Crystal
03-02-2005, 05:04 PM
Woman's dramatic story a lesson in perseverance
UAlbany students hear of Constance Laymon's journey to overcome disability
ALBANY -- Constance Laymon likes tattoos, Harleys, Howard Stern, silver jewelry and coarse language.
But what most people notice first is a quadriplegic in a motorized wheelchair, trailed by a yellow Labrador retriever named Obi, her service dog.
Laymon has learned to joke about her disability. "Hey, at least I didn't have to shovel the snow today," she told students Tuesday at the University at Albany, her alma mater.
She was a guest speaker for an English course titled "Drama of Disability," invited by her former professor, Sarah Blacher Cohen. A playwright and literary critic, Cohen suffers from Charcot-Marie-Tooth. The inherited neurological disorder has robbed her of muscle tone and control. After 33 years at UAlbany, Cohen now teaches from a wheelchair and uses a microphone to amplify a voice that has degenerated into a thin, reedy whisper.
She has her students reading plays such as "The Glass Menagerie," "Miracle Worker," "Children of a Lesser God" and "Sunrise at Campobello." The course aims to teach empathy about disabled people to these healthy 20-somethings, slouched in their seats beneath woolen caps, hoodies and puffy down parkas.
For 90 minutes, Laymon transformed a drowsy, midafternoon classroom into a stage.
Her life has had more than its share of drama. There was a time, after surgeries, months of hospitalization and years of rehabilitation for a fractured neck, crunched spinal cord and brain injury that she felt "pinned to the wall" by depression. Her thoughts turned to suicide.
"Growing up, my self-esteem was completely based on how I looked and my sexuality," said Laymon, 38, of Colonie. She's CEO of Consumer Directed Choices, a $6.4 million-a-year not-for-profit company that helps 260 disabled people coordinate their Medicaid benefits. "All of a sudden, you become disabled and you're asexual, broken, abnormal," she said. "It's a crazy place to be."
She has spent two decades adapting to the physical wreckage left after a 100-foot fall from a shale cliff during a keg party three weeks before her high school graduation in 1984 and just shy of her 18th birthday.
Seated in front of a screen playing a homemade video of the cliff, Laymon recalled the night that left her paralyzed from the waist down. She couldn't make it to her own senior class trip at Cooperstown High School, so she joined an afternoon "skip day party" for Cherry Valley High School students.
"I got completely tanked. We were all drunk and stupid," she said. She stumbled up a steep, sandy hill as other drunken teens pelted her with sticks and rocks.
By rights, she should have been injured then, she figured, but wasn't. A boyfriend drove her home but she returned at night "with a hangover effect" and sat and talked with a friend about her bleak future. Laymon grew up in a self-described "very dysfunctional family" marked by alcoholism, depression and low expectations. She had no plans for college.
She maintained she wasn't drunk when she horsed around in the pitch-black woods "and literally ran off the edge of the cliff."
Most of the 100 or so teens who were there bolted, afraid of being arrested. A handful stayed to help her. Although she was told she didn't lose consciousness, the rest of that accident is erased from her memory.
Laymon's long journey was assisted by what she calls "the empowerment of education" and antidepressants. She also had to overcome open-heart surgery in 1994 to repair a hole unrelated to the cliff fall. A tattoo of a vine covers the surgical scar on her chest. Whale tail and dolphin tattoos decorate her shoulders. Her motto can be found in a book about disability she recommends, "No Pity."
Laymon, who is single, owns a home in Colonie and drives a specially equipped van with hand controls. She oversees 11 employees at Consumer Directed Choices, based in Albany. She helped found it eight years ago with other disabled people after the state Legislature changed the law to give the disabled more autonomy in their own care.
"I consider myself an advo-crat now, which is a combination of an advocate and a bureaucrat," she said. "You need both or there'd be chaos."
Laymon recently was accepted to UAlbany's Ph.D. program in public administration and policy, although she worries about juggling her 50-hour-a-week job with classes.
"Disability advocacy isn't about us and them," Laymon told the class. "You're the activists of the future. People look at me as being less or incapable. You can change that paradigm if you develop empathy."
After her talk, the students applauded. "She was honest and perceptive," said Molly Faddegon of Latham, a continuing education student who works with autistic children.
