, a monumental task. Later it was to assure her of a place in regular public school classes and a life as normal as possible. But I also found myself fighting for a more normal life for other handicapped youngsters and later for all handicapped individuals. Handicap Advocacy became my life's work, albeit unpaid. I chaired a county task force on the Needs of the Handicapped; I was the chairperson for my county's Committee on Employment of the Disabled Persons and organized yearly one-day seminars for employers at the state university; I set up an all-day job fair which involved everybody in the county who had anything to do with disabled individuals, from the county executive to all the non-profit agencies working with those same persons. I begged and borrowed from everywhere and everybody who might help. It was a fantastic success. We had disabled persons who had PhD's and those who were seriously retarded and everything in between. In 1996 I received the Cory Moore Award for my efforts on behalf of disabled persons, and in 1999 I was named one of the Most Outstanding Senior Citizens in the state of
About the Author
At the age of 28 I had my first child, a big, strong, beautiful boy, Johnny. The pregnancy had been normal, uneventful, and the birth, following an easy, quick labor, also uneventful. There was no reason to expect anything different with a second pregnancy. But it was different. Within 2 months I had a small hemorrhage. By the time the baby was born I had had 4 or 5 more. The baby, a girl, was born at 26 weeks, so small the doctor could hold her in his hands. At first I worked just to get her going day by day, a monumental task. Later it was to assure her of a place in regular public school classes and a life as normal as possible. But I also found myself fighting for a more normal life for other handicapped youngsters and later for all handicapped individuals. Handicap Advocacy became my life's work, albeit unpaid. I chaired a county task force on the Needs of the Handicapped; I was the chairperson for my county's Committee on Employment of the Disabled Persons and organized yearly one-day seminars for employers at the state university; I set up an all-day job fair which involved everybody in the county who had anything to do with disabled individuals, from the county executive to all the non-profit agencies working with those same persons. I begged and borrowed from everywhere and everybody who might help. It was a fantastic success. We had disabled persons who had PhD's and those who were seriously retarded and everything in between. In 1996 I received the Cory Moore Award for my efforts on behalf of disabled persons, and in 1999 I was named one of the Most Outstanding Senior Citizens in the state of