article; Physically Challenged, I Never Gave Up - I Found My Niche In The World Of Fashion

While I was in the midst of becoming a ba’alat teshuvah I decided to go to Stern College in New York and use a year of college to focus on advancing my knowledge of Jewish studies. During the second half of the year I was surprised to see changes in my health that had never occurred before. I started to put on weight, my handwriting changed and my voice turned monotone. I didn’t pay much attention to these changes but they were signs of a serious disease that was starting to take hold of my muscular system, called Dystonia, which would drastically alter the course of my life.

That year I attended an NCSY convention in Florida in order to hear my brother give a speech and it was there that I met Harvey Tannenbaum whom I would eventually marry. After finishing at Stern I attended a NCSY camp outside Los Angeles where Harvey was the director. When camp ended I stayed for an extra month in Los Angeles with my grandmother and took an Abnormal Psychology course at U.C.L.A. While I was walking to the car after class one day, my right foot began to kick my left foot. This difficulty with walking started on an occasional basis and soon became an on-going problem.
Meanwhile, I went back to Vancouver, to stay with my parents as I awaited a marriage proposal. While I was in the kitchen helping my mother, I suddenly couldn’t continue to answer her questions, my upper lip felt so tight and stiff that it just wouldn’t move. This new change, added to my already monotonic voice, made my speech completely unintelligible. My family thought that I was joking around, since I wasn’t able to speak or walk properly. If only these changes were just a joke, but they were not.

Our family doctor sent me to a neurologist who gave me a whole gamut of neurological tests in existence at that time. All of the tests came back negative. According to the doctor I was in “perfect health” physically and, therefore, he felt that I needed to be seen by a psychiatrist to explore what was wrong with me mentally.

source:www.jewishpress.com