Chantelle Savoie

As I Am: Book Review

1. What challenges did the person with the disability experience as a result of his disability?
Provide at least 5 examples from the book.
Being ventilator dependent for the rest of his life posed one of the biggest challenges for Garret.
In the beginning stages of his injury when he was just a small boy, he writes about being
confused as to why he always has to be hooked up to all of these tubes. When he finally learns
that this one machine is his lifeline and will be for the rest of his life, he is faced with
nightmares, depression, and emotions that are much to advanced for a boy his age.
With being ventilator-dependent, Garret was faced with the challenge of always having to
depend on other people and his machines to keep him alive. Due to his injury, Garret was
paralyzed from the neck down, meaning he was unable to move any part of his body other than
his head and a little bit in his right shoulder. Because of this, he required 24-hour attention of
both machines and people to basically be at his beckoned call in case anything went wrong.
Even the simplest tasks that the non-disabled population takes for granted, such as going to the
bathroom, eating, even turning on the TV, he could not do on his own. Garret needed someone or
something to do all these things for him. The fact that he would never being able to be
independent or live on his own was extremely challenging and brought him into many stages of
depression and loneliness. With the help of his psychologist, Garret learned how to politely ask
his family and friends around him for anything he needed. However, this brought him much
remorse because he felt he was a pain to be around.
Another challenge for Garret was merely being faced with the fact that he was never going to be
able to have the childhood that all of his friends were able to have. For Garret, going from being
a carefree 4-year-old boy, to not even being able to stand on his own two feet for the rest of his
life was very depressing. He writes of times when he would daydream of running around again,
and feeling the wind in his hair. Furthermore, he was forced to grow up so quickly because with
his condition, he had to be so careful and was always worried something would go wrong. These
feelings of worrying and knowing even the smallest thing could mean life or death challenged
Garret. He was forced to mature must faster than normal kids his age who normally wouldnt
have a care in the world. Furthermore, since he lost the ability to keep homeostasis, his internal
temperature regulators did not work. Because of this, when it was too hot or too cold outside, he
was not allowed outside because his body was not able to adjust to the change in temperature
like normal people can. Since I had no automatic body regulation, the heat would get to me and
Id find myself back inside, bored and lonely (pg. 93). This was challenging because even when
he got his automatic chair and had the option to finally go outside and play with his friends and
attempt to have the childhood he longed for, there was something else that again stopped him
from having a normal life.
Once Garret was old enough and ready to start school, he was not only faced with the challenge
of finding the right school for him, but more so finding a school that would take him in and teach
him according to his mental ability. Since he was ventilator dependent, this classified Garret as a
special needs student even though his mental ability exceeded far beyond the majority of the

other students in the class who were mostly behavior or learning disabled. This was extremely
challenging for Garret because all he wanted to do was learn and have the normal school
experience.
Another challenge Garret faced was accepting that he would have to be very patient in the future
with finding a girl to spend the rest of his life with. He knows that this will be a challenge but
says that with everything that he has been through, he knows he can overcome any challenge.

