Introduction
You can call me "JoJo." My name is Jose Martynov G. Calora. I was born in 1962 in Ithaca, New York, with congenital deformities in my upper extremities. I have short arms, no elbows, and three fingers on each hand. The technical term is phocomelia. My parents were shocked and saddened when I was born. They did not know what caused my congenital deformities. We had no history of phocomelia in the family. My Dad was pursuing a doctorate at Cornell University, my Mom and two older brothers were with him. A few months after I was born and after my Dad earned his doctorate, we all moved back to the Philippines, where I grew up. In the Philippines, my mother stumbled upon an article in Reader's Digest about thalidomide. After reading the article, she remembered when she was given free sample medication by her physician for nausea from motion sickness. She connected the dots and realized that my deformities may have been due to that free sample medication provided by her phy...