Shattered Dreams

Four years ago…my life was pretty close to perfect…or so I thought.  Camryn had just turned 3 and I was loving being a mommy!  I had everything I wanted in life…as well as a promising future!  I was writing feature stories for my local paper and dreaming of what my next child might look like.  All I ever wanted in life was to be a mom and have a big family.  That’s it.  Yet, little did I know…my worst nightmare was about to come true.  In May of 2008 I started experiencing strange symptoms.  My left hand felt numb on and off for a couple of weeks, but I wasn’t too alarmed.  I’d always been healthy.  I didn’t even have a doctor.  Birth control and tylenol were the only medications I had ever put in my body.  I had never drank or smoked…I tried to exercise when I could.  But on June 3 of that year, my whole world came crashing down.  I didn’t know what Multiple Sclerosis was.  All I knew was that I was so dizzy I could barely walk, my hearing was very distorted and the left side of my body was numb.  What did it all mean?  When would I get better? Would it get better?  No..no, they told me.  There is no cure…this a life long chronic disease.  You have scars on your brain and every time you relapse they multiply; your symptoms become worse and more intense. There are drugs you can take…in the form of shots.  You will see a neurologist often, have regular MRI’s of your brain, (which, at the time, horrified me.) One moment I was lying in the sun on a beautiful June day, watching my little girl play in her blow up swimming pool.  The next, I was begging my mom to take care of her if they found something bad…if they found something terminal.  I shook from head to toe for months…I couldn’t stop.  The symptoms persisted, I couldn’t drive, take care of camryn or anything normal.  The pain was excruciating.  At times I wanted to die.  The why questions started.  Why had this happened to me?  What had I done to deserve it?  I tried to think…I went to college, got married, had my first child…things were going like they were “supposed” to…the way I had “planned.”  Whoa, wait a minute.  ”planned.”  I’m sure God got a chuckle out of that one.  I honestly couldn’t fathom why?  Yet the most agonizing question of all plagued my mind every second of every day…it still does.  Can I have more children?  When?  How?  Should I? Oh my God.  This wasn’t supposed to happen.  I’m healthy…wait..I’ve never even been sick!  And you’re telling me my body wants to destroy itself and there’s little I can do about it?  I will die with this horrible disease?  I cried every day for months.  I actually remember the last day I cried.  It was sometime in August.  Somehow I knew I had to make this about something other than me.  I was focusing too much on myself…but I knew that it would come later.  For the moment, I needed to worry about getting better so I could take care of my family.  The answers would come soon enough.  And they did.  It has taken years…but they came…and now I know why I hurt every day.  Why I am reminded constantly of my limitations.  What I have lost…yet what I have gained…the precious lessons I have learned.  I will write about them here.  I want to share what I have learned and document it too.  What I used to be so concerned about doesn’t seem to matter so much anymore.  I have been beyond humbled by this disease and blessed because of it.  Does my heart yearn every day for the life I had wanted to live?  Of course!  There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t ache to hold another baby in my arms.  There are times I feel so incredibly sorry for myself…I am still human, you know.  Some days I cannot bare it.  I feel so tortured.  I remind myself constantly of my blessings…and there are so many, I know.  I’m still learning…yet there is so much I have already learned.  I will write about it…here.