This poem describes what it can be like to have someone you love tormented and tortured by Huntington’s Disease (HD) even in their sleep.

Although the physical movements are contained when sitting upright in his wheelchair, for several years now the disease has struck my husband worst physically when in a lying position.

Such is the extent of his thrashing out and Myoclonus (likened to the whole body hicupping violently) he needs a special bed with four inflatable high sides strapped tightly to the bed to stop him banging his head and feet, breaking limbs, or even rising to the point of jumping/falling out of the bed!

He often cries out and whimpers. Sometimes he claws at his own head trying to rip the illness out of himself. What must be going through his mind? HD… The stuff of horror movies!