When I turned 25 MY life was turned upside down. Leading up to my birthdays, historically, I give a good month count down. When I was due to turn 25, 13 years ago now, I felt like the ships were at half mast… my life was half over… WHAT WAS I DOING WITH MY LIFE?! I had one foot in the grave and I was going nowhere.
Joke was on me. It was on me because you know what really did happen? I got diagnosed with multiple sclerosis after making turning 25 a huge Greek tragedy. It really did a number on me about how I felt about being loveable to someone else(this plays into my marriage and getting involved in said relationship at all). Knowing that everyday you don’t know how it could be; it gives you a weird view on the world, sometimes not for the better.
When I was was 25 I was really going nowhere. I had started college and stopped once at that point. I was working 2 fulltime jobs, had a kindergardener and trying to figure out what to do with my life. I was really going nowhere fast. I wasn’t unhappy, but I was lacking any real substance in my life. I had a job as a waitress with some great regulars and worked as a nursing assistant. I was treading water. Nothing was bad, but nothing was good. My child was healthy. We had a roof over out head. I was happy enough.
For my 25th birthday a group of friends and I went to see Wicked in the city. I woke up the day after my birthday and I could not get out of bed. Had I known better, I would have thought I was hungover, but I had not had a drop to drink the night before. I had a searing pain behind my left eye, vertigo and if I was up I couldn’t get down and vice versa. I thought it would pass. It didn’t. This lasted for weeks. I kept trudging through. I didn’t have insurance, I couldn’t bear the thought of going to the hospital and being stuck with a bill. I kept telling myself there was nothing wrong with me and that I was somehow making it up.
I got in trouble waitressing more than once for dropping trays of food in the alley(kitchen) and in the dining room. I would get these boughts of extreme dizziness where I felt like the room and my feet were spinning in opposite directions. Naturally, I would always be carrying a tray when these spells hit. The General Manager brought me in the office and lectured me that I had to get my shit together or he was going to have to fire me.
At work at the hospital one night while trying to wash up a patient, I fell down with the same type of sitiation. I remember laying on the floor under the hospital bed, willing myself to be able to get up and ignore the dizziness. I was able to bounce back up. Somehow, by some miracle, the nurse didn’t notice. She actually lectured me for not holding the patient up enough while washing them. I apologized and thanked my lucky stars she didn’t noticed.
6 weeks after it all started, my lucky ran out. I fell down in the shower at home and I couldn’t get up. I lay in the shower stall, naked and pitiful thinking what a demise I was going to have. Drowning in a shower stall. Closing my eyes didn’t help the vertigo. I was on the floor long enough that the hot water ran out. Eventually, I was able to get up and pull myself up by the towel bar. I gathered myself together enough to sit and think. I needed to do something about my issue. I was able to get a same day appointment with my eye doctor. Within a week I had an unofficial diagnosis of multiple sclerosis. Opthamolgist’s can’t diagnose you with multiple sclerosis, only neurologists can. Due to the area we live in, I was not able to get in with one for another 4 weeks. Prior to my appointment with them, I suddenly felt better. As quickly as the whole thing came on, it was gone.
I went into my apppointment to the neurolgist with a certain aloofness about myself. I was fine; I didn’t need to do anything, I was all better. I didn’t quite understand the severity of it and that it was a lifelong disease that needed treatment. I had read everything I could, but I missed the hard facts. I had to be on medicine for the rest of my life and the only thing available was injectable medications? I wasn’t doing that. There had to be something else…. I think they call that DENIAL. (Similar to what I am going through about my marriage being over right now) I demanded a second opinion.
I got what I asked for. A second opinion. The first thing that second neurolgist told me was that I should apply for disability. I was dumbfounded. I was TWNETY FIVE years old. I was not disbabled and I was not going to be. I was going to prove people wrong. At that moment, I decided I needed to do something with my life. I opted to go on a drug trial for a multiple sclerosis medication, which was an oral capsule. I couldn’t bear the thought of having to give myself an injection. The medical center I had been referred to was about a 2 hour drive from my home. I had a lot of thinking to do on the way home about a lot of things. By the time I got home that night, I had decided I was going to go back to school to get my nursing degree.
Over the next 6 years, I put myself through LPN and RN school. At times, I worked 4 jobs and went to school full time. I applied to schools everywhere in the driveable area to me. I was rejected from school approximately 12 times. I was waitlisted a handful more. It was by no means an easy feat, but I did it.
Throughout all this, I still had a child milling about. They were not at their father’s house while I fell apart, even if I wanted them to be. I put on a strong face. I kept plugging along. I kept smiling. I worked harder. I didn’t always work smarter, but I thought I was at the time. That doctor “challeneged” me by telling me I was going to be disabled and I was not going to hear of it. I just thought I was not going to be a victim. I was going to be better than my multiple sclerosis.
In case it was killing you, the General Manager apologized for threatening to fire when I found out I had multiple sclerosis. He actually got teary eyed and wanted to know how he could help. I had nothing to tell him. I didn’t know how to help myself. We have come completely full circle on that one. I am back in that exact position. Not only do I not know how to help myself, I can’t help myself.
Here I am, 13 years later. My marriage broke me. Not my multiple sclerosis. But you know what broke my marriage? My multiple sclerosis. At least that’s one of the few cryptic things my saint of a husband has told me. My multiple sclerosis and my depression. Both of which were there when he started dating me. Neither popped up during the relationship, let alone the marriage. He knew what he signed up for. Instead of learning how to help and live with it, help me with it, he ran. Ran like the coward he is. Right into the arms of a horrible, ill intended, morally corrupted woman who from day 1 has been using him. But somehow, I keep getting all of the bad press in the break up and the whirlwinds of bad luck.
Never had a white picket fence 