15 Minutes of Fame

Posted on by ALS Ontario

I’m sure you’ve heard the saying everyone gets 15 minutes of fame, well here’s mine. The only thing is that I’m already dead. My name is Durwin John Cadeau, I am 26 and I have ALS, Lou Gehrig’s disease. Maybe 15 minutes from now lots of people will have read this and my story will help make more people aware of ALS. I had a funny feeling from the first time I had a cramp in my leg that it was ALS. I remember telling my mom I had cramps and when I started limping on my right leg she would always say, “It can’t be ALS you’re only 26.” You see ALS runs in my family, my grandma, one of my aunts and two of my uncles all died from ALS. I also have an aunt living with ALS right now. My mom thought I was too young and I guess she was praying that I would not have it.

After seeing several different doctors in Timmins, and running lots of different tests, almost everything but ALS has been ruled out. I am scheduled for an appointment with an ALS specialist in southern Ontario who is the head of ALS [...] continue the story

Tagged Under: , , , ,
View Original Post  

Scarred for Life

Posted on by These Are My Scars

There is one last lesson I’ve learned throughout this experience, and I could have added it to my last post, but it really warrants its own post. The whole idea of what we are trying to do with These Are My Scars was inspired by the events that took place within my own cancer journey.

During treatment I was so focused on just staying alive and getting through it, I never gave any thought to how I would be affected by the after effects of treatment, including surgery. I have never been squeamish about surgery, I actually wanted to be a surgeon at one point in my life (damn you chemistry), but once it was over, part of me just wanted to bury what had happened.

It’s strange that people will say “you’ve scarred me” or “I’m scarred” but it always has such a negative connotation. I’ll admit to buying into the negativity, after all it’s something that happens to you. No one really chooses to become scarred, so I suppose it can be seen as an invasion. I thought so too!

After my Lobectomy, I was left with a large red J shaped scar on my back and side, it looked like [...] continue the story

Tagged Under: , , , , , , ,

Take One Minute – Better the Devil You Know – Ep. 1

Posted on by Take One Minute

Better the Devil… Its easy to take your body for granted and especially if you are anything like me and have never been that interested in your physical self compared with your mental one.

So when odd things started to happen back in 2004/5 it never occurred to me that I would be faced with living with an incurable degenerative condition.

It took nine months for the answer to come and with it came some relief…as you will see.

Colleen Henderson-Heywood August 16, 2010

More from Take One Minute

Tagged Under: , , , , , ,
View Original Post  

Nick Jonas Diabetes Interview

Posted on by dLife

Nick Jonas interview with Dlife about his diabetes.

January 4, 2010

Tagged Under: , , , , , ,

Word Vomit: The page with my story (where I whine about how life is hard)

Posted on by Chronically Something

I’ve been battling the “something” on a tangible (in the physical symptom sense) level for a little over 3 years. The back story is not unusual. I had the frequently cited, less than ideal, childhood but was lucky to have coped by throwing myself into school. I managed to work and survive and get out of dodge as soon as possible. Years, tears, majors, lots of jobs, and a few school transfers later I was in a PhD program. I was recruited into it early in my academic career and the department seemed diverse enough to deal with my crazy background of Film Production, avant-garde studies, postmodern theory, psychology, and political science. awesome!

Well things changed in my program and I got sick. I was in this program for 4 years when I decided to transfer since there wasn’t a social scientist that wasn’t an economist in the faculty any longer. I was all but dissertation (abd) but I was still left writing a psychology based dissertation with an Economist as an adviser. In any case, with much support from my professors as far as my academic abilities go, I transferred to a university in the UK without funding. It was [...] continue the story

Tagged Under: , , , , , , , , ,
View Original Post