From My Mother (Nonfiction)
By Darcy Leech
ISBN #978-0692589147
Price (Not published yet)
Pages (Not published yet)
Rating 5-Stars
“Living With A Terminal Disease.”
Darcy was told that her brother would die before her when he
was born. Three years older than Dustin, her young life would become entangled
in his care and helping her parents around the house at an early age. Darcy’s
mother, Jo Lyn Bartz (nee Woodard), carried the genetics of myotonic muscular
dystrophy in her genes, which she passed on to Dustin, and he was born with
congenital MMD, a disease that would end in death while still a child. The
disease would also take Darcy’s mother by age 51.
This is one family’s struggle to live with the disease.
Darcy’s father, Randy Bartz was an Air Force enlisted man, and the family
already struggled with low pay. Jo Lyn worked out of the house as a waitress to
earn more money to help with finances, and now the struggle is even greater
with more medical expense. The military medical assistance helped a lot, but
there were always out-of-pocket expenses, and Randy could not just take off and
share in the workload around the house, as much as he would have liked. He was
with civil engineers, and had a job to do, while his wife and young daughter
battled the problems at home.
Darcy’s problems were manifold. She felt cheated because of
all the extra work around the house, not to mention less attention to her own
needs, and often blamed her mother for not doing more. It was even worse as she
became a teenager and wanted to fit in with her school class and sports team.
She often had to wear dirty clothes to school, and was ashamed when her parents
appeared at games dirty and wearing old clothes. She was intelligent and
athletic and wanted to succeed. She was even ashamed when her mother won her a
two thousand dollar a year college tuition for four years, thinking that her
parents should have saved enough money for her college. But before we think of
criticizing this young lady, we should never blame our children for not
understanding. They are not ready for so much knowledge so young. In later years Darcy would look back and see
how foolish and wrong she had been, but no child should be put through so much.
As it was, young Darcy watched as her brother Dustin
struggled through life to live, and eventually died at age 13. Then, as a young
mother herself, she had to witness the decline in health of her mother, and
watched MMD slowly destroy her ability to even smile. The one anchor for the
family was her father, Randy, who stayed by the family and did all he could
while earning money to keep them fed and a roof over the head. Many families in
this situation live below the poverty line, and it’s a struggle even with a
military retirement and a full time civilian job.
Millions of families struggle with disease in the family,
whether MMD, ALS, cancer, or diabetes, and we seldom hear of their stories.
Many don’t know where, or who, to turn to. FROM MY MOTHER gives insight to
those struggles we don’t see, and should be mandatory reading for all of us.
Darcy drew strength from her mother at an early age, then her father when Jo
Lyn was dying. Their prayers sustained them, and with determination, Darcy
succeeded in life, and now wants to tell her family’s story. Highly
recommended.
Tom Johnson
Author of THE SOUL STEALERS
No comments:
Post a Comment