ipl-logo

Shane Burcaw's Laughing At My Nightmare

647 Words3 Pages

In a world where walking, eating, showering, and using the restroom are everyday, mindless tasks, people often forget that there are people who struggle with these things. Shane Burcaw’s autobiography, Laughing at My Nightmare, allows readers to truly understand what it is like to have a debilitating disability. Burcaw’s “nightmare” is a neuromuscular disease called spinal muscular atrophy (SMA), which affects approximately .0001 percent of all people (Burcaw 13). To put it simply, spinal muscular atrophy causes the body to have poor development of muscles, and progressive muscle deterioration over time. This is due to a lack of a protein that is essential in helping to create and maintain muscle tissue. Sufferers of SMA have bodies that …show more content…

After graduating high school, he attended Moravian College in his hometown of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, where he studied English and started a blog that quickly began gaining popularity. Burcaw went on to write as a freelancer for a newspaper called The Morning Call, and continued to post on his blog after college. To go along with his book, Shane also has a website titled Laughing at My Nightmare. He uses this as a tool to share his life as a disabled person, and to promote his non-profit organization whose goal is “to spread a message of positivity while providing equipment grants to those living with muscular dystrophy.” Even though Shane has faced many challenges in his life, he has never chosen to give up. Shane’s success and determination is truly inspirational. In America today, there is a lot of social discrimination towards people with disabilities. Many people have lower expectations for disabled people and assume that they are helpless, which is simply not true. These institutionalized barriers have led to less than 36% of disabled higher schoolers obtaining a diploma, and an even smaller number of students moving on to college. Shane Burcaw is a great example of a disabled person finding their place in life, and becoming a successful member of

Show More
Related

Summary Of Single Handed Cooking By Jj Goode

338 Words | 2 Pages

“Single-Handed Cooking” by JJ Goode speaks about his disability and how although he acknowledges it as an obstacle it isn 't one they aren 't continuously ready to overcome. He uses the example of cooking. It 's a task that for most does not require the intense focus that he needs ,yet it doesn 't stop him from cooking dishes ranging in difficulty. With each dish he successfully creates its a way to prove himself, while the mistakes no matter the cause are a failure. Which is why he continues to tackle demanding recipes because each time he achieves a great end result its another accomplishment.

Read More

Was Terry Fox A Hero

514 Words | 3 Pages

Terry Fox showed the world what a disabled person could do, and that was anything he put his mind to. As can be seen, his disability did not define who he was; instead, it made him

Read More

Ted Talk By Keith Nolan Ethos Logos

807 Words | 4 Pages

A disability can make someone look at a "disabled" person in a specific way, even though they are just as capable as others of doing things. Some people don't realize the impact someone with a disability can have on the world because they are limited and criticized for their issues. People without disabilities can show what they have, and those with disabilities will never even get past the starting line because of people's biased views on disabilities. After listening to the Ted Talk by Keith Nolan, a private cadet, he established ethos, logos, and pathos through his educational speech on the deaf in the military. In the Ted Talk, Keith Nolan backs up his story with emotion, statistics, credible information, and real-life experience.

Read More

Summary Of Shane Burcaw's Laughing At My Nightmare

589 Words | 3 Pages

One can only get spinal muscular atrophy only if both of their parents had copies of a defective gene. Furthermore, if the

Read More

Adversity In The Scarlet Ibis

994 Words | 4 Pages

NO matter how much of a pain it was for her, she kept going and don 't’ give up. Persistence may be difficult at the time to accomplish, but in the end it pays off. After Aimee Mullins had gone through what she did, she was still disabled but it wasn’t difficult for her to do what everyone else could do. This experience for her not only taught her hat she was very persistant and a hard worker, but also taught her that it didn’t matter whether or not she was disabled or not, she could do whatever she wanted to as long as you keep trying to achieve your

Read More

Analysis Of Robert Murphy's The Body Silent

1642 Words | 7 Pages

Murphy lacks mobility and sensation in his lower body other than the feeling of occasional muscle spasms, and has limited movement in his upper body below the neck including his arms. Murphy writes the story as it recounts events throughout his entire life, from childhood onwards. He was sixty-two when he wrote the novel. The story provides Murphy’s anthropological commentary on the life of a person with a disability and how society views and treats people with disabilities (Murphy, 1990). Murphy’s performance patterns both support and inhibit his occupational engagement.

