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The Maia Chung Autism and Disabilities Foundation (MCADF) is still open thanks to the intervention of Jamaican based American Philanthropist David Squeeze Annekie.

When we announced our intent to close at the start of may 2012 we did so having found that could not help ...as we are a donation funded entity and have not been getting the volume of donations necessary.

S0 we took the hard choice of closing our various outreaches.

The outcry for us not to close was great but action came especially from the Diaspora led by Mr. Annekie ...his intervention has helped us to continue our work, paying for dozens of screenings, literature for dissemination the taxes we pay for operating and we will be mounting another major project out of that intervention funding - for one client who lost a limb due to a road collision and who is dire need of a prosthetic limb.

Having to divide the donations between several dozen clients, that amount being just over one million Jamaican dollars - we still need the public's help for this project for which we are putting forth 50 thousand.

Here is the young lady's story:

Jamaica’s National Drivers’ and Traffic Safety Expo 2012– an accident survivor’s experience:

I stand here today to share the most painful, extensive and paralyzing experience that has to date assaulted me - - - I do not want to, and have wished so many times that I did not have to - - - however, I am fully aware that having survived a devastating motor vehicle accident has forced on me a responsibility, which demands that I do whatever I can to prevent the wreckage of another life instigated by dangerous driving. Much of the ways in which my life has been transformed by the accident are simply too painful and difficult to share, nonetheless, it is my hope that when I leave this podium, you would have better understood the magnitude and devastation that the tornado of dangerous driving explodes into one’s life.

Sunday, March 8, 2008, four years, three months, eight days ago – I was walking along the sidewalk, when from the back I was hit by a speeding motorist. The impact tossed me airborne for twenty-one feet.

I then smashed onto the asphalt,and the driver,still unable to come to a stop, drove over me. In the middle of the main road I lie semiconscious with a burst head, fractured skull, right broken a part shoulder,broken ribs, partially smashed off and broken left knee, doubly broken right knee smashed apart and broken, numerous wounds and lacerations, and my right leg which was ran over lie there in a queer angle with large minced and segmented portions of exposed bones. I was at the time a twenty-one years old first year, first degree university student, working a full time job and involved in numerous church, sports and voluntary activities and services.

It took less than ten seconds and one drivers misjudgment, one driver’s decision to speed, one driver’s choice to be reckless - - - one minute selfish act of dangerous driving and in less than ten seconds most of my bones were broken, my whole being shattered,my body wrecked, my life radically marred and completely changed forever.

I lost complete consciousness and woke days later, absolutely drugged and astounded to find myself hooked up to numerous machines, with tubes and needles invading my whole body, my head, hands, legs banded and segments of my limbs screwed up with lengthy protruding nails and affixed to lengthy horizontal metallic poles.

My entire body was crippled by very very excruciating pain – no amount of pain-killing drugs brought any relief and I bitterly regretted regaining consciousness. Because of the fractures to my ribcage even the most minute silent act of breathing hurt severely - - - I did not want to be breathing, I did not want to be here.

Because of one drivers choice to engage in dangerous driving I have had to undergo over fifteen surgeries in which my body has had to be cut up, drilled, screwed and cemented in search of some form of rehabilitation and normalcy – however I still have to come to terms with the fact that I will never be redeemed from the shatters of this accident.

I have spent over ninety percent of the last year and a half in hospital - - - for the last four years, instead of like my peers,perusing educational, social and economic dreams and goals, all I have had to do is fight and struggle to find recovery, while my dreams has been forcibly pushed on a ledge so far from my reach.
Because of one driver’s choice to engage in dangerous driving, my life has been and remains to this very moment agonizingly wrapped in constant pain and discomfort and according to my doctors this may never change.

I no longer remember what it’s like to not be in bad pain, or not depend on and have my body continually invaded with strong medication and their side effects. Though I am only in my twenties, I have developed severe arthritis because of the extensive damage done to my bones.

There has also been other complications to my health and due to damage I presently also suffer from chronic back pain which cannot be resolved and makes me unable to sit or stand comfortably for longer than a couple minutes.
Because of one driver’s choice to engage in dangerous driving.

I am unable to cross the streets comfortable or be around moving vehicles constantly,without being overwhelmed by the intense fear that I’m about to be hit down once more.

I am constantly afflicted by insomnia, panic and anxiety attacks and am daily haunted by graphic flash backs of the accident during my awake hours and gruesome night mares during what little sleep I get.

