I Love You, My Twin Sister! I am a healthy twenty-three-year-old, born with normal vision, normal hearing and normal speech. My twin sister, Dawn, was not born so lucky. My mother was very young when she had given birth to my sister and me. Because we were born so early we were placed in incubators1 until we were three weeks old.
While in the incubator, the doctor administered too much oxygen to my sister. She was later diagnosed with cerebral palsy, a nervous disorder which causes a malfunction2 in the sensory motor skills and also brain damage. She had undergone several unsuccessful surgeries to restore her sight which waspletely gone in her left eye and only 68% detectable in her right eye.
Along with a slow developing brain, and legal blindness, it was also determined that she was legally deaf in her right ear. She had to wear braces on her legs and she had to walk with crutches3. She stuck out like a sore thumb connected to all these contraptions, often causing people to stare and point.
While growing up a twin, I felt my identity was not my own. I wanted to just be Dote, NOT DAWN’S TWIN SISTER. We lived in a small neighborhood where my sister was the only ‘different’child. We were both constantly picked on, and we never had any friends because of my sister’s condition. I began to loathe my sister, and I did everything and anything to get her into trouble to get back at her being born mentally retarded4 and physically disabled.