The breeze caressing her face.

The sound of palm leaves brushing up against each other.

And the sight of a blue sky.

These are the everyday happenings that Rosa Diaz, 52, takes in from her bedroom window. For 12 years she has had trouble moving from the neck down, except for her hands and feet. Most of her time is spent in bed next to a window that opens to a grassy swale between apartment buildings.

In her room she faces a framed poster of Vincent Van Gogh’s A Starry Night. A body-length mirror is in one corner and a television is in another next to an oscillating fan. She holds her head up with her hand by bending her arm on an over-bed table.

“I feel very lonely,” said Diaz, whose family nicknamed her Chachi. “Before this happened to me I didn’t appreciate the small things, like the sun rising or the gardenia smell the wind sometimes brings in.”

At 37, less than two years after marrying the man of her dreams, Diaz developed a disease that gradually caused her muscles to weaken. Within three years, she couldn’t walk.

The disease, polymyositis, is rare and its cause is unknown. It is a chronic inflammatory muscle disease that weakens skeletal muscles. Diaz said that two or three people have it in Miami but she’s been able to reach many more through online communities when her niece lends her a laptop.

Lizzette Puig is social worker for Miami-Dade County’s Disability Service and Independent Living program. She oversees Diaz’s care and makes sure she makes use of local and state programs that will help her to live independently.

“Rosa used to work and provide for herself. Now she is bedridden with no window to the world or outside community,” said Puig. “She is still mentally healthy, and a laptop will help her feel better and avoid depression.”

Nestor Diaz, her husband, has never left her side. But the couple never had children — a reality that overwhelms Rosa with tears. “This disease took my life away. I haven’t been able to be a wife. I will never know what it is like to be a mother,” said Rosa.

With the help of Puig and an aide that comes two hours a day five times a week, Nestor has managed to keep her out of a nursing home.The aide bathes Rosa in her bed once a day and does household chores that include food shopping and folding clothes. Nestor, who is unemployed, takes care of the rest.

“At first friends and family came to visit, keep me company. But after 12 years people forget or move on. Coming here and seeing me like this must be difficult for them,” said Rosa, who worked in Mercy Hospital as an admissions supervisor for several years.

The couple lives in an apartment complex in the fringes of Doral on $700 a month. Adult pampers alone run the couple $80 for a box of 72, and Rosa needs to be changed four times a day. Their car isn’t big enough to accommodate Rosa’s special needs and their home air-conditioner is broken.

When Rosa first lost the ability to walk, the couple looked everywhere for a cure. Rosa tried Chinese herbs and acupuncture. She tried water therapy that helped her exercise her weakened muscles in the buoyancy water provides. The latter helped so much that the couple took a home equity loan out for $20,000 to pay for the treatments that Rosa said cost as much as $625 for a half-hour. The money soon ran out.

Working is a catch 22 for Nestor. “She is like my big baby,” said Nestor, while tenderly looking at Rosa. On one occasion Rosa fell off her bed and spent hours curled up in a corner before Nestor came home from a handyman job.

“I can work and pay someone to take care of her or take care of her myself,” said Nestor, who recently graduated from an air-conditioner and refrigeration repair program. “Either way we still have no extra money.”