Category: Through My Eyes

The Burdens We Carry

On By Chris AnselmoIn Through My Eyes2 Comments

Today, October 10, is World Mental Health Day. It was established in 1992 to promote global mental health awareness, education and advocacy. I only learned about the day a few years ago but I’m glad to see mental health getting its proper due. There are few subjects more important.

There are many different aspects to mental health, which can be explored by searching the #WorldMentalHealthDay hashtag on social media or looking at the list of themes in previous years. Mental health is one of those topics that impacts every area of our lives, both on the individual and societal levels. It impacts how we see ourselves. How we see others. How we see the world.

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Brief Hiatus

On By Chris AnselmoIn Through My Eyes2 Comments

Hi everyone,

I hope your 2022 is off to a great start! We just got a foot of snow here in Connecticut on Saturday. Needless to say, I am ready for spring.

Just wanted to send out a quick update to let you all know that I am going to be taking a little time off from this blog to focus on my memoir. I’ve written about my progress in the past. It took me several years to write the first draft, but I am trying to pick up the pace on the rewrite! It is motivating to see it starting to come together, which makes it much easier to write for prolonged periods of time.

I will still write on here from time to time if properly inspired, and once the book is done, I will resume posting, especially in shameless self-promotion of the book. Rest assured of that!

Happy New Year!

On By Chris AnselmoIn Through My Eyes4 Comments

Wishing my family and friends (and anonymous readers who might someday be my friends) a safe, healthy and uneventful New Year! May 2022 be just an average, unremarkable year. One can hope.

I am terrible at making New Year’s resolutions, but I do like to take stock of life at the end of the year, looking back and looking ahead.

Obviously, the world is a bit chaotic at the moment, and there is much that is out of our control. But there is also much that we can control. We can’t make all our problems go away with a magic wand, but we can still be part of the solution.

Small actions add up, even if it’s something as simple as working on your patience or showing kindness to someone who may not deserve it. Even checking in on a friend who you’ve fallen out of touch with or who may be homebound might make all the difference in that person’s life.

People expect the worst in each other these days. Show them your best. It will leave an impression, and more importantly, shines the little beams of light that will get us out of this dark time.

Happy Thanksgiving!

On By Chris AnselmoIn Through My Eyes3 Comments

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

I hope you are all doing well, or as close to well as possible given the circumstances. The pandemic is not over yet, but we have come a long way from where we were this time last year.

Thanksgiving is a time for family and friends. One of the many cruel aspects of the pandemic has been that it prevented us from being able to see one another safely for far too long. Even now, with the benefit of vaccines, we are not quite back to normal, but at least there is a light at the end of the tunnel. Humans are social creatures. It is not in our nature to be separated for so long. Video conferencing, although a wonderful technology, does not substitute for a hug or for sitting at the dinner table surrounded by good company.  

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35

On By Chris AnselmoIn Through My Eyes5 Comments

I turn 35 this week. Yikes! I am not sure how it happened. Well, I know how it happened but I am more surprised how quickly it happened. Three-and-a-half decades on earth.

Part of me still feels like a kid. I still look at the world with a curious mind. I love sports and ice cream and staying up way past my bedtime. My dream job is still to build large Lego displays all day.

On the other hand, I feel like an old man. I am an old soul to begin with, but this disease has only exacerbated my curmudgeonness (curmudgeoneity?) Staying up way past my bedtime now means going to bed at 11:30. One beer and I get a massive headache. I can’t name any song past 2015. That sort of thing.

But most striking, I feel like an old man because I actually feel like an old man. My body, once able to win hurdles races and walk for miles around Boston without breaking a sweat, is now in constant pain. I can no longer walk, and can barely stand, with assistance, for more than a few seconds.

This has been hard to reconcile with my age. 35, going on 85.

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Appearance on MDA’s Quest Podcast

On By Chris AnselmoIn Through My EyesLeave a comment

MDA recently launched the Quest Podcast, hosted by Mindy Henderson, our new Editor-In-Chief of MDA’s Quest family of content. This podcast will explore issues affecting individuals living with neuromuscular disease and those who love them.

I had the pleasure of being interviewed for the inaugural podcast episode, “The Beginning: Receiving a Diagnosis”. It was a great conversation about what it’s like to receive a neuromuscular disease diagnosis, and how to deal with what comes next.

You can check it out here. Let me know what you think!

Crossroads

On By Chris AnselmoIn Through My Eyes1 Comment

The beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic feels like yesterday. The calendar, however, says otherwise. March 2020 is now almost a year and a half ago. Although the origins of COVID can be traced back to late 2019, the world shut down in March, once it became clear that this was no localized outbreak, but a worldwide menace. It changed my life. It changed all our lives.

The pandemic has been a tragedy. It has been a grind, in every conceivable way. In the midst of great suffering, we have been forced to confront what is truly important in life.

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My Life In 700 Pages

On By Chris AnselmoIn Through My Eyes3 Comments

Some good news after that downer that was my last post: I am finally done with the first draft of my memoir! The bad news: it currently checks in at 705 pages.

Fortunately for you the reader, the final product will not be 700 pages. I wouldn’t put you through that. I want you to buy the book after all. And enjoy it. And then recommend it to your friends. You probably don’t need to know what I ate one Wednesday night in 2012 (a burrito, for what it’s worth). A lot of the draft is blabber that needs to be cut down. Some of it serves as a placeholder to remind me what I was doing at the time, that I’ll eventually take out.

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Final Steps

On By Chris AnselmoIn Through My Eyes7 Comments

A couple weeks ago, I experienced a milestone in my disease progression that I knew was coming, but I still wasn’t quite prepared for: I stopped walking.

Technically speaking, I stopped taking steps forward. I can still shuffle around while holding onto my dad, but for all intents and purposes, I have taken my final steps.

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WEGO Health Patient Panel – Friday, February 26 at 12pm

On By Chris AnselmoIn Through My EyesLeave a comment

Hi everyone!

I just wanted to let you know about an upcoming panel that I will be on to commemorate World Rare Disease Day. The WEGO Health Patient Panel is taking place on Friday, February 26th (tomorrow) at 12pm Eastern.

I will be joined by two other patient leaders in the rare disease space, Guadalupe Hayes-Mota and Lindsey Kizer.

If you would like to register, click here.

Hope to see you there!

Chris