At 17, when Sherry Gervacio nurtured dreams of becoming a doctor, she became a patient.

Gervacio's body started to fail, one limb at a time, as she succumbed to a rare form of muscular dystrophy.

The illness she suffered would steal her ability to walk. It rendered her lungs powerless, made them slaves to a machine that keeps Gervacio breathing with a hiss every few seconds.

It reduced her voice to a trace of a whisper.

And when she enrolled at Kapi'olani Community College, her mother at her side to answer questions on her behalf, it ended her education before she could finish.

But here is the secret that Gervacio, now 36, wants the world to know: Try as it might, this ugly illness could not claim her power to dream. In fact, it turned her into a poet.

Gervacio's first book of poems, "Journey of My Heart," was released in February. The collection took 14 years to realize.

In her tiny room on the third floor of Island Nursing Home, the fingers of Gervacio's left hand — that's her good one — flew across a keyboard on her lap in an effort to explain this. When she hit "enter," a special computer program turned her message into a flat, robotic voice.

"I am a fighter," Gervacio said.

Her computer, which sits on the floor next to her hospital bed, gives Gervacio the ability to communicate. Because she can still type with one hand, it allows her to write, send e-mail, explore the World Wide Web and control online TV channels. A 20-inch monitor hangs in front of her, attached to a flexible metal arm that's similar to a swing-arm desk lamp.

Gervacio included 33 poems in her book, which was illustrated by Tammy Yee, and has written another 100 poems that she hopes to use in future books.

"Journey of My Heart" addresses Gervacio's thoughts on family, fear and faith. She remembers the life she had before her illness locked her life inside a broken body. She reflects on dashed hopes and the gift of her mother's love.

"This book means a lot to me," she explained in an e-mail. "It is the first thing I have accomplished on my own since I have become sick. I hope others will get inspired and learn by reading my book."

Gervacio was a senior at Moanalua High School in November 1988 when she collapsed from cardiac and respiratory arrest. She was diagnosed with reducing body myopathy and spent six months at Tripler Army Medical Center. At the time, there were only eight similar cases diagnosed in the world, and a long-term prognosis was not clear. It still isn't.

Aided by a tutor, she graduated from high school, but the illness was fast taking its toll. Because breathing had become nearly impossible, she needed a tracheotomy and lost her ability to talk. Within a year, she went from walking with a cane to life in a wheelchair.

"When I first got sick, I was depressed most of the time," she said. "I don't show my feelings. I usually keep everything bottled up inside me. That is when I started writing poetry. Writing poetry helped me. It helped me understand myself more and accept my illness."

CONSTANT COMPANION

Gervacio's almost constant companion through the course of her illness has been her mother, Matea Gervacio.

"It's been very difficult," said Matea Gervacio, 67. "Sometimes I think: What's the cause? Am I to blame? It was very hard. Everything changed in our life."

Matea Gervacio was a guard at Honolulu International Airport when the third of her four children got so sick that she had to become a full-time caregiver. It was only last fall, when Matea Gervacio's own health problems overwhelmed her, that she moved her daughter from their Salt Lake home to the nursing home.

She's there every day, though, and sometimes spends the night.

Mother and daughter began their search for a publisher in 2002, the same time that Sherry Gervacio e-mailed Yee, asking if she could illustrate the book.

Yee, a Kane'ohe mother of two and an author, was moved by Gervacio's poems but concerned because no one had agreed to publish them.

"It was something that she really wanted and something her mother really wanted to do for her," Yee said. "This was her only avenue of expression. Writing. And this was all that she wanted. It was her one chance, her dream, and if she was my child, I would do everything in my power to help her."

Yee discovered a woman deprived of life's milestones yet possessed with a sense of honesty. This was not a bitter or cynical woman who poured her feelings onto the page, she said.

"It was hard for me, though," Yee said. "It was a little depressing at times. It was difficult to do the illustrations, at times, for me, personally. I guess what kept me going is that in a lot of her poems, there is hope."

And Yee worried that something would happen to Gervacio, that the illness would leave her too sick to complete the project — or worse, kill her.

'DREAMS DO COME TRUE'

With no bites from a publisher, Matea and Sherry Gervacio formed M&S Creative. Their friend, computer consultant Mel Nakahara, designed the pages for free, and Matea Gervacio spent $5,000 to print the book last fall in the Philippines.

They are marketing it through e-mail requests and hope that Borders Books & Music will agree to sell the book in its Hawai'i stores.

They have already given away about half of the 1,000 copies printed. More than anything, they want people to read the poems. But Matea Gervacio herself doesn't find it easy to get through the book.

"It's her life," she said. "All the things she can express are through writing. She cannot say it to me straight, only through writing. Even now, I can't read it all. I start crying."

A few weeks after the book was released, an infection sent Sherry Gervacio to the intensive care unit at Tripler. She gathered relatives around her — parents, siblings, aunties, cousins — as doctors gave her a steady dose of antibiotics for 30 days.

"I didn't think she would survive," Matea Gervacio said. "Our doctors at Tripler are all amazed. They said she is a very, very brave young lady. She is a fighter."

That Sherry Gervacio beat the odds shouldn't be a surprise. She lives to be an inspiration.

"Dreams do come true with hard work and perseverance," she wrote in an e-mail. "With the love and support of my family, especially my mom, I never gave up hope and fought to live."

Reach Mike Gordon at mgordon@honoluluadvertiser.com.