It was just a regular morning. We're driving to, you know, preschool and right before we
got to our turn, the car just came sped down, cut us off. We swerved, hit the post on the
side of the road. He was in the back seat. Now he's paralyzed from the neck down.
Tyler was born at 35 weeks and he developed seizures when he was a baby and he was diagnosed
with cerebral palsy at that time. She was born with muscular dystrophy but we didn't
know until she was eight years old and she had a stroke. Five months later she had a
trach and was on a ventilator. Amanda was in an automobile accident about four years
ago and she received a high-level spinal cord injury where she's depended on a ventilator
24-7. She definitely has not accepted her situation yet at all. She really is kind of
still waiting to get better. What is the mission of CAMP? It's fun. That's what makes back
CAMP what it is today. So I say, if we have fun, everybody's going to have fun. And when
I look into all these years we have produced back CAMP, probably a person who has more
fun is me. As day one begins, all the volunteers start
heading out to the middles and as each camper comes in, it's a plot after plot. They feel
amazed and so happy to come back. You see, they're lighting up.
I like about the camp. It's fun. It's like a vacation from school. So yeah, best spring
break ever. It's fun. There are a lot of kids here. And you feel very active. And you like
to stay up late. And then this is the camp. They do absolutely everything that no one
else would try to do with the patients. It's definitely something inspiring to us that
we can do certain things. The volunteers that come in, they make connections
with these kids so quickly. And I mean, it's changing for them and for us.
In Venezuela, the other people see Mariana as if it were something weird, that she has
a tracheostomy. And here it's not like that. Here it seems that she is one more of all.
Every time you have to do something better, because if you get static, you get bored.
Something for these kids never having spring. The children feel free in the water because
they can move, they can float. Things that they don't feel. The idea is to have fun,
not to be regulated. From day one, Tyler has loved the water. When
we got the trache, we thought that was the last day Tyler would go in the water. He'd
never go in the water again. Dr. Simpser and the camp showed us that Tyler could do the
things that he loved to do most, which was be in the water.
These kids have a really hard life, but at the same time, these are probably the happiest
people you get to meet. My first motivation for this camp was actually
to get the volunteer hours that I needed. And it just changed my entire direction as
an individual. Most of them come initially for community hours. When they come and they
spend the week here, their lives are changed. I think it's the first time all of us have
seen her smile so much. And you really think this is your life until you come down here
and there's a whole camp of people that live the same life as we do. It's one week that
they just get to be a normal kid.
Thank you.
you
