James Lind

 Life With Charcot-Marie-Tooth…take tissues with you…you’ve been warned! THIS is courage!

Congratulations on making it to eighteen and still being relatively sane! (I said relatively!)

The pictures above are from our trip this weekend to West Edmonton Mall! On the left we have Nikki and I on the Mindbender Roller Coaster…15 stories high, three loops and several twists! We went on several times…lost count actually!

On the right is Nikki and I at the top of the Space Shot. It starts on the ground and shoots you up over 120 feet in less then 2 seconds! Then it bounces you up and down several times. Again we lost count on the number of times we went on it!

And then there was the shopping…over 800 stores! And I think Nikki saw every one of them! Well, we both did! Good fun and picked up some nice clothes for both of us.

We also went on the waterslides at the hotel and went to the move The Prestige…highly recommended!

All in all, a great birthday weekend! Thanks Nikki, I love you!

Okay, so it’s the municipal elections here in Sasaktoon on October 25th. Go and vote people!  I don’t care who you vote for, just make sure you vote.

“But I don’t have time!”
Polls are open from 8am until 8pm. Find ten minutes out of your busy day to exercise a right that thousands of Canadian men gave up their lives to give you. I doubt many of them said “I don’t have time”…so suck it up people! And anybody who doesn’t vote…doesn’t have the right to complain about the city and life and policies in Saskatoon!

Anybody out there figure out that I’m kind of passionate about this subject? Good!
My dad was one of those that was lucky enough to come back from World War Two! Further to that, my dad died on Father’s Day….1972, from cancer probably caused in large part to all the chemicals that were used in the war! He also lost a lot of good friends, kids he grew up with, boys that had to become men waaaay too soon.  

So when your sitting on your couch this evening, watching your favorite television show, or when you’re out enjoying a nice fall walk along the riverbank, stop to remember how lucky you are to be able to do those things in the freedom that we have!

Now GO VOTE ! ! !

I came across this blog site a while ago. I apparently put it into my bookmarks to read later. It’s later now and I just finished reading it…three times. It’s by a young woman named Char, I will guess that is short for Charlotte; but as we all know, I’m usually wrong! I’m sure she will correct me if she sees this! It’s her personal blog about her life and her struggle with CMT. And I quote….

“I will go into more details later, but now I’ll tell you a bit about me and why I’m writing this blog. Through my teenage years I have researched a lot about CMT, to try to understand it better. I only really found out I had it when I was about 13, when I started getting nerve pains in my arms. I’ve found that most sites that talk about it are very hard to understand, so I want this to be something that people can look to for easy to understand information. This will also be a journal for me. I’ll write about things I’m trying, changes, new research, etc. I hope that eventually people will understand this disease (ugh, I don’t like that word) better, and that together we can find a cure for it. -Char”

And a quick definition of CMT…
“Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease, also known as Hereditary Motor and Sensory Neuropathy (HMSN) or Peroneal Muscular Atrophy, is a heterogeneous inherited disorder of nerves (neuropathy) that is characterized by loss of muscle tissue and touch sensation, predominantly in the feet and legs but also in the hands and arms in the advanced stages of disease. Though presently incurable, this disease is one of the most common inherited neurological disorders, with 36 in 100,000 affected.”

Char posts an inspiring look into the day to day difficulties in doing things that we all take for granted. Read her blog, post a comment! It’s here and linked in the Blogroll as well.

Thank you Char…

I lost a piece of my heart today. It hurt…it hurt a lot.
Actually I didn’t really lose it, I know where it is and it’s in very good hands. 
I know that it will be very well taken care of and used only when needed.
I know that it will be treasured for what it meant then, what it means now and what it will mean in the future.
Life goes on, things change. Circumstances that we thought were behind us, sometimes come back to test us. But what is really tested? Faith…love…commitment…trust? These things are tested in us every day. Some tests are harder than others, and take a long time to be completed. And some tests don’t have a right or wrong answer…just a result that must be accepted for what it is. I took the test, I passed, yet failed…life goes on!

True happiness is a rare thing. One must grab it when it presents itself. I did. It was something I hadn’t experienced in my life up until that time, and probably never will again. Do I look back on it and wonder why, thinking that it never should have happened? Or do I look back on it and wonder why not, glad that I took the chance to learn, to live, to experience something that I will remember until the day I die! Am I a better person than I was six months ago? Absolutley! I live, I experience, I love, I learn. Thanks for Toast!

Life is full of risk and reward. But how can someone truly experience reward without taking the risk. Is it worth it? I think so. But it did cost me…a piece of my heart!