Life with Muscular Dystrophy... from the spouses side.

Sheila and I were married on Sept. 4th of 1982. The first eight months were as any new marriage and we went everywhere. We were so very active and very rarely were we home.Our life was blessed with a child and everything was right in our world. The whole story is in another blog here and so I wont repeat it word for word.
One year into our marriage, Sheila was diagnosed with Polymyositis. We were to learn a few months later that it was one of the 40 Nuero-muscular diseases of Muscular Dystrophy. Sheila had already lost the use of her legs and been hospitalized 4 times, once for 2 months. When she came home, our life was changed in so many ways. Though we took the changes with loving care, we knew our life was forever changed.
Did her disease mean we could no longer have a "life?" Was it going to dictate and control everythimg we did for the rest of our lives? Could we continue to dream and want things and raise our children in a world that hospital chairs and motel rooms were more common place for us then our own home? So many questions. Questions that could really only be answered by Time itself. And time did answer them for us.
We learned that we had two choices for ourselves. We could take the disease and let it rule our lives. We could face our challenges with everything we had and all the love we could muster up. We could just let go and allow Polymyositis to become us or we could become the controllers of our own lives. We chose to be the ones that decided where we went and what we would do with our lives. Certainly there were times when we were not able to go places or do things while her disease was in full swing. We had to think about what we were doing and the best ways to do it. But we did'nt allow her illness to stop us from buying a house. We did'nt allow it to stop us from going out and enjoying life to it's fullest. Our love was strong and she was the strongest woman I have ever been blessed by heaven to have been so much a part of.
I will tell you more of what we did and how we adjusted our lives to fit the things we would now face. Not a disabilty but more an a incovienance for us. Our lives for certain changed but Not our dreams. Challenges we met and conquered so that we could live a life that was as close to normal as could be.
The MDA helped us in so many way and I will always be more than grateful to them for being there for us. I will speak only good things of their organization because they were so to us. I will write more in a new blog.
Always, Darrel...