Tom Junod Quotes

My mother, Laura Sumner, had cerebral palsy. She was born absolutely fine, but after about three days, she started having convulsions that left her with a condition that would confine her to a wheelchair her entire life.

I have a form of Parkinson's disease, which I don't like. My legs don't move when my brain tells them to. It's very frustrating.

When I was born, I had a birth injury in my second and third vertebrae. It gave me what they called spastic paralysis, which is actually cerebral palsy.

Towards the end of 2003 it was hard to get through training - and the darkest point was when a doctor told me there was a possibility I could end up in a wheelchair.

I got really, really sick with a horrible disease called transverse myelitis; I lost my legs. I couldn't play anymore. It was a form of multiple sclerosis, which I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy.

I was told that I would be in a wheelchair for the rest of my life.

At the time I was asked if I would ever step back in a race car, but what was very important for me was to go into the bathroom and pee on my own, but I could not do that. I had to be helped. That was my number one priority.

I was actually in an iron lung for about a year, and then I was paralysed from the neck down for another year after that. So I spent a lotta time just lying down as a kid. And some of my earliest memories from then are of listening to the radio.

I feel bad for people in wheelchairs and people who have to use crutches.

I found that this Parkinson's does slow you down, whether you want to slow down or not.

I fell and broke my pelvic bone in three places. So, I'm still sort of an invalid now.

It's factual to say I am a bilateral-below-the-knee amputee. I think it's subjective opinion as to whether or not I am disabled because of that. That's just me.

Then I got a bad back injury, and they thought I wasn't going to have any feeling in my legs.

I grew up in Queens and New Jersey. I started doing children's theater when I was seven to get out of school because I didn't fit in.

If I woke up and didn't have Tourette's syndrome, it would feel weird - not better or worse, just different.

If you would ask me at 15 years old if I would have traded prosthetics for flesh and bone legs, I wouldn't have hesitated for a second. I aspired to that kind of normalcy back then. But if you ask me today, I'm not so sure.

This disease leaves people bedridden. I've gone through phases where I couldn't roll over in bed. I couldn't speak. To have it called 'fatigue' is a gross misnomer.

I was told as a teenager that I would never walk again.

It's nothing to be ashamed of to have a stutter.

I am doing better now though one of my legs is shorter than the other due to the operations.

Autism is a very serious condition.

When we began filming, these people had legs, but as we were filming, they had been injured and they were brought to the hospital to have their legs amputated, and that's where we found them and asked them to come and be part of the film.

I'm dyslexic, I have attention-deficit disorder, and I've got something like a hereditary tremor.

Many people with dyslexia truly suffer, and their lives are worse off for having had that disability.

The biggest problem has been exhaustion. I've spent about 6 of the last 14 years completely bedridden.