It was a cold and foggy morning, just before the sun would begin to ascend in the sky and start to slowly burn away the misty vapor that encompassed everything in a murky haze. While neighbors slept soundly in their warm beds, completely unaware of what was lurking in the dark fog, creeping ever nearer to my home. By the unholy hour of seven o'clock in the morning, before the sun's rays had struck over the horizon and as the darkness continued to cling to the cold blanket of foggy mist a rattling tapping was heard on my metal screen door. I knew it had come for me. Through the darkness, the fog, and the unholy hour it came and my defenses were not strong enough to even attempt a counter attack. With a groan and a deep breath, I flung open the heavy metal interior door to reveal one perky vampire dressed in Old Navy Fleece standing outside my door. Vampires should never be perky, let alone at seven o'clock in the morning but apparently she had not read the Vampire Handbook. This might explain why she was eagerly working as dawn approached instead of in the full coverage of the darkness of night - she had not yet read the fine print of her alternative lifestyle. I invited her in, since everyone knows a vampire can not enter a dwelling without an invitation from a living human being who does not seek blood for a living. Her hands were as cold as ice as she decided which vein in my arm would provide the best access for the snack sized tubes of blood that she needed to collect to ship off to the central laboratory for investigation into my human genetic structure. I think perhaps one small tube is saved and allowed to age like fine wine for taste testings much as we perform wine testings. As she slid the gardenhone, um needle, into my arm I think I caught a flash of fang glimmering in her grin as she watched my blood quickly fill up the tubes. Ruthless vampires. With a square of gauze and a bandaid, guaranteed to cause a rash as I am as allergic to medical adhesives as vampires are to garlic, she was finished. So now my blood will be intrusted to the vampire couriers of FedEx and I can go back to sleep for a while since it is still dark outside! The results of the genetic testing on the blood collected will more than likely take a while, as the nerds try to separate out the specificly identified genetic markers to see if I possess any of them, and I am just thankful that the sphincters at the insurance company have agreed that these highly expensive tests are indeed covered and medically necessary. Vampires and nerds and Sphincters, Oh My!

Last night the dysautonomia decided to remind me just how much power it possesses over my ability to function at the most basic of levels. I had one of my most severe "crashes" in recent memory, and most dramatic in terms of onset. The headache had been nagging at me for a while, but given that I have horrendous migraines that without high dose medication would be a daily torment I did not pay much attention to it. It did not even warrant tylenol let alone my pain medication. Then my temperature regulation went haywire, but that was easy to accommodate by changing into a summer shirt and boxer shorts. I was laying in bed listening to music and relaxing when in under a minute my body crashed. My headache escalated from a tolerable "2-3" on that stupid pain scale to a torturous "7-8", I became intensely nauseous, my vision began to fade out as my body prepared to lose consciousness, and I began to violently tremor. I had to fight through the head spinning, vision fading near unconsciousness to turn off the music that had become torture, to go get my blue barf bucket, and to grab an ice pack and water bottle. Those were the longest two minutes. Then all I could do was force down a double dose of antinausea medication and my pain medication, try (and fail) to eat something with salt to help bring up my blood pressure, sip on water, and lay absolutely flat and still while praying desperately. I could not sit up without the risk of losing consciousness, I could not move without risking vomiting violently (and then losing the medication I had struggled to get in to me), and my lower extremeties felt as if they weighed three times more than normal. I was hot and tremoring primarily in my legs. In other words for a good two hours I was miserable. Then finally the medication and liquids and laying flat and still all caught up and I managed to fall asleep. This morning I still have a bit of a headache, am exhausted, and my legs are sore but I am feeling so much better than last night. I hate these reminders of just how powerful this monster is and how it can take me from feeling decent to feeling dangerously awful in no time at all. With little to no warning it can shut down my body and hold me prisoner until it decides to release me. I have to just keep on living, because I refuse to live in fear of this monster, but it is like living with a shadow over at least a part of you or a nagging awareness that at any moment even the best day could crash down around you. This is my monster, and we are inseperable until a cure is found, so we face the world together - and sometimes he behaves and sometimes he rages but never do I surrender to him and let him live my life.

