'Get a life, get some knowledge, learn about it'

Meet Laura Skaggs

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By Antonia Muskat | Intern
Lake Powell Chronicle

PAGE – Septo-optic dysplasia is a rare congenital malformation syndrome featuring underdevelopment of the optic nerve, pituitary gland dysfunction, and absence of the septum pellucidum (a midline part of the brain).


Cerebral Palsy is a group of disorders that affect movement and muscle tone or posture. It’s caused by damage that occurs to the immature brain as it develops, most often before birth. Eighteen-year-old Laura Skaggs, a senior at Page High, has both of these disorders.


Laura was born on Nov. 5, 2001. She’s lived with both her adopted parents and her disorders her whole life. Her parents are Mike and Brenda Skaggs. Her septo-optic dysplasia affects both her height and her eyesight.


Her eyesight hasn’t taken on terrible damage and her prescription isn’t horrifying.


“My eyesight just depletes faster,” Laura said.


Her left sided hemiplegia is what affects her the most.


“It happens during pregnancy or shortly after birth,” she explained with the utmost confidence. “What I have wasn’t the reason I was put up for adoption.”


Her hemiplegia has left her with a limp in her left leg and an unusable arm. She can’t write with it and she has difficulty driving, so she just uses accommodations.


“Like for school, I have a 504,” she said. A 504 is a list of accommodations that one might need due to a disability, it’s the same thing as an Individualized Education Plan but less severe. “Fourteen surgeries in my life.”


But Laura is the epitome of perseverance and of an influential young woman.


Laura’s had three hip surgeries: two on her left, one on her right. She’s had both her knees done because her physicians had to install plates.
Her left foot has been done twice – the first time was from an infection. Those were her major surgeries. She’s also had a couple of eye surgeries and several other small ones.


“My first surgery was at 18 months old and my last surgery was about four years ago.”


She says she keeps her hopes up but her expectations down as she knows that there’s always a possibility of needing another surgery.
“I’m a big fan of, ‘I can’t’,” she said. “I used to say those a lot and now as I’m older I realize, I could.”


Laura used to hate not being able to do anything with her left hand, but even more so she hated having a physical barrier that others could see. Especially her purple brace. She was in her purple arm brace for most of elementary school. She said that was like physical therapy for her arm.

Even though Laura was self-conscious with her limp, she said she’s still struggling with it. Laura doesn’t feel her limp unless she’s really tired, so when people bring it up, it’s difficult for her and people have made fun of her. She said she has more reason to care about it now because it’s the high school stereotype.


“People have tried to mock the limp, (which was) super emotionally hard,” she said.


Laura was a wheelchair-user after her first foot surgery in 5th grade.


“People get more hate for having a limp and people are sorrier for people in a wheelchair,” she said. “The limp is something that’s been mocked a lot, in both entertainment and in society.” She mentioned that she would like to see more roles in entertainment with people who have a disability.
“I think that since the LGBTQ people are pushing for that advocacy, people should be doing the same for disabled people,” she said, adding that she’s never actually been bullied for having a limp or a disability, just the general jokes about it. She said when she first got to high school, she learned her biggest concern wasn’t about her disability.


As a person with a disability, she says, college shouldn’t be as emotionally or mentally tolling as it is in high school or in elementary.
Her biggest conflict for college is the physical stress it would put on her body. Her main concern when looking at college options is how handicapped accessible it is. She knows that she’ll have a good time there and that the community will be more respecting and open to her.


Her response to others that make fun of and bully disabled people is, “I kind of want to say, get a life, get some knowledge, learn about it, (and) figure out how hard it is.”


Laura said she has her friends to lean on for support and for help when she needs. And she knows when they are joking around with her about her limp.