On
October 29, 2004, my husband, Curry, pushed me onto the stage at the Ritz-Carlton
Hotel in Dearborn, Mich., to receive the 2004 Spirit of da Vinci Award for my
creative use of technology. The da Vinci Awards are co-sponsored by the Engineering
Society of Detroit and the National Multiple Sclerosis Society, Michigan Chapter.
My Liberator delivered my acceptance speech.
Ten years earlier, when I was diagnosed with ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis), I could not have envisioned that I would still be alive, let alone doing art, in 2004. I had been an artist prior to the diagnosis.
In December of 1996, I got my Liberator communication device, with the intention of using it to write letters and a journal for our son, Daniel. I had no idea then of its artistic potential.
By the time we bought our computer in the summer of 1999, I was operating my Liberator with a sensor taped between my eyebrows and attached to a P-switch. Curry called PRC to ask if it was possible to draw on the computer with the Liberator. We were told that it could be done, but it was very tedious.
If they meant to scare me off by using that word, they didn't know who they were talking to! I was the one who loved putting tall stacks of medical records in alphabetical order before I filed them. I delighted in stuffing envelopes and pouring over million-piece puzzles for hours. Tedious I could do!
My first attempt to draw with Microsoft Paint was rough, to say the least. Still, as I finished drawing my first face in five years, I felt like I had come home to myself. ALS had taken so much from me and my family, but it wasn't going to take my soul. Technology would see to that.
That year I did our Christmas card, and in the spring of 2000, my first real art piece, "Big Wheels Keep on Turnin'," was accepted into a juried exhibition in Manhattan for the 10th anniversary of the ADA
Today I am a freelance artist and writer living in Nashville, Tenn., with my husband and son.
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