Coat Catastrophe...

One thing we all take for granted is putting on a coat, but putting them on in a wheelchair is a whole new ball game! In the beginning as a wheelchair user I found it awkward but not too difficult to get a coat on. However as the previously mentioned contractures started to affect my arms, it became nearly impossible to wear one. So what to do in the rain? Well there's two options, drive as quickly as you can to safety or put on a very ugly rain defender that actually can make you wetter because it pools water! Nowadays I choose a third option of using a fleece cover but nothing is ideal! One memorable occasion in England a few years ago led to my family and I coming back to our hotel completely soaking and laughing at ourselves!

Extract;
Suddenly without much warning heavy rain started to pelt down and a huge storm erupted, my rain protector was shoved over me and we started to race back to the van. Unfortunately we were all soaked through by the time we made it; the drops of water were huge and so cold! About five seconds after we closed the door we were bathed in bright sunshine again... We all laughed at that....

Find out what happened next by reading and buying my book DMD Life art & me here; http://duchennemen.net16.net/buymybook.html



Foreword

I’m Ian Griffiths from South Wales. This book is a story of my life so far up to the age of twenty five years. I live with and suffer from the ill effects of DMD which stands for Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy. It is a severe muscle wasting disease and a life limiting terminal illness. It won’t kill you in six months in the traditional sense of ‘terminal’, but it’s far crueller than that, it steals every muscle in your body first and then kills you, anywhere up to the age of thirty. There have been cases of men living past that into their forties and fifties but only with drastic interventions such as ventilators and tracheotomies, more on this can be found by reading on.
I hope to cover a few things in this book, from a history of my childhood years to a more detailed history from sixteen years onwards and finally onto my current problems and triumphs. At times things I write may make you smile or may make you pause and think about the seriousness of life with this devastating disease. I really hope there will be a cure but currently for us supposedly ‘older’ guys with DMD (over twenty one), there seems very little hope. If I don’t see a cure in my lifetime, I hope my campaigning helps in some way bring it about for future generations, so another child won’t have to see their body wither and die before their time.