I am the twenty-seventh
by Roger Cyr
Hello, I am Roger Cyr, born on June 14, 1959 in Fort Kent, Maine. I live in St-François in New Brunswick.
In my family, we were 7 children afflicted with ataxia, 5 boys, 2 girls. My four brothers are deceased. My mother gave birth 27 times and I am the 27th. I knew 19 (10 girls, 9 boys). 7 died at birth, and 1 was 9 months old.
Our ataxia has been classified by Dr. Bouchard as an unknown ataxia.
From the age of 6-7 years, my sister knew that I had the symptoms of ataxia, since others preceded me. I myself did not realize it. It was around the age of 16 years that I realized it and it was a nervous breakdown.
At school, I always kept myself at a distance from others. With my problems of balance, I was afraid of stumbling and that others would mock me. I knew that I was different. I doubted that it was ataxia, but I didn’t want to see it and especially, I believed that no one knew it nor realized it. One day a pupil wanted to fight with me because he knew that I was <<sick>> but I ran away. He easily caught up with me because of my incoordination problems. Another pupil came to my rescue. He looked at my adversary and said to him: <<Philippe, leave him alone, stop it, he is sick>>. After leaving me alone, I cried. The simple fact of having heard the word <<sick>> hurt me. After this happening, the children asked me questions like: <<Is it you who is sick?>>Again, I denied it by saying <<What are you talking about?>>
I quit school. I stayed with my brothers and sisters. We amused ourselves, we had a lot of fun. We worked. But for us, cutting the wood for heating was more recreation than anything else. For us, ataxia was a friend who was a part of our lives and who followed us every day. I am not educated, I quit school in the 6th grade. I don’t hate reading, I especially like writing. But since I have the Internet I no longer read and write.
For me, the most difficult thing to live with ataxia is love, girls. There are damned beautiful women. When I meet a tender, soft, and beautiful woman I would have loved to approach her, seduce her, win her heart. But there was always a small voice which said: Roger, keep your distance, you are handicapped and no matter what you do, you will end up making yourself laughed at. At such moments, I would say to myself: damned crazy disease.
Because I had times of depression, my sister, who had heard of A.C.A.F., got everything set in motion so that I could meet the famous Claude Saint-Jean. Which was done.
These days the computer interests me. I like rogercyr27@hotmail.com
So, write to me. Hear from you soon.