It is pretty rare for a movie to hold my attention from beginning to end and actually have characters that I relate to on a personal level. This is especially true after the past year of dealing with this illness and growing to detest most of television and movies after spending hour upon countless hour too sick to do anything other than half watch the glowing box of mind numbing pointlessness. So when I write that I watched a movie today from beginning to end, and even paused it when I needed to answer the phone or force myself to drink something, that is saying something very powerful about the movie. I watched "The Cake Eaters", a movie I had never heard of before comng across it on Showtime. It is about a teenage girl with Friedreich's Ataxia, which they portray as a terminal illness. She is basically used as a tool for her mother (who can not see her as anything more than her disease) to gain attention as an artist, she is an outsider because to her healthy peers she is a "freak", and she wants to find someone to have sex with her before she dies because she is certain no one could ever love her. I am doing the movie an injustice in condensing it this way, but trying to summarize the emotional plot is difficult. I could completely relate to the girl in the movie because I have felt my entire life like "an other", and for years like I was somehow "less than" because I was born with a body that did not work according to factory specifications. I remember those years as a teenager wanting desperately and working so hard to hide the differences, the toll it took fighting to not allow anyone to see more of the monsters in my life than was absolutely mandatory. I have also felt like at times people have used me as a prop to garnish attention for themselves or been unable to see me as anything other than my disability. That feeling of exploitation, of being made inhuman and into nothing more than a diagnosis is something you never forget and that you rage against even if you rage silently inside. Most of all I related to her fears of never knowing love and not having enough time in life. I am all too aware that it is going to require someone beyond the definition of incredible to be willing to risk loving me, to see beyond all of the brokenness to see the whole person that I am beneath the surface, and to choose to enter the chaos that is my life. Whether or not such a creature exists is a puzzle to me.
Yet my biggest relation to the film was the sense of urgency, the sense of needing to live now because time seemed to be so elusive and so flimsy, like a vapor fading in the sunrise. I have a relatively creative and imaginative spirit, and I can see the possibilities where others see only the impossible. So it has always been frightening to me that in my own life I am unable to imagine myself growing old. I want to imagine it, I want to spread out my life like a time line and laugh at the little old lady with gray curly hair sitting in her rocking chair but I don't see her. When I think of my life and imagine it, when I dream of the future, it all becomes a haze around middle age and I can go no further. It is truly impossible for me to imagine growing old. This creates a sense of urgency in my own life, the need to live in every moment and to not waste this gift of life on the inconsequential things because I too can not sense a life that stretches into enough tomorrows to feel comfortable. I probably sound morbid and overly dramatic, like I am trying to work this thing for all I can, but anyone who knows me knows that I very rarely reveal anything other than the lighter side of this journey. I protect those that I love from the harder aspects, from the monsters that sometimes torment me at night and the harsh realities that have settled into the core of my being years and years ago. I don't waste time feeling sorry for myself too often because that is time I can not get back, and that time is a precious commodity. I am just processing all of these thoughts and emotions that arose from this amazing movie and seeing so much of what I have experienced - in terms of emotions and such- portrayed so incredibly. When I go to sleep tonight and dream of any countless dreams, I wish it would be dreams of growing old and rocking chairs and gray hairs. I wish I could even just imagine.

 I'm Alive Kenny Chesney with Dave Matthews


So damn easy to say that life's so hard
Everybody's got their share of battle scars
As for me I'd like to thank my lucky stars that
I'm alive and well

It'd be easy to add up all the pain
And all the dreams you've sat and watch go up in flames
Dwell on the wreckage as it smolders in the rain
But not me... I'm alive

And today you know that's good enough for me
Breathing in and out's a blessing can't you see
Today's the first day of the rest of my life
And I'm alive and well
I'm alive and well

Stars are dancin' on the water here tonight
It's good for the soul when there's not a soul in sight
This motor's caught its wind and brought me back to life
Now I'm alive and well

And today you know that's good enough for me
Breathing in and out's a blessing can't you see
Today's the first day of the rest of my life
Now I'm alive and well
Yeah I'm alive and well

Life isn't fair. It's just fairer than death, that's all.

