If you don’t know what it’s like to live with dystonia, then you need to watch this Youtube video by Shawn Fairchild.
A brave man living with dystonia, Fairchild shows his true self in this video. No pills, no restraints, just him and his dystonia.
While there are many different types of the condition, Fairchild suffers from a particular kind: Dopa responsive dystonia. What makes this unique is that it only affects the left side of his body.
As he demonstrates in the video, his right arm moves fine. His left hand, though, jerks and spasms uncontrollably. The simple act of lifting a small object and moving it from one end of the table to the other takes an incredible amount of effort.
They say a picture is worth a thousands words, and a video is probably worth billions. And no words could so accurately pull at my heart the way watching him struggle with that small movement did.
I’ve been reading about dystonia for a long time. Reading descriptions of symptoms, from doctors and patients. But seeing is something different altogether.
And lets not forget about the other sense, like hearing. Hearing the way Fairchild struggles to speak and the amount of effort it takes him to get through one sentence or phrase is inspiring.
Because he doesn’t let dystonia stop him.
He knows what he wants to say. He knows that his words need to be heard. And no matter what, he’s going to say them anyway.
And while he does have a treatment that helps control the spasms, I think it takes a lot of courage to show the world what dystonia is really like.
In his follow up video, recorded two hours after he took his medication, the transformation is remarkable.
Seeing really is believing.
