Turtle In A Racehorse World: Dealing with Disability Through Creativity

By Kati & Halene Dahlstrom

The neurosurgeon said, “Kati will be able to learn and do things. She’ll go at her own pace, but it won’t be fast. She will always be a turtle in a racehorse world.” Moving, thinking, and speaking more slowly than the rest of the world is not all roses. So I wrote Turtle in a Racehorse World to tell the racehorses of the world how they can help the turtles like me, and see the good in all who live around them, so the world can be a kinder place.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Publication Consultants
• Release date: May 1, 2009
• ISBN: 9781594332784

Kati & Halene Dahlstrom

Moving, thinking, and speaking more slowly than the rest of the world is not all roses. So I wrote Turtle in a Racehorse World to tell the racehorses of the world how they can help the turtles like me, and see the good in all who live around them, so the world can be a kinder place.

Book preview

Preface

How Turtle In A Racehorse World Began

One day I was upset about my life and my mom told me to start writing a book. I had wanted to start writing one anyway because I felt that it was not just my life and disabilities that needed to be addressed, but that others out there with disabilities felt the same way I do. It soon became a mission of mine. I had a lot to say, so I figured that I would just pour out my heart, even if afterwards I wondered why I had written it in the first place. The venting process started in 2004, and took more than four months to complete. Then the real work began!

The venting had to be sorted, sentence by sentence, topic by topic, and chapter by chapter, in order to figure out what was worth keeping. My mom helped me with that. We had to decide what the gems were, and what was just gravel. From time to time I got confused thinking that the gravel was the gems that needed to be kept. Mom used plenty of humor and patience to help me see the difference. Thank heavens for computers with the Cut and Paste feature!

I learned more and more about myself, what was a real concern, and what was a temporary upset. I can honestly say that I see things a lot more positively now. I loved writing my book, and feeling like I might make a difference in the lives of other people. The only thing I didn’t like was the fact that it took so blasted long in between the writing, the organizational process, the editing, and the publishing—over four years! Now I understand all too well the frustrations other authors feel.

The first part of this book is about my life, frustrations, and feelings. The second part contains some of my favorite writing projects from over the years. I definitely plan to continue with my writing because once I start a project, there are so many ideas going through my head that I can’t wait to share.

My Story

Chapter One

About Me

I was born in Murray, Utah at Cottonwood Hospital on February 12, 1979 at 11:17 PM. Unfortunately my miraculous birth was not without problems. It was a very difficult delivery because I was tiny and didn’t have much room to maneuver. Eventually I made a natural entry into the world.

Soon they realized that I had a hard time eating because I wasn’t strong enough to nurse, but had to drink milk from a bottle that was squirted into my mouth a little at a time. They told my mom that it was because I was tired from the delivery and the eating situation would improve, so we left the hospital and went home.

But I was an awfully fussy baby and couldn’t rest at all if I was laid down. I would start crying loudly, so someone had to hold me upright most of the time. The reason for this was that pressure on my brain was increasing little by little every day, and it was something a doctor needed to diagnose. However, my family— Dad, Mom, and older brother Jeff—had just moved to a new town in Wyoming, far away from any doctors. Thankfully, the doctor who delivered me wanted to see us back in four weeks instead of the usual six weeks, or else I might have died!

At four weeks when I had my checkup, the doctor said that there was something seriously wrong. I had developed hydrocephalus, which is also known as water on the brain, and needed to be taken to the emergency room at Primary Children’s Hospital in Salt Lake City right away. I had my first surgery the next morning.

If you have hydrocephalus, you get something called a shunt placed in your head to release extra fluid pressure. There is a drainage tube that connects into that and it goes under the skin down to the abdomen to get rid of the extra fluid. These things stay with you the rest of your life.

After the surgery, my parents asked if I would be okay and the doctor said, You’ll never know if she would’ve been a genius and now she isn’t, or if she was always going have problems no matter what. Just love her and treat her like a normal kid as much as possible.

I started to feel better almost immediately and was an easygoing, sweet baby from then on, who was barely any trouble, smiled a lot, and was blessed with the ability to love. For the first couple of years, because I was tiny, I had to have gamma globulin shots every 6 weeks. Then I started growing more normally. I liked to sing, dance, play dress-up, play dollies, draw, and coax our horse to come to the fence so I could pet him.

I grew up in a loving family in a beautiful place called Alpine, Wyoming. By the time I went to kindergarten, my family had six people in it—Dad, Mom, Jeff, Me, another brother named Colter, and a new baby sister named Jennalee. But kindergarten was not without problems.

One day the school secretary called my mom, and said, When you pick Kati up early from school you need to tell us, so we won’t worry about her.

My mom said, "I didn’t pick Kati up early! Where is my daughter?"

She was panic-stricken, but didn’t have a car that day to drive the 15 miles to the school. A few minutes later, they called and said that a farmer had found me wandering around in his field, which was behind the school playground. I was listless and confused. My mom called my neurologist and asked if he knew of a reason why this might have happened. He said that I was probably having seizures. That’s when I started taking seizure medications.

As I grew up, I learned to read, and spelling was like a fun game, but writing was hard, and math was extremely difficult because I don’t remember number facts easily at all. My memory was great for some things. I could memorize a poem if someone taught it to me, but anything more complicated just got tangled up in my brain. Every year the kids I went to school with moved further ahead of me academically. That made me frustrated and sad. Luckily, I have my own voice and have always been able to speak my mind.

Over the years it took several surgeries before they found a shunt that would keep working for me. It would work for a while, and then need to be replaced. This is normal for people with shunts because there has to be just the right balance of pressure in the brain, and getting that sorted out can be tricky. I was lucky though, because I only had to have a few surgeries, and some kids end up needing a lot more.

One of the unique things about my recoveries was that from the time I was five, whenever I was coming out of anesthesia, I asked my mom to give me words to spell. It seemed to help me wake up faster. I had to repeat second grade because two surgeries that year caused me to miss too many days.

When I was in