William Goldman, "The Princess Bride"

We are a generation of entitlement, a generation that believes that just because we exist we are automatically entitled to a life that meets some arbitrary definition of "fairness" and "justice". Last time I checked, my birth certificate did not come with any warranty or life time guarantee. There were no promises made, no refunds or exchanges offered, and no manufacturers warranty covering any part of the product.  This is life, not a lifetime movie in which everything works out hapily ever after once you use the required number of kleenex for those appropriately emotional moments, moments that are acceptable because you know the end will always be positive. Reality is not a movie of the week. You take what you are given and you have two choices. You can demand that you receive something else, that you exchange or get a refund of sorts and complain bitterly about the injustices of having not received all that you feel entitled to or you can suck it up and deal, living life as it happens and appreciating the fact that in all honesty we are entitled to nothing. The world owes us nothing but we tend to demand an awful lot from it, thinking we are somehow special and set apart. I am frequently told that somehow the way that I live my life is courageous and brave or that I am doing something extraordinary in how I am dealing with all that has happened in my life. I don't see it that way. I never signed up for this, I just happened to receive this body with all of its genetic misspellings and malfunctions. I can waste my life yelling that it is unfair, but that will change nothing. It will not undo what does not work right in my body and it will not guarantee me more time to experience being alive; it will rob me of precious time to treasure life and to make the most out of every single moment. I refuse to allow the things that went wrong to define me or to limit me or to prevent me from living my life. I only have this life and there are no guarantees or refunds or warrantees or exchanges and I do not feel that I am somehow so special that I am entitled to a life set apart from the realities of the world. Sure, it absolutely sucks at times and I get frustrated and overwhelmed and angry. Then I have a good cry if necessary and suck it up and deal because I am still so blessed. This is my life, and I can do nothing other than live it the best way I know how. I don't see that as anything special or brave or courageous. It is just ordinary me living the life I have been given and refusing to let a moment be wasted on false senses of entitlement or pity when they could be spent in joy and celebration and hope and wonder. I can dance and laugh and sing in the rain just as easily as I can in the bright sunshine, and puddle stomping is grand fun.

I have been pushing myself for the past two weeks or so, with my trip to Virginia and then having to immediately jump back in to my crazy life of medical appointments and such upon my return. While in Virginia I was smart enough to know when I needed to rest and not be too embarrassed to admit that I needed extra rest. Had I been with anyone else I would have kept my guard up and acted like I felt fine, but the friends I was with have seen me at my absolute worst and been there for me unconditionally so I trust them with the good, bad, and ugly of the realities of my life. Something - be it the delightful dysautonomia, the pleasant progressive spastic paraparesis/paraplegia, the lovely lupus, or a fun new friend - is slowly but steadily draining me of energy. Each day I find that I have just a little less energy than the day before and that I require a slightly longer (and I mean I am resting/sleeping for hours in the afternoon and evening) rest each day. It is like a giant tug of war with a monster in my body and I am sliding ever so slowly through muck and slime, unable to get traction. I hate when that happens! Besides, the monster is a bully with a serious attitude problem and he is interfering with my style here! I need to find some high octane fuel to help me yank that rope and send the monster flying into the giant pit of mire and muck and break this pattern of slip sliding away. It is coming up on holiday season again, and I refuse to be sick again this year!! I missed every single holiday last winter because I was so sick, and I want to make up for it this year. Starting with Halloween and going straight through St. Patrick's Day.  I want to celebrate life, hope, renewal, family, friends, love, memories, and all of the blessings in my life. I want to celebrate with the people who have been there for me, who believe in me, who have made this journey less lonesome and frightening and brought laughter and joy to it. I refuse to spend another season of celebration feeling awful, with no energy, and not myself. This is one battle I will not lose.

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