Life, Derailed

The weeks are passing and I am getting no better.

The pain with every movement is excruciating. I am using a walker or a wheelchair to get around. I am banging against the walls of a broken body, trapped in immobility.

My parents start watching my son more frequently. My husband starts falling behind in his work. I am growing increasingly frustrated.

I am harboring adamant hope that the right doctor will figure out what’s wrong with me, give me the correct prescription or adjustment, and then everything will be normal again. But why is it taking so long? 

In the meantime, I’m missing out on my life with regularity. 

 



After months of misdiagnosis and severe immobility - months of terrible - I am diagnosed with Ankylosing Spondylitis, or "something resembling it."

Spondylitis is an autoimmune disease that causes chronic inflammation of joints. What I hear is: there is no end. There is no cure.

Confused and in disbelief, I am reduced to retching sobs many, many times over the coming weeks. I don't believe the real ailment has been found but am also losing hope that I will ever be set back onto the tracks of a normal life again.
I see my everything as hindered with no end... Missed walks, hikes or exercise of any kind, attractiveness hindered by an awkward gait, the potential inability to have and take care of a second child...

* * *

I learn to give myself weekly injections of the drug Enbrel and do gain immediate relief from them. I do my best to move ahead and accept my lot, but the disbelief never goes away. I still think I haven’t seen the doctor yet who will get this right - who will return me to the normal I had always known.