So I was just scrolling around on the internet and I saw this.
Someone had posted it with the comment "I'm dying of laughter". Clearly this sweet little girl has Down Syndrome. Anyone could tell that she has some kind of disability. Is this what the world is coming to? We're starting to laugh at the kids with disabilities? I know that lots of people have laughed at them for a while, but this made me extremely angry and upset. Oh, I'm sorry, I guess this is just called freedom of speech. What a cruel world we live in. I look at this little girl and I see Hannah. I'm extremely protective of Hannah and if anyone talks bad about her I'm going to say something. If someone talks bad about anyone with disabilities, I'm going to say something.
For those of you who don't know, my little sister Hannah (14) was born with Down Syndrome. She spent the first 7 months of her life in the hospital. When she was born, her esophagus was not connected to her stomach so she had to be rushed into surgery the instant she was born. They managed to connect the esophagus but it left a hole so thin no food would be able to pass through it without Hannah choking. This meant she needed a g-tube. A g-tube goes into your stomach with a port on the outside where liquid nutrition is pumped through. Hannah gets all her medicine, water, and formula through this g-tube. She has never eaten by mouth and probably never will. She also needed a trach, which is a tube in her neck that helps her breathe. Thankfully she was decannulated (her trach was removed) a few years ago. She still has her g-tube. All this stuff left her with a very weak immune system. She was sick probably every month. When Hannah gets sick, it's not an easy thing to deal with. She usually needs to be placed on an oxygen tank, sometimes needing five or more liters of oxygen. Since the oxygen tank we had at home only went up to five liters, if she needed more than that it was time for a hospital visit. These visits could last for two days or two weeks.
I remember that me and my sister always had a bag packed in case we needed to be woken up in the middle of the night and get picked up by my grandparents because Hannah needed to go to the hospital. We would get passed off from grandparent to grandparent to aunt and uncle to neighbor. Sometimes we would wake up and my parents and Hannah would be gone and my grandmother was sleeping on the couch. It was all normal for me because I was two years old when Hannah was born. I didn't know any other way. That's why it was so hard for me to understand why people would stare at Hannah when we went out in public. I didn't see anything different about her. She was my little sister. I didn't see the Down Syndrome. I didn't see the trach and the g-tube. I didn't see all the tubes hooked up to her when I went to see her in the hospital. I saw a beautiful little girl who always had a smile on her face. Even in the hospital, you would never see her without a bright smile on her face. Even the hospital staff would come in and ask "Is this girl actually sick? She looks so happy." I think my sister is the only person who would thank the nurse after she changed Hannah's IV. You would never guess that she was in pain or on ten liters of oxygen. She was the happiest girl around.
Can you see why I get so upset when I see offensive pictures like that? Why I get so upset when I see people stare at my sister? Why I get mad when people call others with disabilities 'different'? Just because they look or act a little different does not make them any less of a human being. They were created by God just like you and me. Why should an extra chromosome change how you view them? I like to say that the extra chromosome that comes with Down Syndrome makes those people kinder and happier than anyone else (also much more stubborn). So don't be so quick to judge. My little sister has gone through more in the first few years of her life than most people have to go through in their entire lives. She's so precious and I wouldn't trade her for anything in the world. I wouldn't trade the disabled kids I work with for anything in the world. Every single person is special. We were all made in the image of God. Period. No matter what they look or act like, everyone is a precious child of God.
Thanks for reading!
Sarah Beth
Philippians 1:20-21
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