Delusions of progress in the wake of denial.

Knowing that it’s past time to let go. The hope is even gone.

The pains of Being the "baby" no matter what you do.

The time has come to make a choice.

Coming face to face so to speak with an unpleasant at best memory that can’t be escaped. Dredging up all of the past at the same time with it.

The following poem is from a collection of 41 written by me to try describing Huntington’s Disease (HD).

In Denial (Soft) I covered “standard psychological denial” where a person is in self denial. However, it is little known that another form of denial with HD exists. Termed “organic denial” here not only is the person not aware of their own symptoms but they are also completely unaware that other people can see their symptoms. Source: http://www.hdac.org/features/article.php?p_articleNumber=287.

The following poem is from a collection of 41 written by me to try describing Huntington’s Disease (HD).

Denial (Soft) tries to convey “standard psychological denial”. Here the person knows something is wrong but, understandably, makes excuses for everything so as to put off the likely confirmation of HD. In the next poem – Denial (Hard) I cover “organic denial”.

The following poem is from a collection of 41 written by me to try describing Huntington’s Disease (HD).

This poem tries to convey how people “at risk” of developing the disease have different approaches to coping with not knowing. Some need to know their fate whilst others cannot face up to testing for the gene even though there is just as much chance they might be negative.

Here I also touch on diagnosis by proxy. In essence… If one sibling tests positive he/she confirms their parent is also HD positive and the others are confirmed at risk whether they wanted to know or not!

The following poem is from a collection of 41 written by me to try describing Huntington’s Disease (HD).

In this poem, apart from wanting to note society’s general ignorance around the illness, I wanted to highlight even those with HD in their families can try to hide from accepting it exists and the 50% chance of inheriting.

Denial is actually a big part of living with HD and there is a big problem with people not knowing the risks of passing on HD to their children and being given the opportunity to make life changes before it is too late.

A love poem.