THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, April 2, 1995 TAG: 9504050131
SECTION: REAL LIFE PAGE: K1 EDITION: FINAL
LENGTH: Short : 32 lines
Until August 1989, life for Alexandra Peck Berger was ``one big chocolate bar.'' As director of public affairs for the Medical College of Hampton Roads, she helped create Operation Smile in 1985. Later, she moved to Washington and New York where she developed medical marketing ventures with the Department of State and major American corporations, and wrote a television documentary.
But Berger, a small woman of 105 pounds, woke up that August morning of 1989 unable to walk or use her arms. Her speech ``sounded as if I had not tongue.'' She was diagnosed as having two forms of muscular dystrophy. For someone already battling lupus, an autoimmune disease, this ``was the crowning blow. I had won the lottery.''
For the past five years, Berger says she had ``fought to stay alive and discovered a perspective that eluded my healthy life.'' Berger, 53, and the mother of two grown daughters, lives in Portsmouth with her husband, Dr. Alexander Berger, and gets around with the help of what she calls ``contraptions'' - canes, a wheelchair and an electric scooter.
``We are the new civil rights of the '90s,'' says Berger, an advocate for the disabled and chronically ill. ``Isn't it time we had a forum?''
Her column, ``The Imperfect Navigator,'' will appear occasionally in Real Life. by CNB