Spanish influenza
walking pneumonia
icepick headache
common cold
whooping cough
Diabetes
anorexia
getting old

flat foot
bad back
heel spur
heart attack
spasticus
autisticus
tongue tied
amb(i)dextrous

my weakness
is my forte
my sickness is  my skill
my illness
is my realness
it makes my life a thrill

Trying to fight this
bronchitis
gangrene
runny nose
frostbite
tooth decay
hat hair
broken bones

bed bound
shell-shocked
flea ridden
sinusitis
cholera
dropsy
eliphantitis
out-all-nightis

wom­b fever
winter fever
black water fever
remitting fever
ship fever
jail fever
camp fever
or schizophrenia

scarlet fever
tuberculosis
American plague
rock n roll
Wheezing
Paralysed
Got gas
In both holes

rabies
scabies
rickets
and SARS
man flu
bird flu
swine flew
from Mars

multiple sclerosis
tennis elbow-sis
stomach ulcers
and leukaemia
night blindness
hypothermia
lung cancer
sickle-cell anaemia

French pox
Lockjaw
Polio
Gout
Nostalgia
Dropsy
Knocked right
Out

Stuttering
Bellyacher
Anti-social
Leprosy
Sleep walker
Sleep talker
Absent minded
OCD

Tourettes, ****
Pyromania
tonsillitis
Conjunctivitis
Food poisoned!
Warted over
My Psoriasis
(Will I survive this?)

Measles
Malaria
Meningitis
Migraine
Scrum-pox
Worm fit
Water on
the brain

apparitions
seeing things
rattly chest
bad breath
la duzi
tormentation
inflammation
black death

measles
malaria
migrane
mumps
leprosy
lice and
leg bone
lumps

kleptomania
bubonic plague
black *****
feeling ****
bone shave
falling sickness
wanna stop
just cant quit

Huntington's and
Parkingson's and
Hare-lipped
Hay fever
Typhoid fever
Glandular fever
Night fever
And Hysteria

intellectual
dyslexia
dysfunctional
family
cancer crab
stillborn twin
bad blood
epilepsy

Parking spot
disabilities
all the wounds in
all the militaries
pity thee with
lost agility
lost babes or
infertility

ear infection
starvation
Hepatitis
E to A
smallpox
chicken pox
cow pox
what a day

tuberculosis
stuttering
panic stricken
star struck
scurvy
shingles
headless chicken
bad luck


paranoid
in the void
premature
*******
stomach ulcers
feeble pulses
chronicled
*******

autistic
gallstones
double-jointe­d
wrists and knees
consumption
bad digestion
quinsy palsy
ticks and fleas

amnesia
typhus
amnesia
heart failure
radiation
cholera
amnesia
bad behaviour

Hypochondriac?
By gosh, no!
Poorly are ye?
‘Fraid so.


nostalgia
        suffer me
wanderlust
suffer me
insomnia
suffer me
loneliness
let me be



god
complex
mother
complex
father
complex
ego
complex

­

its complicated
im superior
its complicated
im inferior
its complicated
im a short man
got ingrown hairs
got a bad tan



im suffering
ocd
im suffering
obesity
im suffering
jealousy
xenophobia
and nosebleeds



stokholm
syndrome
toxic shock
syndrome
got it down
syndrome
irritable bowel
syndrome

yellow nail
syndrome
stevens-johnson
syndrome
restless leg
syndrome
shoulder-hand
syndrome

lambert-eaton
syndrome
mi­ddle-lobe
syndrome
mobius
syndrome
pickwickian
syndrome

post rubella
syndrome
riley day
syndrome
straight back
syndrome
ulysess
syndrome



alcoholics
we are prone
drug addicts
we are prone
mind benders
we are prone
fortune spenders
we are prone



My illness, my illness
My illness is my realness

*Pick it up
Tide it over
Fight it off or
Cave in

Save it
Suffer it
Pass it on
When its Raining

bleed him
restrain him
shave his
head

he went from being
quite well
to being quite
dead.

Letters jumping off the page
Not like normal words that stay in place
I close my eyes and hold the tears
And just pretend that I'm not here

Stupid is the word they used
Cause the letters I see wouldn't fuse
They laughed cause they didn't know the pain
Of seeing words and not knowing their name

Writing down things that never looked right
Seeing failure in near sight
I stopped to even try
Not seeing how dyslexia could give me pride

Confusion growing in my head like vines
So I just sit and act like a mime
Tears starting to to brim my eyes
I shut down and begin to cry

How can dyslexia give me pride?

