Tye'd and True: June 2025

I’m Tye Martin, and I’m the new Board Chair of Laughing at My Nightmare (LAMN)! It’s an honor to step into this role and I’m thrilled to get to work alongside Shane (founder and president) and Sarah Burcaw (cofounder and vice president). This is the first entry for a new blog series called “Tye’d and True” which will feature real stories from my life with Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy starting with how I began working with LAMN!

I first came across LAMN when I was finishing up my PhD in biomedical engineering. Like many before, I saw the fantastic feature YouTube on Shane, posted by Rainn Wilson (fun fact: my middle name is actually Dwight). Soon after, I had to dig into Shane’s book Strangers Assume My Girlfriend Is My Nurse, and so much of it hit home. 

Then came my worst “nightmare” in the fall of 2021. My gallbladder went septic and forced me to hit pause and completely reset my life. It led to huge changes, including losing the ability to talk, becoming, receiving a tracheostomy, and severe progression of overall muscle weakness. With the help of my friends, family, and doctors I fought back. I got to return home after two months in intensive care. 

As I healed physically, I began to focus on my mental state and decided to explore social media partly to get reconnected, and of course, to scroll some reels for laughing purposes. 😅 What I didn’t expect to find was the huge disability community on Instagram! Sure, I thought I could meet others with similar neuromuscular diseases, but I also met people from everywhere in the disability community! There were disabled athletes, doctors, moms, siblings, folks overseas, policymakers, nonprofits, wheelchair companies and others! 

As I found more disability activity on social media, I had a gut feeling to get involved with organizations dedicated to helping the disability community. I decided to apply to join the LAMN board. The more I learned about what the team was doing, the more I felt drawn in. LAMN didn’t just talk the talk—they provided aid to help people with disabilities on a daily basis. From giving out laptops and assistive devices to helping people access wheelchair sports, and even providing scholarships for disabled students, the mission really spoke to me!

Shane and Sarah bring their lived experiences to the table in a way that’s honest, meaningful, and totally unpretentious. And they use humor that is authentic with a pinch of sarcasm on occasion (which I love) to deal with the harder parts of disability life. 

I’m so grateful to be part of the LAMN team and can’t wait to see where we go next.

Let’s keep laughing through the chaos because it really does help!

– Tye

Tye Martin, PhD and LAMN Board Chair