by Jan Blaustone
Physical health can be out of our control, but attitude is of our own choosing. Meet four people who took an “I’m going to do this” attitude when confronted by health limitations that ended their livelihoods. By using the strength and power of positive thinking, these four successfully transitioned into new satisfying careers.
Helena Madsen’s diagnosis of limb-girdle muscular dystrophy at age 17 was by chance. Assuming her fatigue was due to a viral infection, her doctor ordered a blood panel only to discover elevated liver enzymes, leading to her LGMD diagnosis. Having few symptoms of her neuromuscular disease, she spent much of her years to follow “in denial” and simply carried on with her life.
After college, and in her thirteen years traveling the country for a busy insurance company, her 20s began to feel more like her 40s.
“Here I was,” says Madsen, of
Gilberts, Ill., “late-20s, single with my own apartment, very active in my church and enduring lots and lots of traveling for my job, and I felt tired, really tired.” It was then the light came on. Her muscular dystrophy had arrived. “It was just too fast a pace for me and I didn’t want to do it anymore.”
At that moment, Madsen became a strategic planner of her life. She eliminated the traveling aspect at work by entering their corporate training program, and becoming more involved in her church’s care ministries. Her church leadership role concentrated on volunteering as a “lay coun- selor.” Helena Madsen
“Lay counseling is befriending someone in need where you walk with them through various aspects of their life,” she explains. “It’s not a substitute for professional counseling but rather a complement to it, and I love it. I discovered a different life purpose and began pursuing it as a possible career with the attitude of ‘I’m going to do this!’”
Madsen enrolled in a counseling program for her master’s degree at Northeastern Illinois University, going to school at night while working full time during the day for three-and-a-half years.
“When you have a goal and something to work for, it becomes very motivating,” says Madsen. “It has proved to be one of the best decisions I’ve ever made.”
Madsen now counsels patients with chronic illnesses in her own private practice and works part time counseling students at Chicago’s community colleges.
“I fought my diagnosis for years,” she says. “I didn’t want to be different. I wanted to fit into a perfect-looking world and I told no one of my diagnosis. I learned there is such shame attached to disability, but you can’t embrace yourself if you are hiding the truth, and you must embrace yourself to progress.
“If I was never diagnosed with muscular dystrophy, if I hadn’t experienced so many ‘mini-losses’ along the way with this progressive disease, my career that I love may never have happened.”
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