05/27/2026
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Draft: Chapter One Opening
I was twenty-two years old, doing time in the Department of Corrections at Territorial in Canyon City, Colorado, when my own body started betraying me on the yard. I was out there hitting the weights, trying to stay sharp, but something was misfiring. My vision was getting weak. My arms were giving out. I’d be pushing iron, and my right side just couldn't keep up with my left. Eventually, my left side started getting bigger while the right side stayed small. At twenty-two, your body is supposed to be armor, but mine was actively fighting against me. I put in a medical slip, but the prison doctor didn't have a clue what he was looking at.
Instead of answers, I got a change of scenery. They started shipping me back and forth to Denver General and Colorado University. I was walking down sterile, brightly lit hospital hallways wrapped in chains, but honestly, I thought it was pretty cool. I was just a young guy enjoying the trip, happy to be out of my cell for the day. I didn't grasp the gravity of it yet, mostly because nobody bothered to explain the gravity of it to me. When they finally gave it a name—Myasthenia Gravis—they handed me a diagnosis and absolutely nothing else. The only thing I knew about MG was some vague memory of a Denver Bronco who had his thymus removed. It was a new, misunderstood beast. So, I just said to hell with it. I kept working out on the yard, dealing with the slurred speech and the failing vision, until I finally caught parole down to Louisiana. I walked out of that system with a broken nervous system, picked up a tattoo machine, and got to work.
