BY JENNIFER BISHOP
Larissa Creed stopped breathing when she was two months old. Due to a lack of oxygen to her brain, she has cerebral palsy, is cortically blind and nonverbal, and relies on others for feeding, diapering, and positioning in her wheelchair. Recently, I watched her parents take the 24-year-old outside for a walk, and the degree of effort and devotion in that single act is hard to convey in words.
An alcohol tax bill that could help 18,000 Marylanders with disabilities, including adults like Larissa, get needed services, is being fought by the powerful liquor lobby, as the Sun reports. Weigh their argument against this glimpse of what Diane and Donald Creed’s lives have been like for 24 years.
Larissa, who lives with her parents in Montgomery County, can understand much of what is said to her. She responds with pleasure to her parents’ voices and her sister’s music, and loves to be taken for assisted walks outside.
Her parents, both in their 60′s, have worked hard to raise Larissa themselves. But she weighs almost as much as they do now, and the physical demands of daily lifting and diapering have left them with shoulder and knee injuries and multiple hernias. They still get up several times a night with her, and then work full-time jobs by day. Vacation and sick leave is spent taking her to over a dozen doctors.
I spent an hour photographing the Creed family preparing Larissa for her walk, lifting, positioning, and strapping on her braces, and trying to soothe her as she howled ear-splitting screams. She was excited and impatient, but she also screams like this all day and all night.
Caring for Larissa has been a 24-year act of love, which these parents have carried on their own shoulders. Now as they near retirement age, they need help.
But they have been told that there is no help available, that they must shoulder the responsibility of Larissa’s care until they die. And even then, Maryland cannot guarantee their child a safe residential placement.
The families of 18,000 people like Larissa are on the Maryland Developmental Disabilities Administration’s waiting list for community services.
Politicians are under great pressure from the liquor industry to oppose these bills which would raise taxes on alcohol. But the income from the new tax would fund addiction recovery programs– a strategy that has worked in other states– and help families like the Creeds.
This is a time for tough choices. Politicians must weigh the burdens on both sides to make the right decision. If they spent an hour at the Creed household, taking Larissa for a walk, they would see things clearly.
