Dan Dorszynski is a 36-year-old man living with Becker muscular dystrophy. Dan attended Stanford University, where he earned his degree in environmental civil engineering. In the summer, Dan lives with his family in Milwaukee, Wis., and spends his winters in Honolulu, Hawaii, where he lives independently. Dan spends his days working as a Web developer, and enjoys traveling, playing wheelchair tennis and learning about new things. You can contact Dan through Twitter @danbmd or through his website Muscular Dystrophy Book.
Dan Dorszynski
Tuesday, April 2, 2013
Have you seen the horror stories about airlines damaging wheelchairs and people getting stuck in the airport in their wheelchairs and wheelchairs breaking while traveling and people getting sick while abroad or that cruise ship that ran out of power or those people who spent 10 hours stuck in a plane on the tarmac?
Yes, me too. But what you don’t hear about are the thousands of successful trips that people take every day. The trips that go smoothly. The trips where everything falls into place just perfectly. The trips where wheelchairs make it off the plane just fine. The trips where even...
Friday, November 2, 2012
Think about the last time that you were faced with a challenge because of your neuromuscular disease. Maybe you fell? Maybe you got stuck somewhere? Maybe you needed help getting transferred from your plane seat and your pants got caught on the armrest and you accidentally mooned the entire flight crew?
Those have all happened to me — and the last one resulted in adding “suspenders” to my pre-travel checklist!
Now that I am a little older, I have noticed that more and more often the incidents associated with my muscular dystrophy have become more and more laughable. Looking back they...
Friday, May 25, 2012
I am a very competitive person and always have been. I love board games, card games, trivia contests and all sorts of competitions. I also love sports. I even built a simulation online sports game that MDA featured in Quest magazine way back in 2000. While growing up with muscular dystrophy, however, sports weren’t always something I excelled in even though I loved them. The good news is that adaptive and wheelchair sports are out there and getting more and more popular, enabling people with all types of abilities to participate.
I wish I had known about wheelchair and adaptive sports when...
Monday, April 16, 2012
One of the challenges in dealing with muscular dystrophy is the process of surrendering the ability to do certain things the way someone without a neuromuscular disease does them.
When I started needing help standing up from a chair, I felt a constant frustration stemming from two sources. First, I wanted to keep being able to do it myself. Second, I didn’t want anyone to help me. This sounds like the same thing but it’s not. For me, letting go of the ability to stand up on my own was a completely separate challenge from the challenge of accepting help from others — a struggle I still...
Monday, April 9, 2012
Sometimes when dealing with a physical disorder there are things we adapt to automatically like the way we eat or the way we get dressed. I have personally managed to adapt in several ways, several different times during the progression of my muscular dystrophy. You probably have too.
There have also been instances when I struggled with something more than necessary. This was partly due to pride but in many cases it was that I simply didn’t know what tools were out there to help me.
In reflection I came up with eight different problems I encountered and the solutions I wish I’d discovered...
Friday, February 3, 2012
While growing up with muscular dystrophy, I was aware that my body behaved differently from others' bodies. I walked differently. I got up from chairs differently. There were times I felt like all eyes were on me because I was different. Eventually I got past that feeling, but once I started using a wheelchair I began to feel self conscious all over again.
What I forgot during those times in my life is that we're all different. Even people without muscular dystrophy have things about them that make them feel different from others. It's how you accept your differences, or "own" them, that can...
