Learning to Live With Cerebral Palsy
Cerebral palsy has changed Vicky Page's life. As she tells her friend Terrence Hicks, it was particularly difficult being a teenager who relied on a wheelchair.
Page says that the issue of acceptance -- by her friends back in school and by herself today -- is one she's still reconciling herself to. And the question of intimacy has its own complications.
Vicky Page's story comes to NPR from the StoryCorps project, in which the oral histories of ordinary Americans are recorded. The project, currently at the Library of Congress, is beginning a national tour this month.
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RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
On Capitol Hill, something unusual is going on: intense listening. Friends, neighbors, family members are stepping into mobile recording studios outside the Library of Congress, sharing personal stories. It's all part of an oral history project called StoryCorps. Beginning today and every Friday for the next year, MORNING EDITION will bring you excerpts of StoryCorps interviews as its mobile studios crisscross the nation.
Meet Vicki Page. She's 26 years old and lives in New York. She tells her friend, Terrence Hicks, about what it's like to grow up with cerebral palsy.
Ms. VICKI PAGE (26 Years Old): I had a few friends who I formed tight relationships with, who all of a sudden wouldn't sit next to me anymore at the lunch table, decided I wasn't cool enough, would stop calling me after I called them, wouldn't speak to me when I spoke to them. I was kind of on my own. And then as far as intimate relationships, being in a wheelchair, you're always protected by this chair. There's armor between you and the opposite sex. So intimacy is a difficult thing.
Mr. TERRENCE HICKS (Vicki Page's Friend): Even now?
Ms. PAGE: Even now. You know, I've never been kissed. So I have no idea what the rules are and what the norms are of a relationship, and I have to be honest: I don't see myself in a romantic relationship at all. I think that I'm--gotten to this place where a wall is up so much that I don't even want to go in that direction, 'cause when I do, I get sad. I would just like to fully accept where I am. And I'm on the road, but I'm not there yet.
MONTAGNE: Vicki Page recorded her interview at a StoryCorps booth in New York. To find out when a mobile StoryCorps recording studio is coming to your town, visit npr.org. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright National Public Radio.