Dyslexia...
You are a *****.
You are a curse that I wouldn't wish on anyone.

Why must you be the puppet master of letters,
Pick them up,
Move them around,
Make them dance,
And then drop them like an unwanted broken toy?

Why must you send a tornado ripping across the page?
When before you came the letters were perfect,
And organized,
Like they had been placed there by a child with OCD.
Then after you're done,
And you've made your destruction,
The page looks like a bowl of alphabet soup,
All jumbled up,
And almost a hopeless gesture,
To try to put them back together.

But dyslexia,
I fight against you.
I wont let you win,
And let you stop me,
From doing the things I love most.

Count-entious . . .
Five-Seven-Five, or
Is it Seven-Five-Seven?
Dyslexic Haiku!

High Coo-Coo . . .
Words like scrambled eggs
Malapropos slip off the tongs
Lysdexics UNTIE!

In Swummary . . .
I never flip turned
I zagged; everyone else zigged
Oh, how I was schooled

As I read through my old journal,
I realized what I have overcome,
How much I've learned,
And I remembered why I used to hate reading and writing.
Dyslexia has always been a pain for me.
I couldn't really read until I was in 3rd grade.
I could read,
But its because I saw words like pictures.
I knew what they were,
But I never gave them any real thought.
I would read,
"The cat is brown."
And my teacher would ask,
"What color is the cat?"
And I would respond with,
"What cat?"
Like the lady had lost her mind.
I started my journal when I was in 5th grade.
I had practically only been reading for 2 years.

I'm grateful now,
Of how far I've came.
Before,
I couldn't spell simple words.
I spelt the word remember as remeber.
The word sandwich was sandwicht for me.
Diary was dairy.
Behind was beeheind.
Even so much as the word and had its own difficulties. I spelt it as aedn.
The word sorry was missing an "R" and the word very had an extra one.
Concrete was concreaete.
A purse was a purce to me.
Every time I would write a poem,
I would write pemo and then put a number beside of it.
I wouldn't have a clay model, I would have a klayh modle.
Festival was feastaival.
Favorite was favearit.
Does was dose,
And should was suhood.

Living with this...
To say the least has been a struggle,
But I've overcame it,
And I'm proud of how far I've come.

I am dyslexic,
And I can spell:
D-e-p-r-e-s-s-i-o-n.
Font wards and backwards.
I can invent new ways,
How it looks,
sounds.
I am dyslexic
And I stumble over the word:
L-I-F-E.
This lyfe's
Syllables I have yet to conquer
Or the ability to make it possible.

Life

                               Lyef

           Liph

                                
                                           Lief

He was a young lad and in the fourth grade
Struggling hard for the grades he made.
Everything he tried seemed to vanish in the air
For he could not read and there was no one to care.

The teacher made fun of the young boy’s plight
No compassion, understanding, was ever in sight.
The days were filled with doubt and fear
He was told to repeat grade four next year.

Starting the fourth the second time around
A new school, a new teacher, made his heart pound.
For the world to see, on the card it came
The very first day he had to spell his name.

J - E - E - R - Y came out of the pen
The letters did appear to be correct just then.
The teacher bent close and whispered in his ear
“One E and two R’s, I think you meant dear.”

He fell in love with the teacher that day
She knew his heart and just what to say.
She knew the pain that the young boy felt
And all the embarrassment the past year dealt.

Miss Hagness, the angel, had come to his aid
He sensed her love and was no longer afraid.
Like the gentle Shepherd, reaching down from above
She taught him to read by her affection and love.

He went on to college to prepare for a life
Giving to help others with trouble and strife.
Pastor Jerry’s the Shepherd of many a heart
With love and compassion from the fourth grade did start.



===============================================
Teacher­ Part II
The story told in verse is about my pastor. It is about the struggles of a lad who was ridiculed in school because of a reading disorder called dyslexia. It is about how the system would have let him sink into oblivion but for the personal interest of a young teacher who came into his life the second time he went through the fourth grade. A teacher who had compassion in her heart for the boy and helped him discover the talents that lay hidden deeply within him. The talents that allowed God to develop within him, developed a compassion for others and a giving of himself first as a youth pastor for many years and then for the first time as a senior pastor.

It is also a story of how indifference toward others can lead to destruction of a young mind to the point of total loss of self worth. It is about the deep wounds that can be inflected by the harsh words we speak. Such words can never be retrieved from the abyss of time. How many times do we fail to see or ignore what we see because it does not conveniently fit into our schedule and in the process, contribute in the destruction of a life?