Said Cohen, "You can read all the plays and books about a disability, but there's nothing like hearing it directly."
UAlbany students hear of Constance Laymon's journey to overcome disability
ALBANY -- Constance Laymon likes tattoos, Harleys, Howard Stern, silver jewelry and coarse language.
But what most people notice first is a quadriplegic in a motorized wheelchair, trailed by a yellow Labrador retriever named Obi, her service dog.
Laymon has learned to joke about her disability. "Hey, at least I didn't have to shovel the snow today," she told students Tuesday at the University at Albany, her alma mater.
She was a guest speaker for an English course titled "Drama of Disability," invited by her former professor, Sarah Blacher Cohen. A playwright and literary critic, Cohen suffers from Charcot-Marie-Tooth. The inherited neurological disorder has robbed her of muscle tone and control. After 33 years at UAlbany, Cohen now teaches from a wheelchair and uses a microphone to amplify a voice that has degenerated into a thin, reedy whisper.
She has her students reading plays such as "The Glass Menagerie," "Miracle Worker," "Children of a Lesser God" and "Sunrise at Campobello." The course aims to teach empathy about disabled people to these healthy 20-somethings, slouched in their seats beneath woolen caps, hoodies and puffy down parkas.
For 90 minutes, Laymon transformed a drowsy, midafternoon classroom into a stage.
Her life has had more than its share of drama. There was a time, after surgeries, months of hospitalization and years of rehabilitation for a fractured neck, crunched spinal cord and brain injury that she felt "pinned to the wall" by depression. Her thoughts turned to suicide.
"Growing up, my self-esteem was completely based on how I looked and my sexuality," said Laymon, 38, of Colonie. She's CEO of Consumer Directed Choices, a $6.4 million-a-year not-for-profit company that helps 260 disabled people coordinate their Medicaid benefits. "All of a sudden, you become disabled and you're asexual, broken, abnormal," she said. "It's a crazy place to be."
She has spent two decades adapting to the physical wreckage left after a 100-foot fall from a shale cliff during a keg party three weeks before her high school graduation in 1984 and just shy of her 18th birthday.
Seated in front of a screen playing a homemade video of the cliff, Laymon recalled the night that left her paralyzed from the waist down. She couldn't make it to her own senior class trip at Cooperstown High School, so she joined an afternoon "skip day party" for Cherry Valley High School students.
"I got completely tanked. We were all drunk and stupid," she said. She stumbled up a steep, sandy hill as other drunken teens pelted her with sticks and rocks.
By rights, she should have been injured then, she figured, but wasn't. A boyfriend drove her home but she returned at night "with a hangover effect" and sat and talked with a friend about her bleak future. Laymon grew up in a self-described "very dysfunctional family" marked by alcoholism, depression and low expectations. She had no plans for college.
She maintained she wasn't drunk when she horsed around in the pitch-black woods "and literally ran off the edge of the cliff."
Most of the 100 or so teens who were there bolted, afraid of being arrested. A handful stayed to help her. Although she was told she didn't lose consciousness, the rest of that accident is erased from her memory.
Laymon's long journey was assisted by what she calls "the empowerment of education" and antidepressants. She also had to overcome open-heart surgery in 1994 to repair a hole unrelated to the cliff fall. A tattoo of a vine covers the surgical scar on her chest. Whale tail and dolphin tattoos decorate her shoulders. Her motto can be found in a book about disability she recommends, "No Pity."
Laymon, who is single, owns a home in Colonie and drives a specially equipped van with hand controls. She oversees 11 employees at Consumer Directed Choices, based in Albany. She helped found it eight years ago with other disabled people after the state Legislature changed the law to give the disabled more autonomy in their own care.
"I consider myself an advo-crat now, which is a combination of an advocate and a bureaucrat," she said. "You need both or there'd be chaos."
Laymon recently was accepted to UAlbany's Ph.D. program in public administration and policy, although she worries about juggling her 50-hour-a-week job with classes.
"Disability advocacy isn't about us and them," Laymon told the class. "You're the activists of the future. People look at me as being less or incapable. You can change that paradigm if you develop empathy."
After her talk, the students applauded. "She was honest and perceptive," said Molly Faddegon of Latham, a continuing education student who works with autistic children.
Said Cohen, "You can read all the plays and books about a disability, but there's nothing like hearing it directly."