TheStar.com | HealthZone | Personal stories tell disability history

TheStar.com | HealthZone | Personal stories tell disability history: "'The pressure on me to breathe without (a ventilator) lasted five years,' Essex says – until her father put his foot down. With the help of a newly invented chest-size breathing apparatus, Rev. Roy Essex ignored the protests of the institution's doctors and took his daughter home.

'That was the beginning of the rest of my life,' says Essex, now 71 and a grandmother. 'I could breathe and sleep without gasping for air."