~ from the back cover ~

     From a bullied deaf kid, to a lip-reader for the FBI, to the inspiration for a TV series, Sue Thomas' journey has had many high and lows.

     Just when things seem to even, there is a new setback...Multiple Sclerosis. What a strange word!

It took Sue a lifetime to learn to speak; now she has a condition she can't even pronounce! Sue writes, "When I look back on that day when I first walked through the doors of the Neurology Center and saw all the people who had been affected by MS, I simply wanted to run away...and never return."

    The most difficult challenge was the damage to her precious eyes. Her lip-reading skills dramatically affected, Thomas begins slipping into a dark and silent world. As the isolation becomes unbearable Sue has a decision to make. Will she run from it and fight against it, as she fought her silence for the first 30 years, or embrace and learn from it?

     Each day holds new dimensions as Sue learns that the joy of triumph comes through knowing the agony of defeat.

      Using humor and her amazing gift of story-telling, Sue Thomas takes the reader into her world, a world of silence now compounded by the elusive symptoms of MS. Sue has always faced the odds. Profoundly deaf from infancy Sue credits her mother's determination to make her as normal as possible.Years of speech therapy made her a master lip-reader and landed her a job with the FBI. She also knew the disciplines of becoming a champion skater. Now her body is betraying her with mysterious symptoms.

      Sue uses the analogy of a marathon runner to illustrate her journey with an incurable and debilitating disease. SHe chronicles the early symptoms, and the emotional battles with the MS Beast. Her fighting spirit witll not accept defeat and she continies to pursue a life that would be exhausting to any well person. She continues a rigorous speaking agenda, stars in her own TV series, becomes an ambassador for the MS Society, and begins a training program with Service Dogs for people who are physically challenged. There are times when the MS Beast seems to have her in its clutches as she loses her sight, the abiity to walk on her own two feet, and loses control of the simplest body functions.

     Sue knows she could never make the journey alone. She finds encouragement in the lives that come along her side; her nurse, her service dogs, and many other who face each day with physical challenges. Most of all, she credits God who walks along her side to cheer her on, walks before her to pave the way and walks behind her the entire journey in case she needs a swift kick to keep going.

     Sue knows that her greatest acomplishment in life is simply staying in the race.