Life with Cerebral Palsy
...ould benefit. After using Google for awhile, I began using the AOL Search browser to help me find the right link to a good website. The site I found after about a half hour of jumping around from site to site was through an article of the research process that physicians and psychologists are currently going through on the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke website. This was the “backbone” website that I had been searching for in order for me to go along with my process. Finding the right sources for this assignment was pretty easy, once I was able to get going on the right track in regard to locating the useful information I needed. Of course, along the way, I did go through quite a few blind alleys or useless sites, that did not even come close to matching the criteria I was searching for. I can recall one site that was about getting in contact with a lawyer who could help find ways to sue medical physicians who had nothing to do with cerebral palsy. The reason I had entered this site was because I thought it would contain information about some of the cases that have gone to court over cerebral palsy malpractices or negligence against doctors in the United States and other countries around the world. As I was meandering around the site and its links, I could not find anything helpful for me in my search process about the types of lawsuits they take to court and for what reasons. Another useless site that I came across was the United Cerebral Palsy website. The website is set up for each state in the United States and Canada, and just basically gives an overview of numbers and statistics about cerebral palsy in that particular state or province. It also has employment opportunities, organizational principles and the history of UCP. The website that I looked into was the UCP of Texas and for the type of information I was looking for, this site did not contain the research I needed. In some cases, going through the search process was somewhat challenging and also frustrating at times when I could not find the information that I was looking for. When I began researching cerebral palsy, I found out many things about the disorder that I have never seen or heard about in my lifetime. Cerebral palsy can be found all the way back into the 1860’s when an English surgeon by the name of William Little wrote the very first descriptions of the puzzling medical disorder that plagued children during their first years of life. Children who were stricken with CP or Little’s disease would often have stiff and spastic muscles in their arms and in some cases their legs, making them unable to crawl or walk or even grasp a hold of an object. To Dr. Little, it seemed that children acquired CP following a premature or complicated birth which may have resulted in a lack of oxygen to the brain during delivery. Little believed that the oxygen shortage may have damaged sensitive brain tissues which controlled the movement of the child. However, in 1897, a famous psychiatrist named Sigmund Freud disagreed with Dr. Little’s belief, claiming that the disorder may have begun in the mother’s womb during the development of the brain. Freud wrote, “Difficult birth, in certain cases is merely a symptom of deeper effects that influence the development of the fetus.” Despite Freud’s belief, scientists have recently discovered that only a small fraction of these cases are less than 10 percent accounted for (Hope Through Research). Cerebral palsy is one of the most common disorders of all congenital or present at birth disorders. There are 15-20 cases of CP seen in every 10,000 births and approximately 500,000 children and adults have the disorder in the United States alone. Before delivery, during delivery and just after birth seem to be when the first signs of CP are found (Vitale). The four major types of cerebral palsy are Spastic, Dyskinetic, Ataxic, and Mixed each with a different and unique characterization of the disorder. Spastic, which is the most common type, and could also be referred to as Hypertonic Cerebral palsy because of the plethora of muscle tone, is characterized by tight or stiff muscles. A form of Dyskinetic cerebral palsy is when involuntary movements are present due to the changing level of muscle tone in the patient. Ataxic CP occurs when the cerebellum has been damaged, causing the lack of coordination and jerky movements such as seizures. Also, Mixed CP occurs when two or more varieties of CP are present in the same person and is a rare find in most studies of this particular type (March of Dimes). Although there are different types of cerebral palsy, each can be similar to another in some fashion. There are many factors or causes that can lead to being diagnosed with cerebral palsy. Only a small portion of children who are diagnosed with CP acquire the disorder after birth, usually from brain damage in the first few months of life or even until the child has reached the age of two or three years old. Some symptoms of cerebral palsy may take time to become obvious since cases of cerebral palsy can vary from severe to mild and sometimes even unnoticeable (Vitale). This result may be caused from an infection in the brain, head trauma from an accident, from a fall or from child abuse. Other causes of a child that could develop CP, could go unseen and sometimes not even thought of during or after birth such as multiple births or even a physical birth defect, could go undetected for months after the child is born (Overview). Like any other disorder, there are numerous variations associated with cerebral palsy which impair the brain and its function. Mental impairment, seizures, growth problems, impaired vision and/or heari...