By Ian Miller
Lexi Cartwright has been with The Golden Scoop for a year and a half, and she loves every minute of it. Born with fetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FASD), Lexi has found it difficult to accomplish many of the tasks someone else might find trivial, such as math and reading, but she hasn’t let it stop her from living a full life! She sat down for an interview to talk about her experience living with FASD.
“When I was two years old, I got adopted from Russia, and since then I have lived with my adoptive family for nearly nineteen years now,” said Lexi. “At age fifteen, I got diagnosed with FASD, which is fetal alcohol spectrum disorder. So, that affects the brain development, if people don’t know that. It definitely has been rough over a couple of years, but I love working at The Golden Scoop [because] it gives me a great opportunity and I love that I’m able to work with a lot of other people who have disabilities.”
I asked Lexi how FASD has affected her in daily life. “Really just not [being] able to use, like, my brain the right way, as other people might,” she said. “When I was younger, I wasn’t able to do math or reading, and that was a struggle for me. I actually got held back in third grade because I couldn’t do that. But since then, it’s been a struggle, and I haven’t been able to do actual college courses.”
Lexi enjoys her time at The Golden Scoop, and I asked what her first impressions were when she started. “At first, I was, like, a little overwhelmed because I wasn’t used to working with people with Down Syndrome or [autism], so that was definitely a change,” she said. “It’s definitely been, in a way, a blessing because I’m now used to it, and I also had another job that also had people with disabilities like Down Syndrome, and I was able to help them because I was used to working with people with that disability because of The Golden Scoop.”
Since graduating from high school, Lexi now plans on getting a certification in massage therapy! “I’ve always wanted to do something in the medical field,” she said, “but I’ve noticed that, with my disability, it’s harder to do that . . . I’ve always wanted to be a doctor, but that’s definitely a big thing to do.”
I asked Lexi how she would like to help people with FASD, and she said, “Using my disability as something that can help others, and teach people that maybe also have FASD, to help them see that it’s not something bad. They’re not going to fall apart; they shouldn’t hate themselves . . . I wasn’t necessarily even mad at my birth parents; I was mad at myself. I felt like I had done something wrong, and I want other people to know that’s not the case.”
Find the Golden Scoop at these locations:
9540 Nall Avenue
Overland Park, Kansas 66207
913-284-804410460 W 103rd Street
Overland Park, Kansas 66214
913-232-9639Hours:
Monday – Closed
Tuesday-Saturday: 8am-7pm
Sunday @103rd: 9am-5pm
Sunday @ 95th: 1pm-5pm
