'Not all disabilities are visible,' said the single mom.
Anyone can judge, but not everyone can understand. Sometimes harsh judgments can turn into aggression, hurting innocent people. This happened to Emma Doherty when she took her three-year-old son Bobby to Alder Hey Children’s Hospital in Liverpool per The Independent. Upon returning to her car, she found a note calling her a “lazy conning b***h.” Emma shared a screenshot of the note on Facebook in August 2018, along with a message for those who read it.
Today, Bobby is living a happy life. He’s obsessed with lions and Mickey Mouse, and his first sports day was a smashing hit. But during a big part of his life, he endured something that is normally too much to bear for the children of his age. Bobby was born with three holes in his heart and he has undergone more than 15 surgeries already and has spent a large chunk of his life in the intensive care unit. Not a happy place to be in, for such a young boy. But thankfully, he survived despite all.
According to The Mirror, Bobby was just six weeks old when Emma felt that something was wrong with his breathing. She took him to her local A&E department in Wigan and he was transferred to Liverpool's Alder Hey Hospital where surgeons put in a heart stent. So when Emma found this rude note tucked by an angry bystander, she was emotionally crushed. According to the screenshot she shared in the post, the note read, “You lazy conning b****. You did not have a disabled person with you! These spaces are reserved for people who need them!”
Shocked, Emma hit back at the stranger with her eye-opening Facebook post. “To the person who put this on my car which I had put my disabled badge fully on show I'm not angry at your pure ignorance I'm actually upset with it,” she wrote. “How dare you ever accuse anyone of not needing a disabled badge without knowing. I promise to get the stigma away from people with disabled badges who don't ‘look disabled,’” she added, seemingly enraged at the false judgment. She said she hoped that her post would reach the person who wrote the note so they could see what her little boy had endured.
The single mom went on to share the harrowing list of treatments and surgeries her boy went through. “He's had over 15 operations: 3 open hearts, 2 stomachs, lung, and diaphragm, and countless artery stenting operations, and spent half his life on intensive care. He's had 2 strokes and was paralyzed, brain damaged, and has a spine and hip condition as well as a massive heart condition.” She revealed that she didn’t get his wheelchair out because they were running late for an appointment. “But for your information, not everyone who holds a blue badge needs to have a wheelchair,” she wrote fiercely. “I've sat through things nobody should see but why did your note break me? Because it's your pure ignorance towards others,” Emma wrote heartbreakingly in the post.
The Wigan mom also noted that “Not all disabilities are visible and I hope you regret doing this and learn your lesson,” and asserted, “Everyone needs to stop and think before acting.” She said she is the kind of woman who hardly got upset, but the brutal and aggressive note upset her to the core. However, she added that this had nothing to do with the hospital, and the hospital usually treated her and her son with respect, and “saved the boy’s life many times.”
The post spread on social media and received more than 32,000 reactions and hundreds of comments on Facebook. People jumped in to support the mother and son, fuming at the note and calling the person “rude,” “ignorant,” “idiot,” “stupid,” “disgusting,” “horrible,” and “cruel.”
Although “Brave Bobby,” as Emma calls him sometimes, is recovering now, the unfortunate note did engrave a memory in their minds about how people interpret physical disability so incorrectly. “Bobby is a real fighter and we just have to hope that he makes it to an age where he is able to have both a new heart and lung,” she said per The Mirror, as Bobby wasn’t allowed to have a heart surgery until he turned 15.
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