DICK JOHNSON WELCOMES QUESTIONS FROM READERS

A pair of medical conditions has sent numismatic author Dick Johnson to rehabilitate at a Connecticut Hospital in recent months. His most serious condition is Inclusion Body Myositis -- called I.B.M. for short -- which causes muscle cells to deteriorate in the legs and other locations in the body. IBM is a rare condition with perhaps less than 500 patients in Connecticut. His doctor states Dick is his oldest living patient with IBM.

He has had this condition for more than 5 decades. For the first 28 years he was diagnosed as Peripheral Neuropathy as his doctor did not recognize the rare medical condition. It was only when he found a doctor specializing in IBM that he was diagnosed correctly in 2008.

Patients with IBM normally lose two percent of their muscle mass per year. Dick's started with weakness in the legs in the 1980's and progressed to occasional falling which led to using a wheelchair for mobility by 2008. More recently, Dick's IBM condition has spread to the muscles in his throat. Neither conditions are life threatening and his muscle loss has leveled off.

Per Dick's wife Shirley, he spends the bulk of his time reading. Dick will be 89 in August and would welcome e-mails from old friends and new authors with questions on the technology of how coins and medals are made. He is an authority on this subject, having written An Encyclopedia of Coin and Medal Technology. Dick's e-mail address is dick.johnson@snet.net.

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