In this episode of Green Mountain Disability Stories, occupational therapist Adrienne Miao interviews occupational therapist Mary Anne Lewis. Mary Anne is also mom to Patrick, Desirée, and Dustin. Patrick is a Vermonter living with cerebral palsy and blindness, and as his mom, Mary Anne helps Patrick run his own successful business while she and her husband run a bed-and-breakfast in Vermont. MaryAnne shares what she and her family have learned about moving to Vermont and joining a new school, the overlap between her occupational therapist and parent roles, and the fine art of shipping jars of dry goods.



"Patrick has used switches to control his environment for a long time. He has one switch that controls his music, another that turns on his fan and another that runs his blender. He also has another switch that is hooked up to a measuring cup on the end of a gooseneck. Patrick has used this device for years to help water the plants, help pour the milk for a milkshake, etc. As an Occupational Therapist, I was constantly thinking, 'What could Patrick do vocationally, with his switches?' And then it came to me that he could make layered jars of cookies, soups, etc., using his 'pouring switch'. And thus, Purely Patrick was born."




https://youtu.be/YvVjE0gfJEc




A full transcript appears below.







Adrienne: All right. Thank you so much for joining me, Mary Anne. I'm so excited to get to talk to you! So this is the Green Mountain Disability Stories Podcast. My name is Adrienne Miao, and I am a community services coordinator at CDCI. And today, I have with me MaryAnne Lewis.



I'm so excited to talk about her various connections to Vermont, to disability advocacy and to being a family member of someone with a disability. MaryAnne, can you tell us a little bit about yourself and about how you got into the profession that you ended up pursuing?



Mary Anne: So I am an occupational therapist, currently retired, although I've maintained my license. I knew growing up I just always wanted to be in a helping profession. I was thinking I wanted to be a PT because I think, like the rest of the world, I knew more about PT than I did OT. It was actually my older brother who was an influence.



He was studying pre-Med at a college that also had an OT major, and he said, "Why PT? Why not OT?" And I said, "Because I don't really know much about it." And he said, "Well, let me introduce you to some of my OT friends." And so I spent a little time on the campus with him, and then I started volunteering for different OT departments to see what it was really truly like. And so he is exactly almost four years ahead of me, so he was gone off campus when I entered as a freshman, but it was really my brother who was influential in guiding me that direction.



Adrienne: Well, okay. So this is a great transition to ask a little bit about your family. Do you mind sharing a little bit about your family?



Mary Anne: No, not at all. So George and I had been married for seven years before we took the plunge to have kids. We had Europe on the bucket list and get a house on the bucket list. And so I was pregnant at 30, ended up in the hospital on the long term, high-risk OB-GYN unit. I had been minding my own business sitting in a grad class at Hopkins, and at that point, I was 20 weeks pregnant when my water broke.



And so that was the beginning of a long and a short bed rest. So I was on bed rest in the hospital in entirety for six weeks, which feels like a long time, I wish it could have been longer. At 26 weeks, I had to have an emergency C-section and Patrick was born. So he was then in the NICU for about three and a half months, about 14 weeks premature. That was just about how long he was in the NICU.



And then when Patrick -- well, it was a process, but eventually, when Patrick was seven, we ended up adopting two kids.



They're siblings, and they were in the US foster care system, and they were out in Colorado.

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