Your son has Duchenne Muscular Distrophy…

The story of Mohiddine

Your son has Duchenne  Muscular Dystrophy…’

Words we’d rather forget. We are parents just like you and just like you we dreamt of the perfect family and planned for our ideal future. It wasn’t long after our son was born when we realized something was wrong. Our son was diagnosed with Duchene Muscular Dystrophy; a disease we never heard of before and sadly knew nothing about. We had to accept the painful reality that our family will never be the same again. Living with such a genetic disease was devastating. As you can imagine we experienced many emotions least of which was denial and fear of the future. It was the heartache,the confusion, the anger, the continuous questions, the guilt; it was a rollercoaster of emotions. We were given the official diagnosis with no explanation of what muscular dystrophy was.Not only did we realize we were alone in our ordeal but we had no support whatsoever from anyone. Our doctors confused us with their recommendations and so did the therapists. We had no emotional or psychological support nor were we able to find any answers to our questions. The lack of social awareness was baffling and the inexistence of adequate schools equipped to offer our son what he needs was frightening. We found ourselves alone and stuck in a vicious cycle.

When we look at our son we don’t see the sick diseased boy, we see a beautiful human being who has been struck by Duchene Muscular Dystrophy and we accepted the fact that it has become a part of our daily lives… We acknowledged this and we learnt to live with it but we also decided to change our own attitude of playing the victim and feeling despair and make changes in our lives. We decided to help spread awareness about DMD and to integrate our son in our society. Our son and all the other little boys and girls who were robbed of a natural healthy life; we are working on changing their reality and offer them equal opportunity to fulfill their dreams.

L.A.N.D is born (Lebanese Association for Neuromuscular Diseases)