2. What challenges did the family and/or friends of the person with a disability experience
as a result of that persons disability? Give at least 3 examples from the book.
Due to the extreme nature of Garrets disability the cost of all his equipment, treatments, and
nurses was a huge hardship on his already struggling family. Garret states, My medical bills for
each and every year were going to be over 70,000 (pg. 79). And this amount, he explains, is
only if he doesnt make a trip to the hospital that year which would be an extra $20,000. To pay
for all this and more, his Dad was forced to work full time leaving Garret alone at home with just
his mom and nurse to tend to him. This was extremely challenging for his mom who became
stressed all the time from lack of relaxation and alone time. When things got really bad, his
mother had to eventually get a job to try to make ends meet. Money problems were a constant
challenge to Garrets family, and led to his parents fighting all the time. The fighting could have
been a reason for his fathers affair with one of his nurses and the divorce of his parents that
followed.
At one point, money was so tight that Garrets parents had no other option but to sue the makers
of the motorcycle that Garret was injured on. Garret writes that his parents decided to file a law
suit against Honda because of their failure to have a loose clothing warning on their pamphlet
(pg. 79). When news of the lawsuit made it to the local newspapers, hate mail started arriving at
the Freys home and whenever his family went out to dinner or to run errands, people glared at
them. This was because apparently, people believed that Garrets family was suing Honda to buy
luxury items (pg. 79). This was just one of the many challenges that his family had to face.
People just did not understand that they were doing what they needed to do in order to continue
providing for Garrets medical needs.
The last challenge I am going to discuss is the one faced by Garrets psychologist, Dr. Pirnot.
Readers can tell early on that Dr. Pirnot is not just your ordinary psychologist. The way she
involved herself in Garrets case, and truly changed his life for the better despite the extremely
unfortunate circumstances his accident left him in is truly remarkable. Throughout the book, Dr.
Pirnot engulfs herself in Garrets life and proves that she will do anything to give him the means
of a somewhat normal life. In her attempts to do just this, she encounters many challenges
especially in the area of schooling. One such challenge was her fight against the school board to
make them pay for the nurse that they required to be with Garret at school. Dr. Pirnot argued
that if it was the schools standard and law to require Garret to have a nurse present with him at
school because he is ventilatory dependent, then they should be the ones to have to pay for the
nurse. Dr. Pirnot with the help of Garrets mom fought hard to make this happen. Eventually, the

case was brought to the Supreme Court of the United States where Garret, his mom, and Dr.
Pirnot won.
3B. If you have not known a person with this particular disability, what do you now think
is most important for someone else to know about a person with this disability.
It is crucial for schools, teachers, parents and even the general population to know that with this
disability, even though Garret by law had to go to a special school that had a special class for
him to be in, this does not mean he is mentally disabled. As physical disability does not mean
that they have a mental disability as well. In his book, Garret faced this problem when placed in
a class with other children with disabilities. He explains to readers that nothing ever stimulated
him and everything was too easy. He complained that he learned very little in school because all
the other children around him had mostly mental disabilities and would always distract the
teacher and misbehave so the teacher had to constantly stop teaching to attend to these children.
It is so important for teachers and even the general population to know that there are so many
different types of disabilities and it is essential to separate them accordingly and not just throw
them all into one classroom and expect them to all learn. Everyone is different.
4. How has reading this book influenced your understanding of this disability? Please be
specific.
With someone like Garret, who is a quadriplegic, ventilator dependent person, it is sometimes
hard to look past all the machinery and acknowledge that just because they are in a wheel chair,
and their arms and legs might look a little deformed, does not mean that they are any different
from us. Before reading this book, I assumed that if a person with his disability was asked
whether they would take the accident and everything back if they could in order to live a normal
life, I would never expect anyone to honestly answer no. Garret tells readers, you need to
understand that I do not see myself now as abnormal, in the sense that I have a rich life with love
and knowledge available to me (pg. 193). With this disability, you lose an immense part of
your life, you cant walk, you cant feel, and you cant even reproduce, but the mental
knowledge and understanding of the world is intensified. Its like in deaf people. They say if
you are deaf, your other senses kick into over drive to compensate for the lack of hearing. It
seems with Garrets disability, his inability to ever breath on his own again or ever move his own
body again has allowed his mental capacity to kick into over drive to essentially make up for his
physical disability. His understanding of the world is so different and pure. I now understand
that this disability doesnt make you any less normal, it just makes you different.
5. How do you think reading this book will influence you as a teacher or other service
professional? Please be specific.
Reading this book has definitely influenced the way I would be a psychologist if I ever was to
become one. It is well documented that doctors are not supposed to get mentally attached to
their patients for fear of losing them, or changing they way they provide treatment. However,
after reading this book, and seeing the just how much Dr. Pirnot changed Garrets life for the
better makes me question this standard. Throughout the book, it is easy to tell that Dr. Pirnot
cares deeply for Garret and his family. Her passion for him and to give him the best care, school

experience, and life that she can shines bright and is proved especially beneficial when they win
the Supreme Court Case. If I were to ever become a psychologist, I am not saying I would
immediately become attached to every case I work, but I wouldnt let the thought of that hold me
back. I would care and love and put my whole heart into anything I was doing because good
results can occur.