Look & Feel Your Best During Stressful Times: Tips From a Disability Fashion Blogger

Lainie Ishbia, MSW, is a mom, wife, blogger, fashionista, and disability and empowerment speaker. She wears leg braces and struggles with buttons and everyday fine motor tasks because of a slowly progressive neuromuscular disorder called Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease (CMT). Lainie is passionate about helping people with disabilities to look and feel their best. She created a lifestyle and . . .

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Who’s On Your MDA Care Center Team?: Young-Adult- and Adult-Focused Social Workers

At more than 150 MDA Care Centers nationwide, kids and adults living with neuromuscular disease (NMD) have access to multidisciplinary care teams made up of different specialists who can coordinate in one place on an appointment day to optimize a complete care plan. Included on these teams are allied health professionals and social workers who . . .

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Who’s On Your MDA Care Center Team?: Pediatric Social Workers

At more than 150 MDA Care Centers nationwide, kids and adults living with neuromuscular disease (NMD) have access to multidisciplinary care teams made up of different specialists who can coordinate in one place on an appointment day to optimize a complete care plan. Included on these teams are allied health professionals and social workers who . . .

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Creating a Network: How Hiring PCAs Gave Me Confidence and Independence, In College and Beyond

Josh Cueter, 22, from Troy, Michigan, is a 2020 graduate from Michigan State University.  At school he was a board member of the MSU Adaptive Sports & Recreation Club as well as MSU’s Council of Students with Disabilities.  After a semester internship with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in Washington, DC, Josh is currently working . . .

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What the COVID-19 Pandemic Can Teach Us About the Isolation Those Living With Neuromuscular Disease Experience Every Day

In March 2020, MDA asked our advocates how the novel coronavirus pandemic was impacting their lives. New Yorker Robert Paulson shared his story — and the universal truth about how neuromuscular disease (NMD), like COVID-19, creates isolation. But for those living with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and other forms of NMD, that isolation doesn’t always . . .

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Why Attending MDA’s Upcoming Virtual Pompe Disease PFDD Meeting is Vital

Ryan Colburn is a rare disease patient with a professional background in engineering and operations management, spending portions of his career working on racecars, airplanes, and rockets. Diagnosed with Pompe disease in 2015, he has spent the time since learning about rare disease topics including research, advocacy, and drug development to better understand how to . . .

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On World FSHD Awareness Day 2020, MDA National Ambassador Tana Zwart Asks Us to Share Our Truths

“For any story of changing the world is always the story of many.” — Judith Heumann Tomorrow, June 20, is World FSHD Awareness Day, dedicated to facioscapulohumeral muscular dystrophy, a disease that etched itself into my DNA and, since I was 7, completely changed the trajectory of my life. Next month, on July 26, the . . .

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Hacking COVID: MDA Staff Edition

In April, MDA fielded a survey to ask its community how COVID-19 was impacting their lives. We heard your responses — anxiety, questions, hope — and wanted to know more. In this six-part blog series, Hacking COVID, people from MDA’s community, all living with neuromuscular diseases, shared how they’ve altered their day-to-day lives, how they’ve . . .

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Hacking COVID: MDA Ambassador Edition, Part 2

In April, MDA fielded a survey to ask its community how COVID-19 was impacting their lives. We heard your responses — anxiety, questions, hope — and wanted to know more. In this six-part blog series, Hacking COVID, people from MDA’s community, all living with neuromuscular diseases, shared how they’ve altered their day-to-day lives, how they’ve . . .

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Hacking COVID: MDA Ambassador Edition, Part 1

In April, MDA fielded a survey to ask its community how COVID-19 was impacting their lives. We heard your responses — anxiety, questions, hope — and wanted to know more. In this six-part blog series, Hacking COVID, people from MDA’s community, all living with neuromuscular diseases, shared how they’ve altered their day-to-day lives, how they’ve . . .

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