Apr. 21--It's not something her doctor prescribed, but for Debra Bailey gardening is physical therapy for her incurable disease.
Bailey has muscular dystrophy, a debilitating genetic disease that may ultimately leave her paralyzed, unable to get out of bed or kill her.
"It's incurable. There's nothing I can do about it," she said. "I can take vitamins, and that's about it."
Bailey said she was diagnosed with the disease in 1995.
"I told myself there's nothing I could do about it, so I decided I might as well keep on stepping on," Bailey said. "The next time I got my license tags renewed, I got tags that said stepping on.
"I am not going to let it stop me. There's days I can get out and days that I can't."
She bent over a plot of decorative grasses she was weeding Thursday at the Danville Science Center Butterfly Garden. She volunteers every chance she gets at the Butterfly Garden.
A master gardener, Bailey also is the co-coordinator for the master gardener program, matching up volunteers with gardening opportunities.
She credits her husband for her gardening therapy.
Prior to the diagnosis, Bailey worked two jobs. After the diagnosis, she was eventually forced to quit working.
"If you've worked two jobs as long as I have, you can't go to doing nothing all of a sudden," she said. Her husband recognized that fairly quickly.
"He signed me up for the master gardener class and paid for it and everything," Bailey said. "He said I was the only person he knew who could buy a dead plant, bring it home and have it grow.
"He also knew I'd go to the class just not to let the money go to waste since it was paid for."
Bailey stopped for a minute to pull two more handfuls of weeds out. She tamped her potato hook on the soil and leaned lightly on it.
"This is my favorite tool. I don't have to get down on my hands and knees," she said.
"I use it to balance with, too," she said.
All many people know of muscular dystrophy is that Jerry Lewis hosts a muscular dystrophy telethon every year.
But, according to the Muscular Dystrophy Association, a quarter million children and adults are living with the disease.
Chances are, MDA spokespersons say, you know someone who suffers from MD.
According to information from the MDA, muscular dystrophy is a genetic disorder that "weakens the muscles that help the body move."
"Everyone's muscles have something like little men that go out into the body and get food and nutrition for the muscles," Bailey said.
"My little men are lazy. They're couch potatoes. They don't go out much."
Bailey actually got her diagnosis when she went for new eyeglasses.
Her eye doctor noticed she couldn't move her eyes up and down or left to right. A muscle biopsy later confirmed a diagnosis. About a year later, after visits to other doctors, she got her diagnosis.
"I could wake up tomorrow and not walk," Bailey said. "It could be 20 years from now. They don't know how long I have."
But uncertainty doesn't stop her.
"I raised my girls up to believe anything is possible if you believe in it," she said. "You can't say you can't do it until you at least try. I'll try once and if I can't do it, it makes me mad. But I keep on going.
"That's why I do what I do," Bailey added. "I'm going to do as much as I can while I can. I've lived with it for so long it's a matter of fact.
"If I get to the point where I can't use my legs anymore and I'm in a wheelchair, I'm still not going to stop," she said. "I'll still find something to do. I'm going to keep on going. I'm not going to sit at home and say 'poor me.' I'm not going to do that, so I just keep on going."
--Contact Rebecca Blanton
at
or (434) 791-7984.
-----
To see more of the Danville Register & Bee or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.registerbee.com.
Copyright (c) 2008, Danville Register & Bee, Va.
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.
For reprints, email tmsreprints@permissionsgroup.com, call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.