I find it fascinating after years and years of having no idea what’s going on in life, how your life story happens almost like a movie before your eyes, and then one day it feels like Shutter Island or Inception, where you were so confused at parts and then slowly everything starts to make sense. When I look back on my life each scene went flawlessly, or not so flawlessly depending on how you look at it, into the next. Just when I thought the movie hit the climax it was still part of the building plot. You’ll see what I mean, but I’ll just start here:
It was the beginning of 2016, I was 19 and had recently decided to move back home after going to the University of Kansas fall after high school. The first semester at Ku ended I realized I didn't want to do nursing as my major anymore and that KU was not for me after dropping my sorority and feeling like I didn't belong at KU.
I was starting at community college when on one day in March 2016 in my statistics class, I started to notice as I was writing that my hand was a little numb and tingly. I thought it was pretty weird but it went away. A week later, I was going down the stairs at home and tripped down the stairs. Once again weird and embarrassing, but I am clumsy. The last thing that made me go to the doctor was my foot would just hurt sometimes, a pain that I had never experienced before. I knew something was up so I went to the doctor and explained about the weird symptoms I was experiencing. I was then diagnosed with… multiple sclerosis? Nope. I was diagnosed with carpal tunnel. She believed it to be from texting too much and prescribed me a wrist splint and to not text as much. So I was on my way. I had carpal tunnel and a texting problem.
That spring break, my family and I went to San Francisco to visit my brother, Ryan. I remember my sister had to put on my necklace because my hands didn’t have the coordination and were too shaky to put the clasp in. I thought that was just living with carpel tunnel at the time.
I loved San Francisco so much that I decided to move out there with my big brother that summer and figure out the rest later. I had my mojo going in San Francisco. At times I was so lonely, but I learned how to have fun with myself. I think being able to enjoy doing activities and have fun by yourself is one of the best traits you can have in life. I didn’t have a car out there, so I used public transportation and walking to get everywhere. Rebecca, my friend out there, was so influential in my personal growth. She gave me tough love when I first moved there and told me I was going to need to figure out public transportation, so I did. She even gave me a job at her law office doing filing in Oakland. I remember her boss asking if I knew how to do filing. In my head, I thought "My whole life has prepared me for this. I had been doing filing for my dad's trucking company since I was probably 12 years old." It felt good to be employed. Rebecca gave me a sense of independence I never had before.
One of my favorite activities out there was going to Whole Foods. Reflecting on why I loved it, the grocery store is a weird sense of community when you are alone in a city. Sad to type but true lol! When I would go to get groceries it felt like a marathon to carry them up the hills all the way home. I thought I just had bad back problems and would try to put on heating pads and stretch all the time to find relief.
After being homesick and tired of always being in pain, I needed to go home and see my family for some comfort. I came back to Kansas and picked up right where I left off. I was still feeling off, yet not knowing the cause. I continued to have horrible back pain, so I decided to go see a chiropractor. The chiropractor did a full evaluation then asked me to walk in a straight line. It then hit me... I couldn’t. I had that bad of balance, coordination, and back pain. My mom noticed the chiropractor's eyes when he saw me walk. He knew something was off, so he sent me to get an x-ray of my back. It showed that everything looked perfectly normal! Everything was still a mystery.
One day before going to work at my dad's company, my mom came into the kitchen while I was eating breakfast with a look of worry in her eyes. My mom began to explain that she thought I had multiple sclerosis. I had no idea what multiple sclerosis was or why she would think that I had it. My mom explained that God revealed to her that I had it the night before and she looked it up on Google and I had the majority of the symptoms. Thankful to the Great Physician (God) for diagnosing me. I was so confused I had never even heard of multiple sclerosis.
We went to our family friend who was a doctor later that day and my mom explained that she thought I had multiple sclerosis. He did a full analysis. I remember being so scared and starting to tear up when I started to realize how many of my motor functions were off. I had a tremor in my hand, my right hand was numb, no coordination, and my foot had a weird pain. The doctor said a brain MRI is the only true way to diagnose. That would be my first MRI, but not my last. The brain scan confirmed…. I had multiple sclerosis.
