After falling and getting stitches in my head at the hospital, one of my children bought walker for me. They had noticed that I was having a bit of a problem walking with a cane and got tired often. I could fold up and load the Walker into the back of the Subaru. So now I had a cane to assist me when I got out of the Subaru to walk to the back of the car and take out the Walker. I was still going to the local Junior College expanding my knowledge C++ and Unix. About every 3 months I would go do the Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, PMR, at UC Davis in Sacramento for an examination, still thinking I had Limb Girdle Muscular Dystrophy, LGMD.

In June of 2007 I became a member of the Yuba County Grand Jury. I encourage anyone who is retired, has time on their hands and feel some responsibility to their community, to volunteer for Grand Jury duty. We were split into groups of three or four and went through communications from citizens to decide which areas of the County Government we would inspect. Citizen complaints about their local government are determinants on what a grand jury may look into. By law, law enforcement is looked at every year. I became the spokeswoman for the group that inspected law enforcement. We had weekly meetings in addition to visits to various jails, police departments, juvenile facilities and sheriff’s departments. I put quite a lot of mileage on my Walker during the year I was on the grand jury.

In October of 2007 I drove to march Air Force Base and participated as a panel member at an SR-71 symposium at the March AFB air museum where they had an SR-71 on display. Using both the Walker and my cane I was able to get around quite easily and when long distance came up I was able to hitch a ride in a golf cart driven by the museum staff. It was a great time seeing old friends and reminiscing experiences I spent 28 years on that program.

In the fall of 2009 I explained to a friend that I was suffering from LGMD and tried to explain my symptoms. His son was a doctor. Several weeks later I received a report; he had received from his son, describing everything about LGMD. I read the report several times and came to the conclusion that I did not have LGMD. On my next visit to PMR at UC Davis, in Apr 2010, I explained to the doctor that after reading the report I was convinced I did not have LGMD. They scheduled me for a biopsy which was performed the following week. I would have to wait a week before I would get the results.
I received a phone call about a week later from a UC Davis doctor. “I have good news and I have bad news, the good news is you do not have LGMD, the bad news is you have IBM.” I called my friend who had sent me the report on LGMD and told him that a biopsy confirmed I had IBM. He was able to get a report describing everything about IBM and sent that to me. I read the report several times and came to the conclusion they were writing about me. I was absolutely positive I had IBM.