My Becker MD Story

---

As a young boy, I had no clue of my impending fight with muscular dystrophy. I loved bodybuilding and sports, yet I struggled with reaching my physical goals. I played football in eighth grade and was put on 2nd string because I wasn't fast enough for the varsity team. I then tried my luck with wrestling and believe it or not I was fairly good at it. The only issues I had were nose bleeds and exhaustion after full excursion during tournaments. Then in highschool, I took weight training but reaching my goals was still a struggle. I had no idea why I struggled and my self-esteem took a huge fall. Another contributing factor was my abusive father and his ridiculing of my so called drive all the time. After I graduated, I attended college to be an automotive technician.  This was actually a good time in my life. Then if course my disease reared its ugly head, with random falls. So in 1991, I went to a neurologist to find out what was going on with my body. The Doctor told me that I had becker muscular dystrophy and that it was a death sentence. He gave me five years to walk and ten to live. Well if that wasn't enough, the mother of my first angle daughter, decided to leave for greener grass. I was crushed and decided to party since my life was over! That was a huge mistake by the way. In that mind set I met my wife to be and things changed for the better. She loved me in spite of my disease and gave me my second sweet angel daughter. She showed me that my life wasn't over and had purpose. My biggest struggle since is the slow loss of strength and keeping my wight down. I'm still walking today, no thanks to a fall a few years ago. I fell when I was walking down my garage stairs. It was like my foot never touched the floor. I hit full force on my butt sending lightning up my spine. I fractured two lower vertebrae and the doctors said they couldn't fix the damage. So now when I stand to long my thighs go numb and burn. I would advise anyone with my disease to hold on to something when descending stairs. Anyway that's most of my story.