There's a small goldfish sitting right in the middle of Harry's nightstand that his parents placed there five months ago. He's never wanted a fish though, it's quite cruel actually, watching an animal day after day stay trapped in a tiny bowl their whole lives only having a few inches to venture. What could they do? They're stuck, frozen almost in this little world they've been condemned too. They have no one to communicate with, but it's not because they don't want to, they just can't.
Harry thinks he's kind of like a fish.
He's not dumb or weird, he's just unable. Unable to talk in complete sentences, unable to move from place to place without his wheelchair. Unable to write without shaking. Unable to dress himself properly in the morning. Unable to swallow big bites without choking. Unable to control himself from drooling at the dinner table now and then. Unable to relate his being to anything other than a sad fish. The result of Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis. ALS. Motor Neuron Disease. Lou Gehrig's disease. Call it what you will, but he calls it the reason he stares at the small fish bowl sitting right in the
middle of his nightstand with such understanding.
In around nineteen months Harry is supposed to die, according to the best specialists his parents can find.
This is the story of until then.
author's note:
Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), often referred to as "Lou Gehrig's Disease," is a progressive neurodegenerative disease that affects nerve cells in the brain and the spinal cord. Motor neurons reach from the brain to the spinal cord and from the spinal cord to the muscles throughout the body. The progressive degeneration of the motor neurons in ALS eventually leads to their death. When the motor neurons die, the ability of the brain to initiate and control muscle movement is lost. With voluntary muscle action progressively affected, patients in the later stages of the disease may become totally paralyzed. Eventually, you lose the ability to talk and breathe. Most patients live for 3-5 years after being diagnosed with this disease.
YOU ARE READING
a little sunshine (larry)
Romance"I'm Louis, what are you in for?" He spoke of the waiting room as if it were a jail. Maybe it is. or Harry was diagnosed with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) at the age of seventeen. Louis was a boy who made him forget.
