My mum has a saying, "You've got to laugh or you'll end up crying". How true that is these days! There's a lot with DMD that can certainly make you upset and sometimes you can't avoid that. Although when happy moments come they are often remembered and thoroughly enjoyed.
We still laugh at the time that I was flung off a horse (I landed in soft snow), the horse ran off and my dad was running after it!
Extract;
...I was out riding; my father and cousin .... were walking beside me. After a gentle ride past some snow banks the horse suddenly got startled and threw me off! I landed in some soft snow in a daze. My cousin was standing there laughing as my father chased after the bolting horse, I can remember his hat falling off and flapping behind him in a comical manner....
There's always something good to smile about in life, finding those moments is the hard part!
Read through my happy memories in my book DMD LIFE ART & ME!
EBOOK available here; https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/69702
Available on Amazon USA here; http://www.amazon.com/DMD-Life-Art-Ian-Griffiths/dp/1907652337/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1288120811&sr=8-1
Available on Amazon UK here; http://www.amazon.co.uk/DMD-LIFE-ART-AND-ME/dp/1907652337/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1288105302&sr=8-1
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.
