disability

Finding his own way
By Allie Caren
June 26, 2014 - 12:11pm
Scotty Fura and his family are determined to move forward after a tragic accident to the Camillus boy.

Jennifer Fura remembers it being quiet — as if life was on autopilot — for a long time.

“Whatever they needed they got; try to sleep when you could. I don’t remember a lot of it,” she said. “I kind of felt like a zombie for awhile.”

One day all of that changed, when her son, Scotty, walked into the kitchen, smiled at her, and said, “Hi, mom.”

“And that’s when it hit me: I’m like, if this kid is smiling, every day, after what he’s been through: why aren’t I?” she said.

Disability rights professor shares his story at Watson Symposium
By Kassie Brabaw
April 11, 2014 - 12:41am
The daylong conference featured speakers who talked about topics including bio-ethics and contemporary medicine.

In 2010, William J. Peace was critically ill with a badly infected wound. Doctors told him he would be bed-bound for at least six months, maybe a year. But, they said, the wound might never heal. He might never be able to sit in his wheelchair or work again. Then they said the words that Peace said people with disabilities hear too often, “we can make you comfortable.”

They said it was his choice – he could stay on his current treatment track and risk being dependent on other people for the rest of his life, or he could stop all treatment and die comfortably. Peace chose to live.

A light in the dark
By Christine Mehta
August 24, 2010 - 11:49pm
Alexander Williams, a graduate student from Ghana, has managed to overcome the obstacles inherent to being blind.

Alexander Williams was always a curious child. One day, his curiosity got him into trouble.

At age 12, Williams was hit in the right eye by a stray bullet.  Warring factions in the part of Liberia where he lived for the first 12 years of his life were fighting over port access to the harbor when his house got caught in the crossfire.