Busy Livin’ Summarized from an article by Anthony Flott featured in the Fall 2015 issue of Nebraska Magazine. Monica Sucha Vickers isn’t sure exactly what her mother, Agnes, was told upon her birth Sept. 8, 1954, in Salina, Kansas. But whatever hospital staff said to her, the news was devastating. Either Agnes was told that her daughter had died, or soon would. She was sent home to grieve, childless. “It was a very different world then,” Vickers said. But, Monica’s father, Alvin, knew the truth. Monica was born without legs and with just one arm. Each day, he went to the hospital to visit the newborn. Agnes saw him come and go and guessed at the truth. She went back to the hospital and saw her daughter. Staff told her Monica’s organs likely were jumbled. That she was deaf and blind. Agnes took a rattle to the hospital and shook it over her daughter’s head. My daughter can see, she told them, she can hear and she will live. Defying Differences No one can say for sure why Monica was born as a congenital amputee, but doctors theorize that her mother was prescribed Thalidomide when she was three-months pregnant. Thalidomide was initially administered as a sedative or hypnotic and later issued to alleviate morning sickness. It was never approved for use in the U.S., but it was abroad. In Germany, where it was developed, up to 7,000 infants were born with malformation of the limbs soon after the drug was made available for sale in 1957. “How it got into the U.S., I don’t know,” Monica said. Unfortunately hospital records from the time Agnes was prescribed the medication were destroyed right when the lawsuits started. Monica was eventually fitted with artificial limbs. By the time she was in the sixth grade the family had moved to Syracuse, Nebraska. For the most part, they treated her no differently than any able-bodied child. At Syracuse High School, she learned to type one-handed. By the time she graduated in 1972, she could type 110 words per minute – professional typists hit 50 to 80 words per minute. “It was something I could definitely do and I just loved it. I took all the typing classes a person could take in high school and all the typing classes a person could take in college,” cited Monica. The Husker Experience Monica first realized how challenging life could be when she moved to Lincoln to attend UNL. “I knew I was disabled and different from other people, but it didn’t affect anything,” she said. “The first time it really affected something was when I was in college.” She lived in centrally located Selleck Hall but had to schedule classes so she had enough time to get from one to another on crutches. “I still had to walk a long ways; still had to carry books. Those were very big challenges.” She averaged two hours getting to and from classes in the building with “seemingly endless steps.” Watching the Huskers play was a blast, but Memorial Stadium’s long, steep ramps required “intense stamina, balance, strength and courage.” Bad weather made it worse. Monica recalls emerging from one building when a gust of wind blew her artificial legs backward at the knee. “That was a scary moment.” After enduring Nebraska winters for four years, she graduated with a degree in 1976, and decided to head to a warmer climate. A Warmer Way of Life The day of graduation, Monica and Pat Schoenfelder, her best friend and UNL roommate, packed everything Monica owned into a U-Haul, hopped into her hand-controlled car and headed west to somewhere warmer. They wound up in Oceanside, California, and within six weeks Monica had an apartment and a job as a medical transcriptionist for Scripps. Later, she would operate her own transcription business before finishing her career with industry giant M*Modal. Monica has now been married for 25 years to her husband, Mike, who she met when he drove a group of amputees to a dance in Los Angeles. Both are retired now and life in Florence, Arizona. A Memoir in the Making Monica started her memoir in 2011 with help from Pat, who would ask Monica questions about her life and take notes. “We talked every Sunday,” she said. “She was the one who could open you up with a lot of questions – things I wouldn’t even remember to think about. Sometimes she’d say … you need to go deeper.” When they were done, Pat handed over her notes and Monica began writing. “My Extraordinary Life” was published in 2013 and is available on Amazon.com and through Monica’s website, myextraordinaryamputeelife.com. Since it was published, it has won more than a dozen awards, including the Reader’s Favorite Book Contest and the 2015 Next Generation Indie Book Awards.
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