Read More

Waist High In The World Analysis

1224 Words | 5 Pages

People with disabilities are often viewed as less capable, less intelligent and not available to cope well in society. Mairs uses the different persuasive strategies such as ethos, logos and pathos to create a conscious awareness to build a world in which despite the differences everyone is treated with equality and dignity. She imagines her body as something other than problematic, but a reason to fight to build a world in which people wants her in. Mairs mentions in page 169 “I imagine a world where people, allowed the space to accept- admit, endure, embrace- their diverse and often difficult realities.” As Robert M Hensel, a famous Guinness world champion and a man with spina bifida said once “There is no greater disability in society, than the inability to see a person as

Read More

Examples Of Stereotypes In One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest

1140 Words | 5 Pages

McMurphy shows him and the others that they can embrace their disabilities instead of being ashamed of them. He teaches them to not let the stereotypes get to them

Read More

Last Stop On Market Street Literary Analysis

542 Words | 3 Pages

This book presents the real life struggles of individuals with disability. The story of August serves as a mirror and a window to readers. Readers who do not have any disability can empathize with Auggie for all his struggles. Auggie’s story fits the category of realistic fiction because his deformity is a genetic mutation which occurs naturally and can happen in the real world. His struggles with his new school, friends and bullying are realistic as some readers can relate to this.

Read More

Essay On Cadet Teaching

507 Words | 3 Pages

Spina bifida is “a congenital defect of the spine in which part of the spinal cord and its meninges are exposed through a gap in the backbone. It often causes paralysis of the lower limbs, and sometimes mental handicap.” (google.com). This illness causes dylan to be in the special Ed classroom. I’ve learned so many different things from dylan, not only has he made me a better person, he has helped me think from a different perspective.

Read More

Nancy Mairs On Being A Cripple Essay

807 Words | 4 Pages

In the essay, “On Being a Cripple,” Nancy Mairs uses humorous diction and a positive tone to educate people about life as a cripple and struggles of people with disabilities. She does this to show how hard it is to be disabled and how it differs from the life of someone without a disability. She talks about the struggles and the fears that disabled people must deal with on a daily basis. Mairs use of rhetoric creates a strong sense of connection and understanding for the reader. Nancy Mairs is successful in using detailed imagery, diction, and tone to educate her readers about the difficulties of living with a disability.

Read More

Summary Of Walter Myers 'Sometimes A Dream Needs A Push'

651 Words | 3 Pages

The story “Sometimes a Dream Needs a Push” by Walter Myers is a very inspirational story where a boy, Chris Blair, is in a car crash and loses his ability to walk but perseveres doing what he likes despite having an injury. The author in this story can convey a lot of messages but I think the main overall message is that disabled people can still play sports and even sometimes be better than non-disabled people. The mom demonstrates this when she asked the dad, who was a professional basketball player, if he could play better than his son Chris, who is in a wheelchair due to a car accident, and the dad said “Then he looked back down at the screen and grumbled something. I figured he was saying there was no way he could play as well as me in a chair, but I didn’t

Read More

Overcoming Narrative Analysis

1088 Words | 5 Pages

When reading autobiographies written by people with disabilities, a source of tension can sometimes be found between the author and the mediatory forces which surround their writing process. When reading such texts about individuals with intellectual disabilities, however, this tension colors every inch of the text, from its organizational structure to the progression of its narrative. In the case of memoirs such as Rachel Simon’s Riding the Bus with my Sister and Jason Kingsley and Mitchell Levitz’s Count Us In, the various forms of narrative mediation present essentially warp the texts into providing narratives exclusively targeted at a non-disabled audience. To elaborate, their stories prioritize portraying an overcoming narrative of sorts, a specific style of storytelling

Read More

I Am Ashamed Of Education Essay

886 Words | 4 Pages

I am ashamed to have grown up in a world in which disabled people are treated like an exception, as if their life itself is an inconvenience and penalty. And I am afraid that this nefarious act will continue to be passed on to the next generation by us, and thus that generation will keep educating their children the same, erroneous concept, over and over again. So, I am here to change this education and the inequitable views of disabled. I am here to break your walls of stereotype towards the disabled.

Read More

Summary Of Unstoppable By Nick Vujicic

318 Words | 2 Pages

Unstoppable, written by Nick Vujicic, is an auto-biography talking about his experience as a disabled man. Born without limbs, Nick Vujicic did not let this get to him in his pursuit of happiness. Despite having these disabilities, he still manages to make the most of his time on earth and still manages to smile about it. He never let him being unique from everyone else prevent him from doing things other people have the opportunity to do so; such as surfing or skydiving. This book starts off with his daily life, how successful and busy he’s become, but soon enough he talks about the emotional crisis he is forced to live through on a daily basis.

Read More

More about Shane Burcaw's Laughing At My Nightmare

Related Topics

Open Document