What! A Cripple? You? You bet I am. You can verify this for yourself in the galleries. Before you politically indignant get offended, relax. I can assure you that you Will Not be spared a diatribe at some later date the reasons I use that word - but it is not today's point. Ok, what is today's point then?

 

Since it is only a matter of time until One of You asks this very question, I decided to answer it ahead of time.

I have a neurological disorder called dystonia; more particularly, dystonia musculorum deformans. So, what is it? fair question. For the Medical interpretation we will borrow directly from the Medical Research Foundation (DMRF) web site:

"Dystonia is a neurological movement disorder characterized by involuntary muscle contractions, which force certain parts of the body into abnormal, sometimes painful, movements or postures. Dystonia can affect any part of the body including the arms and legs, trunk, neck, eyelids, face, or vocal cords."

Another way to look at things is like so:

• Dystonia is a neurological muscle disorder that causes uncontrollable, painful spasms in one or more parts of the body.
• While not widely known, dystonia affects an estimated 500,000 people in North America alone- more than muscular dystrophy, Huntington's disease and Lou Gehrig's disease combined.
• Different forms of the disease affect the face, neck, throat, eyelids, arms, legs or torso.
• This disease can appear in children and adults alike.

Exactly Why & How (technically speaking) it works isn't really known or understood. There are no real answers to these puzzling questions — just theories. There aren't all that many of them. There is no definitive test or diagnosis for Dystonia, nor is there a known cure. Dystonia is under-researched. Even with hundreds of thousands of adults and children suffering symptoms related to the disease, a large number of patients never receive a proper prognosis. Dystonia is not well known by the public or the general medical population.

Clearly one can not have a condition of this nature without it impacting many aspects of their life. It has certainly been one of the largest influences; good and bad; in my life, my career, & my writing. There have been times in my life were I have been in violent denial, others where I've wallowed in it to the extreme, and most of the time I am somewhere in the happy medium.

All of this can be seen through the expression of my poetry & essays, as well as some of my photography. You could say this site is an invitation to view the world through the eyes of one man with one disability...

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