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Submitted by honeybunny on 06/30/2008 05:21 PM
- Category: Social Issues
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The Cheese
Born 13 weeks prematurely with cerebral palsy, Emmanuel spent the first months of his life in the hospital on a ventilator. Two weeks after his long-awaited homecoming, Yadira received the news: her son also had retinopathy of prematurity. Being on a ventilator for so long had caused his retinas to begin to detach. If Emmanuel and his family did not travel immediately from their home in Puerto Rico to New York for surgery, Emmanuel could become blind.
Today, Manny as his friends and family call him is preparing for a different journey. A confident, ever-grinning, four-and-one-half-year-old, he is graduating from the Lighthouse Child Development Center preschool this month. In the fall, he will begin kindergarten with 25 other children at a barrier-free public school in Brooklyn.
As Yadira says, it has been an incredible few years in her family's life.
After Manny's first surgery, and four months of unsuccessful therapy back home, the Vasquez family learned that he would need another eye operation. They returned to the hospital in New York. Despite the doctors' best efforts, the vision in Manny's left eye could not be saved, and the hospital referred Yadira to the Lighthouse in Queens.
Here, optometrist Dr. Mike Fischer evaluated the one-year-old and fitted him for corrective lenses, while Yadira discussed Manny's vision with the school social worker. Within days, Manny was attending weekly sessions at the Lighthouse Child Development Center in Manhattan to begin learning how to make the best use of the remaining vision in his right eye, while still in New York. Several weeks passed, and Yadira made a life-altering decision: she would move to New York so that Manny could continue to go to the Lighthouse.
Yadira says, "Between Manny's cerebral palsy and his vision loss, he started out with more than his share of challenges. I was determined to go wherever I had to for him. I feel good...
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