3-18-1995, 17 years old. It has been four hours and now it is time to leave the hospital. As I sit in the back seat of my parent’s car with my mom and dad in the front seat, I cannot help but think about what has just happened. It is almost like a bad dream. How could this be happening to me and yet at such a time when this should not be happening to me was all I could think about. This is my senior year in high school. The only thing that should be on my mind is where I will be going to college next year, what kind of car do I want to buy and where do I want to go with my girlfriend this weekend. But instead I am being given the diagnosis muscular dystrophy. The only thing I know about muscular dystrophy is that you are born with it and usually in a wheelchair. I certainly was not born with it and I am not in a wheelchair but yet the doctors here are telling me that I have
muscular dystrophy. They have to be wrong. They must have made a mistake. As I think about what the doctors have said to me, I cannot help but cry. Visions of living a life in a wheelchair at my parents house is a vision I never thought I would have to think about. After all, I can do what everybody else can do. I may not be the strongest or the fastest at certain tasks but I am not the typical image of a person with muscular dystrophy. My dad said something to me as we made our way toward home. He said, “you have to play the hand you’ve been dealt. It may be a bad hand but you have to play it”. I cannot help but think he is right but then again he is not the one with the problem. I don’t want to play this hand. I want to go back to being the old me, the one who was like everybody else. The only thing I can think of right now is that this must be a dream and I hope that I wake up soon and realize that I don’t have muscular dystrophy. Please I hope that this is a dream!
