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DISABILITIES Week 133

By Daniel J. Vance

When Iris Smith, now of Newport Center, Vermont, was age 8 in 1968, she was rushed to the hospital unconscious. A doctor had misdiagnosed her burst appendix and now Smith was hanging to life by a thread. Infection had spread rapidly throughout her system.

In the emergency room, "the doctor (told my parents) it was too late," she recently said over the telephone. "But he took me into the operating room anyway. The doctor tried as best he could to save me. My mother said later that she passed out when he said I wasn't going to live."

She credits her survival to a little girl spreading the news of her sickness to several neighboring women, who would begin fervently praying for her. Smith remained unconscious until a week after surgery, spending four weeks in the hospital.

"After that I couldn't go to school for about a year and a half," she said. "I suddenly had learning disabilities. I had a lot of brain impairment. I couldn't learn quickly. I began having a very hard time with math. I had trouble with my speech. Even now I have trouble putting two sentences together. I have to speak slowly to coordinate my thoughts. Without medicine I'd be slurring my speech and unable to communicate well."

She said her parents soon moved to a new city, where her new classmates would make fun of her.

"Today, I have the same types of impairments," she said. "It took me many years to accept myself for the way I was. I always thought I would improve. Because of nerve damage in my left leg I wear a leg brace. I can stand for ten to fifteen minutes with crutches, and then I have to use a wheelchair to take the pressure off my feet."

Her story has a happy ending. She has been married for 25 years and is a mother. She volunteers for the faith-based disabilities organization Joni and Friends. She also writes songs and sings to encourage struggling people, performing mostly in New England. One of her happiest moments came in Florida in 1994 while visiting a church. A woman she met there had a familiar accent. After hearing the woman's background, Smith suddenly realized that this woman was the same little girl that had spread the news of her sickness to those neighboring women 26 years before.

For more, see www.danieljvance.com