Saturday, November 17, 2007

Muscular Dystrophy Adult Support Group

Today I attended the monthly MDA Adult Support Group. I have been attending since 1990; I guess that qualifies me as a regular. It was just me and my nurse, Ernie; the facilitator, David; The head of patient services at MDA San Diego, Danielle; my friends Ceci and Jason. The three of us are regulars at the group. Ceci has an undetermined condition. She has two dogs, Spike and Samson. Spike is a Yorkshire Terrier, who used to be her assistance dog. He is kind of a mascot to the group. He is always trying to get cookies from the attendees. His cute, little face usually gets him cookies. Samson is a friendly black lab who is the new assistance dog. Jason is an aspiring filmmaker with Freidrick's Ataxia, who doesn't let anything get in his way of enjoying his life and pursuing his dreams (see blog post of September 15, 2007).

Today we went around the circle, as usual to see what was new with everybody since the last meeting. David also asked us each to talk about a Thanksgiving memory. Mine was the time my family rented a houseboat on Lake Mead for Thanksgiving. We were going to fish for our food. Big mistake! After a day of fishing, all we had to show for our efforts were a small sunfish and a catfish. Our pitiful Thanksgiving dinner for the five of us was a few Tater-Totts and some fish. The dinner was not so great, but the important part was that we were all together as a family. To this day we still laugh about it.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Johnny, thank you for sharing your great self with us. Those around you are thankful for the great friend and inspiring persona you are for everyone you meet. Happy Thanksgiving Johnny, yeah I know it's late, but thankfulness is never out of season. Mario

Anonymous said...

I especially starved that Thanksgiving as I didn't eat fish to begin with! Those tater-tots (2each as I recall)were the best tater tots I'd ever had. And seeing Mom fishing with a broom stick handle, then Dad jumping desperately into the lake with a giant net so as to not let the fish snap the line, was a riot. That fish just ran circles around Dad as he couldn't see anything from his watery perspective. We laughed, we starved and yes...we had great Thanksgiving memories!!!