When I first saw her at a Denver hospital, I could see the despair in her eyes, the silent wail that is conveyed in the photo, Face of Despair. Why wouldn’t she be feeling that, given her life at the time…
Susie was three years old, hospitalized from birth, diagnosed with a condition that caused her muscles to waste away. This included her breathing muscles and she was on a breathing machine. She was confined to a wheelchair. The only activity Susie could tolerate for fifteen minutes, three times a day, was to be strapped to a table, then tilted into an upright position. The staff noted in the chart she was mentally challenged.
