This Is Me Smiling

"Virgin River" or "Complete Unknown" viewers may wonder about Huntington's disease, a rare, incurable genetic disorder that afflicts the show's expectant father and the film's Woody Guthrie. Sustained societal gaze has been waiting for memoirs like mine to learn how this disease progressively damages (among other things) the ability to speak, think, move, swallow and regulate emotions. Death occurs from heart failure, aspiration pneumonia or suicide. This book describes which HD symptoms are playing out in my life, what my mother's side of the family experienced and how Randy, my husband, is becoming my caregiver. I am losing the ability to communicate, which is my greatest fear. I am the third-generation embodiment of the neurodegenerative plight. Like Charlie in "Flowers for Algernon," I know what is coming and it's a race against time to describe how Huntington's disease affects me. Knowing you understand this disease will help me make peace with a life I never planned for or wanted.