Adonis Diaries

Meet self-autonomous Jessica: Born without hands. Born without arms. Period

Jessica fly airplanes. Jessica drives cars. Jessica inserts her eye lenses with feet.  She eat with her right foot. She buttons her shirts with her right foot.  She cooks and pump gas with right foot…  Jessica has a complete wardrobe of shirts with buttons and pants with buttons.

Jessica was born without hands and without arms: nothing attached to the shoulders.  The mother claims that the echographies and all prenatal tests and images didn’t show lack of arms and hands!  Who is joking here?  If images can distinguish a male from a female, just from this tiny extension, how can they miss arms and hands?  The mother said that the physician just said “Yes” to her question: “You mean my daughter is born without arms and hands?”

Was the physician hiding information on religious grounds so that the parents would not demand abortion?

Since Jessica has to be using her right foot, she cannot be wearing hard to remove boots.  Consequently, it is doubtful that Jessica will be skiing: Until she learns to remove complicated boots with teeth and lips.  What if she has to go…to the toilet, and things have to be out-of-the-way within a minute?

Jessica swims daily, and practice tae kwan doo, and do almost everything that she feels like doing to be viewed as “Normal”.

But Jessica is not normal. She said: “When I see a handicapped person on wheelchairs I ask myself “How does he manage to live autonomously?”

Jessica’s mother is Filipina and she is as short as her tiny mother. Jessica’s “American” father is tall and well-built.  I am wondering: “If Jessica was born to be as tall and big as her father, would she has been as agile and “dexter” with her feet and legs?”

Question: “How does Jessica walk?”  This question sounds ironic or mean or trying plainly to be funny, but consider the case of a monkey, born without hands and arms. I figure that the monkey would learn be able to eat and clean itself and carry on with daily needs to survive.  The question would remain: “How this monkey would walk and move?”

Will the monkey learn to be completely biped?  Will the monkey walk erect? If this monkey learns to walk like people then, would it be as dexter and agile with its feet to feed itself and carry on as when a kid? I tend to believe that this monkey would learn to climb trees and jump from a tree to another, although not as effortlessly as the other “normal” monkeys.

Actually, Jessica has to invest more energy and effort for simple tasks that we take for granted, and she feels exhausted faster than “normal” people.  And I wonder: “Suppose Jessica needs to scratch the back of her neck of her back, how does she perform this task? Has she tailor-made a scratching instrument that reaches every spot on her body?”

I am wondering: “Why Jessica has to keep wearing time-consuming buttoned cloths?  Shouldn’t Jessica start her own design fashion?”

In this documentary on ARTE, another woman was born with just one arm and hand missing.

Who do you think is more handicapped: Jessica or the one-armed woman?   I think the one-armed woman had it more easily growing up, but as she grew big, she must have failed to using her feet as extensions to her one arm and hand.  By the time both women are in their sixties, and sclerosis ravaging bones, which one of the women will be faring better as self-autonomous individual?

So many questions, and how we manage to survive with all the handicaps we are plagued with…