Chris Buhl's Story

Chris Buhl: Well, the muscular dystrophy that both my brother and I deal with, I was diagnosed when I was nine years old. It really didn’t start to show for me until I was about five or six. So it was really quite a surprise. And then we went to a lot of doctors. It was a big challenge, big surprise to have that diagnosis. and to have things continually changing. And when I was 14, I got my first guitar, electric guitar, which I was just thrilled about. When I was 18, I graduated high school, went to college. I went to Southwest State in Marshall, Minnesota. Got my degree in speech communication, radio and TV. I actually did an internship at a TV station in Sioux Falls, South Dakota.

They offered me a job which I took and I lived and worked in Sioux Falls for seven years. Realizing that I was getting to a point that I needed more help, found out that the ASI services were on site and that there’s somebody here 24 hours a day and being set up, built for accessibility, was a huge thing for me, of course. I really liked the building. It was built real wisely with the way that they have nice wide doors and low countertops and lots of space. Of course, the services that are provided For me, it’s real important to be able to have those different pieces that all fit together and are able to give me as much independence as I can get.

A fear of mine is that those things weren’t available, those services weren’t available to me, how differently things would be, how much things would change, and I don’t think that there would be much positive change from it.