WoW documentary The Remarkable Life of Ibelin lit a fire under Martin Hywood, a charity worker with a similar condition who's raised over £300,000 since his diagnosis
I recently had the opportunity to attend a roundtable discussion around The Remarkable Life of Ibelin, hosted by the charity Muscular Dystrophy UK. In case you're unfamiliar, the documentary centers around WoW player Mats Steen, who died in 2014 due to Duchenne muscular dystrophy, a muscle wasting condition with a life expectancy of around 20 to 30 years.
It's an emotional journey to watch, to be sure, but I was also deeply impacted by the speakers at the roundtable itself, all of which found a deep connection to the story and the way it was told. I had a follow-up chat with Martin Hywood of Muscular Dystrophy UK, who was diagnosed with limb-Girdle muscular dystrophy in 1996, and has raised a staggering £300,000 for research into conditions like his over the course of his life.
«I was diagnosed over 25 years ago, and I was fed up, I was so angry, and I was like, in a position of: 'Why me, why has this happened to me?' I wanted to be a car mechanic. I left school at 15. I went back for my exams, but that was that … I was told to sort of give up the career, because after going from pillar to post with about four different hospitals, I eventually got this diagnosis.
»I was all fed up," Hywood explains. «I didn't want to know anybody living with muscular dystrophy. I didn't want a charity or anything to do with it. But I knew I needed to change my whole career.» What follows is a pretty staggering set of jobs—Hywood went on to work for Volkswagen, became an administrator at an IT company he later bought, had a stint in pharma, and more.
«My wife was noticing children getting diagnosed, which was devastating … so we started fundraising. I was so lucky. It was like the Midas touch. Everywhere I went and spoke about it. People would get in touch, like the Kaiser Chiefs and Jon Richardson from 8 out of 10 cats … All these people just started getting in touch and said, 'How can I help?' … So, yeah, so that's all these little events we put on. Accumulated to £300,000 so far.»
Read more on pcgamer.com
