When he was in school, kids would throw his book bag into the toilet. His mother had to go into school to advocate for him. Students with disabilities, like senior Bill Uditsky who has Tourette’s syndrome, are often misunderstood. But at the same time, services like the Cabrini Disabilities Resource Center give these students the support they need.
In addition to his Tourette’s syndrome, Uditsky has a combination of OCD and ADHD.
Tourette’s syndrome is a neurological disorder characterized by repetitive, involuntary movements and/or vocalizations called tics.
“I transferred out of (a public school) because kids were so mean and would not accept me,” Uditsky, a senior accounting major, said. “There were kids who were making fun of my religion and one kid threw my schoolbag in a toilet in the boys’ locker room. My mom had to be my advocate and defend me at the time, because I was younger and I really didn’t have the social skills to defend myself. When my mom stepped forward, I stepped forward and I was like, ‘this is enough.’ I was having suicidal thoughts; it was really bad. But at Cabrini, I’ve really learned a lot. … I’m trying to improve as a person.”
Many individuals with Tourette’s experience linked additional neurobehavioral problems such as ADHD and obsessive-compulsive symptoms. People with Tourette’s have also reported problems with depression or anxiety disorders.
“With Tourette’s, your muscles like tense up and pretty much when you have to let out a tic, your brain sends a synapse to another area of the brain,” Uditsky said. “A synapse is like the cell-to-cell communication and pretty much what the synapse does is misfires and when it misfires, it sends the wrong signal to the body. When the body misinterprets the signal, it turns into a tic, whether it’s vocal or physical.”
The struggles of living with Tourette’s can not only affect childhood, but adulthood as well. Constant tics cause stress on the body and can eventually deteriorate the bone or muscles.
“My tics are very mild compared to a lot of other people’s,” Uditsky said. “Motor tics can range from twitching your nose, blinking your eyes, spitting, darting your arm out, raising up your arm, it can be any kind of gesture, even your legs. It’s a full body tic. The way I typically compare it is that it’s like a sneeze. The more you hold it in, the harder it comes out and the more painful it is.
“It’s a complex disability to live life with, but I’ve turned it into something positive. But it definitely hinders a lot of my abilities, like when I try to take a test and I get really anxious and I have high blood pressure. The anxiety, high blood pressure and Tourette’s are a vicious cycle,” Uditsky said. “So when I get anxious, my blood pressure could raise, my tics get worse and when my tics get worse I get more anxiety and then my blood pressure raises even more.”
“I feel that I was honestly put on this earth to educate people about Tourette’s,” Uditsky said. “People go through different walks of life. People end up in different places, but in the end, we’re all similar. We’re all human. We all have our faults. Nobody’s perfect.”
Out of the 53.9 million school-aged children in the U.S., around 2.8 million (5.2 percent) were reported to have a disability in the 2010 census. Yet according to the U.S. Department of Education, approximately nine out of 10 of the nation’s colleges enroll students with disabilities, and of the 86 percent of those that enroll students with learning disabilities, only 24 percent say they can help disabled students “to a major extent.”
“My main disability, the reason I came here, is that I’m legally blind in one eye, and my other eye is not perfect. And then in my sophomore year, as a side effect of radiation, I lost the ability to walk,” Mary Boyle, a senior and frequent visitor of the Cabrini Disabilities Resource Center (DRC), said. “Now I’m in a power chair, but professors and students don’t know I’m blind, so I have to tell them.”
Students like Mary, are eligible for free reading matter in Braille, large print, or audio format. Despite that, in 2011, regardless of race, gender or ethnicity, 374,400 visually disabled individuals received a college degree or higher. From the same survey, 4,232,100 more disclosed to having less than a high school diploma.
“As my doctor explains, something that might tire you out in an hour, will tire me out in 10 minutes because I have to put so much more effort into it,” Mary said. “Some of the struggles I’ve come across are, because they (other students) can’t tell that I’m blind, they assume my disability, why I come to the DRC, is a wheelchair. They don’t think that there might be an underlying disability. When they see someone walk in, they assume it’s a learning disability, or something they can’t see. When they see a wheelchair, they assume that that’s the disability. I’ve had professors that don’t know, and usually don’t ask if I have any specific reason other than the wheelchair that I can go to the DRC.”
