Hello Kathy,I, too, am close to Austin - on Lake LBJ. I was diagnosed in 2004, a red-letter year for me: I lost both of my parents in July of that year, my only sibling in August, and was diagnosed with h-IBM in December. Fortunately, when I finally found the wonderful doctors at the MDA clinic in Round Rock, Dr. Horvitz immediately prescribed an antidepressant. I sincerely urge you to consider taking one if you are teary-eyed or prone to days of despair. Facing a debilitating degenerative disease is no picnic, and there is no shame in taking something to help you deal with the depression that it causes. It will help your family, too.
I am 61, and have given up most of my work because my hands are so weak. I was a portrait artist – working in colored pencil. So now, I am concentrating on residential design – something I can do on the computer. I can’t do big projects anymore (you know, help the client site the home on raw land, stake boundaries, supervise construction, etc) but I can still draw a little guest house from time to time.
I hope we may have a chance to meet sometime; we appear to be almost neighbors. My very best to you as you adjust to this new challenge. I have decided over the last four years that I am very fortunate. I have no pain. My brain works as well as it ever did. I don’t drool or quake with palsy. I know what lies ahead, so I can adjust to it a little at a time, and my family and friends will be here to help. And if God brings me to it, He will bring me through it.
All the best to you.
Marilyn Hartl
...Marilyn/HIBM Central TX
...Hope is a thing with feathers that perches in the soul, and sings the songs without the words, and never stops at all.
http://photos.yahoo.com/merlin78639