Sonuchi Sanada

My muscular dystrophy doctor, Dr. Wessel, had me on a timeline from the time I was four or five. When I'd stop walking. When I couldn't raise my arms. When my lungs wouldn't be strong enough to breathe, which was supposed to be my late 30s. Then a flu hit when I was 9. Dec. 14, 1989, my lungs filled faster than anyone could keep up, and the ventilator came decades early. I was young and scared, and I told them to let me go. Dr. Wessel took my mom outside the ICU to talk. He was so mad at the disease for moving faster than he wanted that he balled up his fist and put it through the drywall. According to my mom, he said, "We're not going to let him die." It's the first and only time I've heard of a doctor so angry at a disease that he punched a wall. Dec. 15 1989, I was placed on my vent. I'm still here. I'm still on that ventilator. And I still think about that hole in the wall.