Finding out you have Huntingtons Disease is one of the hardest things many people will deal with in their lifetime. I know I felt like a totally different person after I found out I had HD, back in 1997. The more I learned about it, the scarier the future looked. I read the list of symptoms and at first thought I was automatically destined to get all of them. (I did not realize then that every one with HD has their own mix of symptoms.)

The feeling I felt the most right after testing was worthlessness. Knowing that I would eventually break the hearts of each and every person who loved me was the worst thought. Knowing that my future was going to be shorter and uglier than first thought, I seriously considered running away to parts unknown to spare my loved one having to bear witness to my slow deterioration. So instead I tried to push away everyone I loved, at a time that I needed them them most. Good thing they saw through it and refused to be pushed away.

I had been in a ten year relationship when we found out I was at risk for HD. My husband married me without either of us being aware that I was At-Risk. I felt the need to push him as far away as possible. There was a part of me that desperately needed to know if he was staying with me because he loved me and wanted to, or out of guilt because he felt he HAD to. I remember telling him "just walk away, loving me is not going to be worth it". I felt the same way about my family and friends. I felt like the biggest curse going.

For the first year after testing I felt that having HD marked the end of my life. The urge to just curl up and wait for death was tempting, for awhile. Luckily the urge to put to good use the limited days I had left, took over.

One day it just clicked, I believe it was the day that my focus shifted from what I had lost, to what I had left. And I had a whole lot left. Recognizing my "blessings" was the first step to turning things around inside my head. It is hard for the dark thoughts to hang out when you are focusing on positive things.

At the camp I attended last year, Dr. Jess told us that through loss is gain, that the two are entertwined. The loss is the cloud itself and the gain is the silverlinings that exist in all the challenges that life brings us.

Surviving losses can give us inner strength, understanding, compassion, a zest/appreciation for life, and personal growth. Show me a person who has never suffered a loss, and I will show you a person who has not evolved at all. Survivors are a special breed of person.

It takes a concentrated effort at first to see the silverlinings, but after you practice it for awhile it becomes automatic. The power of positive thinking is real and obtainable. It is always there for the taking. I find that it is the doorway to inner peace and tranquility for me.

I am no longer fighting the HD, I have more of a Zen type approach of "flowing" with it. I can not seperate what is HD and what is just me, it is all entertwined. I am what I am. I say what I say. I do what I do. I am still basically the same person I was before I found out about the HD. But I see everything differently now.

Finding out why I was the way I was and being diagnosed with HD inspired many brand new beginings for me, after the shock phase had passed and the dust settled. With knowledge came understanding, with understanding came acceptance, and with acceptance came self love.

It was the domino effect. After suffering from depression for seemingly a lifetime, I was happy and found that inner peace that had eluded me my whole life.

Looking back, I was certain that I was symptomatic for HD as a teenager. But recently I read a list of ADD symptoms and I now believe that was my problem then. My guess is that I had ADD because I was gene positive for Huntingtons. All my emotional and congitive problems got progressively worse as I grew up, and then worse still in my young adulthood. By the time I found out I was at risk for HD at age 28 I had no self esteem left.

So when I say that finding out about the HD was a huge relief and a good thing for me, I really mean that. The day I saw the list of emotional and cognitive symptoms I knew immediately that I would test positive, and I did 6 months later. No wonder the pieces did not fit together, I had the wrong edge pieces, the wrong frame...

Under the new Huntington's frame all the odd shaped pieces fit. My emotional difficulties, my cognitive quirks, my clumsiness and lack of coordination in sports. My difficulty learning new things in school, inability to concentrate or memorize facts or formulas. It was a revelation. Unfortunately it was all after the fact and too late to redo my high school years. But I did graduate which, all things concidered was a miracle in itself.

I believe that people born with the HD gene are wired differently from birth. That we are predisposed to certain HD personality traits and emotional/cognitive difficulties. As well as depression and suicidal thoughts. There is so much going on inside that is so hard to express in words. It is like we feel everything single thing 10 times stronger that the average person, and that makes every feeling we have very intense. So perhaps we tend to over react because we over feel things.

I have spoken to other people with HD and quite a few of them have said that their lives changed for the better after the HD diagnosis. They always knew instinctively that they were different from other people, same as I did. It is like living your life as a round peg in a square world, and then finding out that you belonged to the round world. And for the first time you fit.

No one's life is still the same after Huntingtons enters their world, but depending on how they chose to perceive things, they could be even better...