Disability Memoir

In 2011, three years after leaving the NFL, Steve Gleason was diagnosed with ALS, a terminal disease that paralyzes the entire body. Doctors gave him three years to live. He was thirty-four years old. As Steve says, he is now ten years past his expiration date. His memoir is the chronicle of a remarkable life, one filled with optimism and joy, despite the trauma and pain and despair he has experienced.

A riveting and candid account of a young journalist's awakening to a life of chronic illness, weaving together her personal story with reporting to shed light on how Americans live with long-term diagnoses today.

Macular degeneration affects over eight million people in the United States. Patients lose central vision, the ability to read fine print and recognize faces. A diagnosis doesn't mean surrendering to these challenges. Instead, understanding this medical condition will help pave the way toward a better future-for yourself or loved one.

At a time when we are all more rudderless than ever, we look for the very best teachers and mentors to guide us. In Fully Alive, an unusual and gripping memoir, Timothy Shriver shows how his teachers have been the world's most forgotten minority: people with intellectual disabilities. In these pages we meet the individuals who helped him come of age and find a deeper and more meaningful way to see the world.

Ido in Autismland opens a window into non-verbal autism through dozens of short, autobiographical essays each offering new insights into autism symptoms, effective and ineffective treatments, and the inner emotional life of a severely autistic boy. In his pithy essays, author Ido Kedar, a brilliant 16-year-old with autism, challenges what he believes are misconceptions in many theories that dominate autism treatment today while he simultaneously chronicles his personal growth in his struggles to overcome his limitations.

Katherine and Jay Wolf were a young couple living the dream in Southern California, but all was nearly lost when Katherine suffered a shocking near-fatal brainstem stroke and struggled to find hope in a life that looked nothing like the one they had before.

Diagnosed with pathological demand avoidance (PDA) in his teenage years, Harry Thompson looks back with wit and humour at the ups and downs of family and romantic relationships, school, work and mental health, as well as his teenage struggle with drugs and alcohol. By embracing neurodiversity and emphasising that autistic people are not flawed human beings, Thompson demonstrates that some merely need to take the 'scenic route' in order to flourish and reach their full potential.

Thousands of soldiers die every year to defend their country. United States Army Staff Sergeant Travis Mills was sure that he would become another statistic when, during his third tour of duty in Afghanistan, he was caught in an IED blast four days before his 25th birthday. Against the odds, he lived, but at a severe cost - Travis became one of only five soldiers from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq to survive a quadruple amputation.

Before becoming the actor, producer, advocate, and model that people know today, Nyle DiMarco was half of a pair of Deaf twins born to a multi-generational Deaf family in Queens, New York. At the hospital one day after he was born, Nyle “failed” his first test—a hearing test—to the joy and excitement of his parents.

First came the boom - the loud, deep, unapologetic bellow that seemed to erupt from the very core of the Earth. Eerily, the majestic high-rise slowly leaned to the south. On the 78th floor of the World Trade Center's north tower, no alarms sounded, and no one had information about what had happened at 8:46 a.m. on September 11, 2001. Blind since birth, Michael couldn't see a thing, but he could hear the sounds of shattering glass, falling debris, and terrified people flooding around him and his guide dog, Roselle.

This groundbreaking memoir offers a glimpse into an activist's journey to finding and cultivating community and the continued fight for disability justice, from the founder and director of the Disability Visibility Project.

Blinded at age three, Mike May defied expectations by breaking world records in downhill speed skiing, joining the CIA, and becoming a successful inventor, entrepreneur, and family man. He had never yearned for vision. Then, in 1999, a chance encounter brought startling news: a revolutionary stem-cell transplant surgery could restore May's vision.

In this inspirational memoir, Derrick Coleman, Jr., the Seattle Seahawks fullback who won the 2014 Super Bowl with the Seahawks in his second year in the NFL, relates his inspirational story of hard work and determination in his own words. Showcasing his unlikely and challenging journey to become the first deaf athlete to play offense in the NFL, he talks about overcoming internal and external obstacles in the course of reaching your true potential.

Bárbara Anderson narra con brutal franqueza el día a día de tener un hijo con discapacidad: los retos dentro y fuera de casa, las complicaciones de salud y de vida; los cambios de prioridades; el Everest de cada día al tener un hijo con - hasta ahora - un diagnóstico irreversible como es la parálisis cerebral infantil.

Find Another Dream, written and performed by Maysoon Zayid, is the true story of how a Muslim Jersey girl with cerebral palsy creates her own path to stardom. The daughter of Palestinian immigrants, as a child she dreamed of one day dancing on Broadway. As a teen, a bubble-bursting choreographer told her to “find another dream”, so she set her sights on becoming a soap star, undeterred by the fact that the odds were against her.

Sabrina Greenlee was born to teenage parents in the shadow of South Carolina’s Clemson University, and her story unfolds against the backdrop of her challenging upbringing in a family that lacked the means—financial and emotional—to offer her and her two brothers the safety, comfort, and love every child deserves. When she was a teenager, her beloved younger brother, Dilly, died in a drunk driving accident. In her early twenties, Sabrina faced the tragic loss of her fiancé and one true love. A decade later, she was brutally and publicly assaulted, resulting in the loss of her vision.

Christopher Reeve has mastered the art of turning the impossible into the inevitable. In Nothing Is Impossible, Reeve shows that we are all capable of overcoming seemingly insurmountable hardships. Published on the eve of both his fiftieth birthday and the seventh anniversary of his spinal cord injury, Nothing Is Impossible reminds us that life is not to be taken for granted but to be lived fully with zeal, curiosity, and gratitude.

Our aim with this narrative is to share our journey through the labyrinth of cancer treatment—the decisions we faced, the paths we chose, and, most importantly, the lessons we learned. We hope to offer guidance, support, and perhaps a sense of solidarity to others who find themselves on a similar journey. This is not your typical medical guide; it is a well-researched companion for every aspect of your cancer journey and a deeply personal account of battling cancer from the perspective of a spouse.

Discover the power of perseverance in Simply Revland: How to Succeed in Life Despite Yourself—the compelling autobiography by Steven Mark Revland, narrated by Dan Levy and published by Panda Publishing Agency.

At six months old, Kenneth is struck by polio, leaving him physically marked and setting the tone for a life shaped by struggle. Abandoned by his mother at the hospital, he is taken in by Pearlie Mae, a blind but fearsome relative who raises him with tough love and relentless discipline. By three, Kenneth experiences haunting visions of celestial beings that feel like a divine or infernal claim on his soul, adding a spiritual weight to his physical trials. Life with Pearlie Mae is harsh; she demands survival skills rather than offering comfort. Kenneth learns early to navigate a world that ...