选修7 Unit 1 Live One Day At A Time

MARTY'S STORY

Hi, my name is Marty Fielding and I guess you could say that I am "one in a million " In other words, there are not many people like me. You see, I have a muscle disease which makes me very weak, so I can't run or climb stairs as quickly as other people. In addition, sometimes I am very clumsy and drop things or bump into furniture. Unfortunately, the doctos don't know how to make me better, but I am very outgoing and have learned to adapt to my disability. My motto is: live one day at a time.

Until I was ten years old I was the same as everyone else. I used to climb trees, swim and play football. In fact, I used to dream about playing professional football and possibly representing my country in the World Cup. Then I started to get weaker and weaker, until I could only enjoy football from a bench at the stadium. In the end I went into hospital for medical tests. I stayed there for nearly three months. I think I had at least a billion tests, including one in which they cut out a piece of muscle from my leg and looked at it under a microscope. Even after all that, no one could give my disease a name and it is dfficult to know what the future holds.

One problem is that I don't look any different from other people. So sometimes some children in my primary school would laugh, when I got out of breath after running a short way or had to stop and rest halfway up the stairs. Sometimes, too, I was too weak to go to school so my education uffered. Every time I returned after an absence, I felt stupid because I was behind the others.