“I was two and a half when I was diagnosed with a brain tumor. They operated, which is what caused my blindness. So like a camera, it’s not the lens that’s the problem, it’s the interior of the camera that’s the problem, which is why glasses won’t help me,” Mary said. “I had a stroke when I was 15, but I recovered from that about 98 percent. Then I had a pulmonary embolism when I was 18, so I would say I was about 21 when I lost my walking ability.”
A stroke occurs when the blood supply to part of the brain is unexpectedly disrupted or when a blood vessel in the brain ruptures, leaking blood into the spaces surrounding brain cells. Despite stroke being a condition of the brain, it can affect the entire body. Strokes are large risk factors for pulmonary embolisms, which is a sudden blockage in a lung artery. The blockage usually is caused by a blood clot that travels to the lung from a vein in the leg.
Twenty-five percent of people who recover from their first stroke will have another stroke within five years.
Though Mary has encountered numerous obstacles to her health, she keeps an upbeat attitude and is very good at lightening the mood with her off-the-cuff humor. Despite her past struggles and her potential future problems, she has strong plans of working with children who have suffered from brain tumors as she did.
“Disabilities are more than meets the eye,” Mary said. “I can’t look at someone and say, ‘They don’t have a disability.’”
This is the way it is for most learning disabilities or impairments accommodated by disabilities centers. Most disabilities are not visible from the exterior. However, in most cases, many people with disabilities, like Maria Stadtmueller, don’t mind talking about them.
“I don’t mind telling people about my hearing impairment, because that is me. People with a learning disability wouldn’t want to tell people they have a learning disability, because people could think ‘that person is dumb, or ‘that person is whatever’ so they don’t want to set them apart in the learning atmosphere, but I like to tell people about it so then they know to talk louder,” Maria Stadtmueller, sophomore special and elementary education major, said. “And sometimes it’s a hassle for people that talk softly, but I don’t mind saying ‘can you talk louder,’ ‘can you come closer to me,’ ‘can I follow you around?’“
Maria has a hearing disability. She has a 45 percent hearing loss in both ears.
“They found that in second grade that I had unusual hearing that kept fluctuating every time I got my hearing tested. I would be really good and then really bad. In eighth grade it was bad enough that they said ‘Ok we really need to look at this’ and I was at 30 percent decibel loss. That’s when I got my services.”
A mild hearing loss can cause a child to miss as much as 50 percent of classroom discussion. Because of this, it is very easy for a student who is hearing impaired to lag behind without accommodations like Maria has, such as an FM audio transmitter device, or stenographer.
“Right now I have a CART note servicer. She’s like a stenographer and she comes with me from class to class, and that’s something that Cabrini gave me from the DRC. So people notice that and they’re like ‘oh, who is this lady taking depositions of this class?’ Maria said. “I have to explain that she’s my assistant and I have a hearing deficiency and she helps out. But I read lips; that’s something that really helps me. People think it’s really creepy when I’m like staring at them and they don’t understand.”
Even the most experienced lip readers may only be able to understand about 30 percent of English speech. Most words appear ambiguous and unidentifiable on the lips. Many different sounds will also look the same.
“Mine’s different from other people’s disabilities. I don’t have an IEP (Individualized Education Program). It’s not a learning disability, it’s just the way I learn is different because I was diagnosed as an auditory learner, but I’m hearing impaired so that cancels itself out,” Maria said. “My audiologist thinks that by the time I’m like 30, or if I’m lucky maybe 40, I’ll be completely deaf. Which is kind of scary, but I try not to think about it.”
Students with disabilities can often feel removed from the rest of their classmates. Maria mentioned that she knows people get annoyed with the volume at which she speaks. She doesn’t do it purposely and only talks loudly because that’s the only way she can hear herself.
“I became eligible for hearing aids, but I don’t want them. I know I need them, but I don’t want them. It’s kind of just another thing that sets me apart,” Maria said.
No matter the disability, all impairments put individuals at a disadvantage, academically and socially. Despite this, it is important to realize that the disability does not own the person, but the person owns the disability.