If we are teachers, mentors, leaders, or just breathing, we can share the pain of others to ease their burdens and encourage them in the difficult times. As we share the pain of others, we gain the right to share the joy in their triumphs and successes.

The story came from a message delivered on Sunday morning May 1, 1999. The poem wrote itself from the words spoken in that message. Can we do anything less than what the young teacher did for the boy? As God leads us, let us listen to the still small voice. The voice may be the voice of a child pleading for help, the voice of our Father directing each of us in the path we must travel. Be ever aware of the opportunities that God lays in our path. Maybe just doing only what is required and not seeing beyond ourselves we miss seeing the potential of a young mind. Could this be the greatest disservice we could do to our Father?

Oh God, give me the wisdom to see the promise and potential in others and be led by Your hand in molding the young mind.

It is written, “Though you have done it unto the least of these, you have done it unto me.”

My Grandpa was given a challenge and an opportunity. I was diagnosed with dyslexia at age seven. He never had actual experience dealing with a child that had dyslexia. He wanted to impact my life in some way that did not involve reading, but was just as effective. He realized that if I would not be able to read then I should experience life instead. After talking with my mom, they came up with a plan for the summer. During my first trip to France, I was given the rare opportunity to see something new. He took me on the canals and showed me the county in a way that was not found in books.
It was an experience that I would never forget. At age seven, I did not do the same amount of work on the boat as everyone else. What I remember doing was coiling and collecting the lines (rope) and making them into perfect flat circles. When doing this, I was getting the lines ready for the next lock. At first the locks were scary. The tall cement walls were covered in green algae. I could hear the water spilling out at a rapped pace. The locks were filling with water, making the boat rise higher than we once were. When we finally reached the height of the water on the other side of the way out, the door opened and we started up again on to the next lock.          
When we were on the boat in the canals, my Grandpa taught me how to live on a boat, work as a team, and to have patience. He always said to my mom and me, “you always need to find time to play, no matter how old you are.” That was what the summer was for. He always thought that you are never too old to have fun and act like a kid, now and then.
Working the canals on the boat was something that I picked up almost naturally. It felt like I already knew what I was doing and how it had to be done. I was working with my hands and keeping my mind off of school and the challenges I had there. Doing this gave me confidence and allowed me an opportunity to be successful.
School is much like the rough waters in the canal. Summer for me was a break from the formal education that I was failing at. In school, I had been falling behind and not getting the education that I needed. For instance, my reading level would get lower every year and teachers did not know what to do with me. So Grandpa tried to work around my dyslexia in a way that only I would get. This is something that no one else attempted. It felt amazing that I was doing something without realizing that I was learning too.  
He also knew that I was interested in drawing. So along with the canal trips he took me to art museums to see paintings firsthand. While I walked through the galleries of the magnificent paintings, Grandpa would take his time reading every little blurb about every painting. Even though I could not read well enough to understand, I never understood why someone would read instead of looking at the paintings and letting them tell a story. In my mind, he was a walking encyclopedia, absorbing every scrap of information that he could. To me, he knew everything and he was willing to share it with me at every possible moment.  
For the seventh summer together, he wanted to go on the Themes in England in order to see Windsor castle. I was thirteen, he was eighty-two, and this was the most memorable trip I ever had. With the excitement of a new adventure ahead we left port and it began. We went from working the locks and mooring the boat, watching movies on the boat that took place where we spent the night, and concocting new recipes with whatever we had on hand.
Two weeks after the trip we had together, Grandpa felt ill and sadly passed away. He died of leukemia. On his dying bed he completed every last minute detail before he died. Above all, he did not want his death to affect his grandchildren while they were at camp and school. He did not want them to know until after they were through, because he didn’t want them sad while they were supposed to be having fun. My mom honored that wish.  
Two weeks after he died, my mom, Dad, and my little brother picked me up at the end of summer school. I was not expecting all of them to pick me up. When everything was set we left, but my mom did something out of the ordinary. She hopped in the back seat of the car. She did not look happy when she told me that Grandpa had died. I was shocked. I did not understand how it was possible. With all the mixed emotions, I cried on my mom’s lap the entire ride back home.
Now as I am growing closer to college and having my own life, I still think fondly of my grandpa and what he did. I still can’t believe that it had been more than five years ago since he passed away. Deep down, I know that if he was still alive today he would be so proud of me and the accomplishments that I made despite my dyslexia.