Lance's Birthday Report

Last night I was at home playing with my granddaughter who had somehow decided to become a little pink monster, inspite of being all smiles and wanting to be played with. Then I got a photo from my brother Brett.  Turns out he had been in Wyoming getting my Mom's old house remodeled enough to try to sell it, so Lance hadn't gotten mail from the post office box address I gave everyone until they got home, but on Halloween he sent the picture and said, "You should post this on your facebook wall, Lance got a stack of cards 8 inches high for his birthday."  Just look at hat smile. So thank you again to everyone who sent him one.  He specifically mentioned that he had gotten some from an after school program and a kindergarten class. He also had some from countries around the world including London, Slovakia and Canada they said.

Happy Birthday Greetings from around the world. I hope

My Beautiful Brother turns 39 years old on Friday, Oct. 24th and I was thinking, he loves getting mail and he is worried with our mom being in the Nursing Home and he would be so happy to get a post card, birthday card or printed letter. He can read but cursive is difficult.

The mailing address is

Lance Miller 
PO Box 865
Middleburg VA 20118

He loves the Steelers and any sports, He Loves red cars, the teenage mutant ninja turtles and Donald Duck. He still loves fruit punch more than any other drink but maybe hot fudge sundaes at Dairy Queen beat it out as the all time first choice. Back when they lived in Cody, Wyoming, the Dairy Queen closed for the winter, but the owner actually postponed the closing and kept it open each year so Lance could have his annual birthday party there first.  Lance has the most amazing social skills and people love him. He was in Special Ed. classes for his academic subjects but interacted in regular classes for PE, he loved swimming and bowling, and he Loved Choir, and still does like to sing and still recognizes and talks to people he knew back in those classes.  He called the Bingo games at the senior center and served as an usher at the church he attended with mom.  He started working at WalMart as a part of a school program when he was 15 but he stayed there 19 years, until he had to move to Virginia to live with our brother when my Mom's health became weaker. He started grade school the year the mainstreaming law passed and my mom insisted Cody start a class. And he graduated high school with a real diploma eight months before Dad died of esophageal cancer.

1. Being born with a handicapping condition wasn't as difficult as having to deal with people who had a lot of preconceived ideas about his limitations  I remember the idiots in the hospital who delivered him telling my parents he should be institutionalized before we could ever get attached because he'd never know who we are and he'd be dead before 25. Medical views of what was, at that time, called "mongoloid idiots" were pretty much in the dark ages. Over the years Mom had a Dr try to kill him by letting Giardia run its course until he had lost half his body weight and his hearing. Then when she made it clear that "no, his dying would not be the best thing for the family" one shot of penicillin cured the Giardia but not the deafness until surgery five years later. 

Then after an accident in the park with his puppy jumping up as he came down the slide, and tearing the skin on his arm with it's claw - an emergency room Dr. strapped him down at age six and started putting stitches in him arm without numbing it, "I don't want to waste the novocain, these kids don't feel pain, he is just screaming from reflex"

Well that might have been the Dark ages or this might be. 90% of Down's infants are aborted once it is diagnosed and in some countries it is legal to abort a Down syndrome baby right up to birth.

Here is an earlier blog post I wrote about Lance

http://echo-echosvoice.blogspot.com/2011/10/my-brother-has-downs-syndrome-and-i.html