What is MD?

My husband is disabled, but not with MD. He knew two people with this disease when he was a child and unfortunately had to go to both funerals. The disease is not a laughing matter. My husband was volunteered to do this fundraiser by an anonymous friend, but he is not a person who would ever say no to something like this. MD is one of our normal charities that we support on an ongoing basis. He will not only be willing to do this again next year, but if I forget to volunteer him, he may do it himself.

Not all forms of MD are quite as serious as the one his friends had. I personally believe this particular form is the most known form, and the most tragic. In any case, it’s the form of MD I hear about most often. It’s a terminal form. People with this form of MD always, without exception, die at a very young age. Anyone with this terrible form of MD who lives to the age of 21 is considered “lucky”.

While my husband and I are having a little fun with this charity right now, please don't think the disease itself is any fun. Jerry's kids deserve the attention they get and much more. Any disease that kills, or even has a remote possibility of killing, is a disease that needs to be put at the very top of any scientific or medical priority list.

My husband's disease is not a killer. He suffers from Juvenile Rheumatoid Arthritis (aka JRA) and will not die from it. He was diagnosed before he was 2 years old. It is painful, disfiguring, caused him to become a quadriplegic... but he will not die from it.

If you're looking for a great charity, consider MDA (the Muscular Dystrophy Association). This way you can have fun with people like my husband and me, and keep that procrastinating man in MDA jail! And you will also be helping to find a way to take MD out of our vocabulary and put strictly into history books.

What a wonderful world it would be if a mother couldn't answer her child's question, "Mom? What is muscular dystrophy?". There are too many many diseases on the list that fit this category right now, but we have utterly brilliant people on this planet to help us get to that wonderful world. Kudos to those people who devote their talent, brains and lives to things like this. We really do live in a wonderful world =)


P.S. American statistics for MD: There are 250,000 people affected with one of the nine forms of muscular dystrophy and 1 million people affected by 1 of the 43 diseases covered under MDA's program.