Because of one driver’s choice to engage in dangerous driving I have lost friends and family who have withdrawn because the havoc that has occurred in me physically and emotionally has just been too much for them to grapple with. I have also lost three relationships at different stages and suffered devastating heartbreaks, because each of these guys could not and eventually refused to deal with, or see beyond the destruction and ongoing devastation to my being --- and thus walked away.

After the accident I had to drop out of University and to date have not been able to resume. If it had not been for one driver’s choice to engage in dangerous driving,I would have been graduating next month - - - but in place of acquiring a university education debt, I have acquired a debt exceeding five million dollars in medical bills --- a debt that continues to grow.Any little money that could have gone towards my education, a car, a house or just simply survival gets blown up in medication and medical expenses.

Apart from constant procedures and treatment, I continue to live on medication and have had to take over thirty different drugs on a daily basis. My present needed medication costs over thirty thousand dollars monthly, which presently I’m unable to afford, and thus I simply have no choice but to grit my teeth and try to hold up and bear out much of the intense pain, discomfort and other complications.

Because of one driver’s choice to engage in dangerous driving, whenever I apply for a job, the visual damage that has been done to my body takes precedence over my qualifications and ability, with most prospective employers automatically creating an endless list of cants and rendering me disabled and incapable without a chance to prove myself – making it manifold times harder in an already difficult and overpopulated job market.

Because of one driver’s choice to engage in dangerous driving my right leg had to be amputated. This marked the end of three and a half horrendously long and inordinately painful years of fighting and pleading and the final and deepest stab of the failure of countless surgeries, medical procedures and hospitalizations. The loss of my leg has cut deep down into the deepest and most secured parts of my being, and shatteringly ripped, pierced, crushed and devastated my total being -- emptying me out and enclosing what’s left into hallow and intense pain and darkness.

While I would want to explain to you what this one drivers perilous selfish choice to engage in wanton and dangerous driving has done to me through this amputation --- I can’t --- not only because I am emotionally unable to talk about it, but because there are no words that does justice to explaining it.

Time won’t allow me to even begin listing and dissecting for you the countless ways in which this accident has drastically changed and continues to wreak havoc in my life and throughout my body.

Just imagine for one minute though that you are in constant horrendous physical, mental and emotional pain, that you are totally on your own with your only mode of getting around is to hop on a weakened painful knee that has been broken and needs replacing, with every step requiring that you lift your body with a shoulder that has been broken and remains unfixed with the bone protruding into your flesh and a damaged wrist; that your leg has been amputated.

In a society that removes the “dis” from disabled and replaces it with “un”, thus seeing and rendering you as unable, and every single day, everywhere you go persons stare at you as if you are an alien who just fell from mars, and hardly anyone treat you as a wholesome person, with a wholesome brain, emotions and feelings, and when persons look at you they no longer see you, but see an amputation and thus look at you or make comments laced with pity, smirks, condemnation, mockery and for some scorn, and you are no longer looked at as a rightful belonging and contributing member of society but as a liability who has to be barely tolerated.

And because you are vulnerable you get pushed aside and literally knocked down and stepped over in crowds, and persons openly rebuke you for being in public spaces and demand that in your ‘condition’ you stay home out of their and the public’s way, and where buses and taxis refuse to stop for you because time is money and you can’t move as fast as others, or passengers push past you into taxis during rush hour - - - where every single day is another day where everything and everyone remind you that you are different, lacking, no longer a person but an accident amputee, remnant/leftover - - - .

It has been four years, three months, eight days --- and I haven’t recovered ---never will. I have wished so many times that I could undo those couple seconds in which the mind behind the wheels chose to not observe road safety, those few seconds in which the hands on that steering failed to steer away from me, that minute second when that foot didn’t depress the brake on time --- but I can’t - - - and so I will never get back these past four years that has been taken and continues to be taken, or the millions of dollars spent and continue to be spent, I’ll never in this life get back my leg --- the pain and agony, the depression, the suffering, the outcast, abuse, prejudice and incapacity of society cannot be undone.
There are no words to adequately express to you all what one drivers disregard for road safety has done and continues to do to my life.

I stand here today - - - only because of the grace and goodness of God ----- and I am begging you --- please do not be the next driver to disregard road safety and shatter another person’s life --- don’t be the next driver to,through irresponsible and dangerous driving choose to destroy another life --- please.