The Four Walls of My Freedom

by Thomson, Donna

• ISBN13: 9781552788905
• ISBN10: 1552788903
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2010-11-16
• Publisher: Natl Book Network

Summary

This is a riveting and redemptive family memoir. Donna Thomson's vivid descriptions of her own experience in treading delicately through daily care, medical emergencies and the medical bureaucracy as she and her family cope with her son Nicholas' cerebral palsy is both inspirational and instructive. From the first tentative diagnosis to Nicholas' celebration of his 21st birthday last summer, Thomson examines how she and her family have tried, with various degrees of success, to cope with Nicholas' needs, while at the same time ensuring that their lives (as well as Nicholas') have value and dignity. Donna Thomson's own experience with adversity takes on new meaning when viewed through the lens of Nobel Prize-winning economist Amartya Sen and other philosophers' roadmaps of how to realize a good life against all odds. This lens includes not only people with disability, but also the enormous generation of post-WWII Baby Boomers who are beginning to sense the health care crisis that is looming as they deal with their own aging and increasingly infirm parents. Donna Thomson's brilliantly written family memoir provides a strong, original message that touches on the lives of anyone caring for the needs of another.

Table of Contents

Foreword	p. 9
The Beginning	p. 11
Amartya Sen and the Capability Approach	p. 33
Beginning to Think Differently	p. 43
A Plan for the Future	p. 47
Eldercare	p. 55
I Am Loved, Therefore I Am	p. 61
Worthy of Dignity	p. 69
Some Mother's Child	p. 75
Welcome to Holland	p. 81
Nicholas and Capability	p. 91
The Prison of Pain	p. 101
The Injustice of Pain	p. 115
Learning and Belonging	p. 123
Capable Me	p. 147
Dependency Matters	p. 153
Being Well	p. 175
Good Ideas and Practical Solutions	p. 185
Acknowledgements	p. 209
	p. 211
	p. 223
	p. 231
Endnotes	p. 239
Bibliography	p. 244
Index	p. 251
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