When Marie wasn’t busy providing therapy for Karen, caring for her other three children and writing her memoirs, she was advocating for people with cerebral palsy. Marie worked with Karen daily for 10 years and Karen eventually learned to walk with the aid of crutches, to swim and to write. The doctor could see Karen was intelligent and prescribed a home exercise regimen, a highly unusual practice in those days. Against medical advice to institutionalize their daughter, they kept Karen, their third child, at home with the family in Rye, N.Y., just a few miles away from the headquarters of Enabling Devices! Marie began a tireless effort to find a doctor who could help her daughter.Ī 2006 report compiled by United Cerebral Palsy says “the Killileas consulted 23 top medical specialists and clinics in the United States and Canada,” before finding a doctor who agreed with Marie, that Karen had potential. It took several years, but eventually, Marie and James learned that Karen had CP.

They said that “Karen had no intellect, could never learn to walk or communicate with others.” But Marie knew they were wrong. According to Marie Killileas’ 1991 obituary, doctors told her and her husband James that their daughter’s “case was hopeless”. As she failed to reach developmental milestones, Karen’s parents consulted with doctors who were unable to provide a clear diagnosis but were overwhelmingly pessimistic about the little girl’s prognosis.

When she was born in 1940, Karen Killilea was three months early and weighed less than two pounds. Written long before the Americans with Disabilities Act and decades before people with disabilities had the benefits of technology, at a time when doctors routinely told parents whose children were born with CP to institutionalize and forget about them, “Karen,” which tells the true story of Karen Killilea, was nothing short of groundbreaking. Killilea also published a sequel called, “With Love from Karen” in 1963 and “Wren,” a children’s version of Karen’s story published in 1968.

March is Cerebral Palsy Awareness Month and at Enabling Devices, we believe that one of the best ways of raising awareness is through books! Few books did more to raise awareness about CP and the potential of people with CP than the 1952 best-seller, “Karen” by Marie Killilea.

Karen by marie killilea summary