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SMA hasn't gotten in the way of me having a fun marriage

Kyla Pollock is a wife and mother from Garden Grove, California. Her husband, Collin, has SMA type 3, and together they run the barbecue sauce business WheelyQ. She shares about the joy, strength, and beauty she’s found in being married to Collin these past 18 years.

In recognition of Spinal Muscular Atrophy Awareness Month in August, the Faces of SMA campaign features a multimedia series with written essays and video interviews highlighting the real-life experiences of people affected by SMA in their own words. Follow us on Facebook and Instagram for more stories like this, using the hashtag #FacesofSMA, and check here for more.

Transcript

I am married to Collin. We have been married for 18 and a half years. And when we met, Collin was in a wheelchair. So he was very open about his disability, his disease.

While we were engaged, we shifted to me helping him with little things that he would need. And I started to be his caregiver at that time and I’ve never stopped. So I’ve always been his caregiver.

We pivot and we adjust his needs depending on how he’s doing, how he has lost certain abilities. But it’s been a really interesting and fun — we try to laugh about all the things, we try to laugh as much as we can — but it’s been a really exciting, interesting, fun marriage. Because it’s like no day is like the day before.

It’s kind of like a dance that we have. You know, when you’re somebody’s caregiver and you’re their spouse, there is a level of intimacy there that you’re really only gonna get when you’re their caregiver and it’s not always fun. Sometimes gross, but.

There is this incredible thing that we have that I think a lot of typical able-bodied spouses don’t have because they don’t have that reliance and that intimacy in this other way.

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