Last year, my life changed. I don't mean that I moved houses or broke up with an old lover (dating isn't my forte, anyway, so let's not complicate things). I mean that I got sick. Really sick. Sick to the point of no return – or so it seemed.
When people face tremendous hardships in their lives, they feel the urge to cower and live in denial that the event happened. They panic or try to resume life as it was before it seemed to shatter. They can be so stubborn that they don't notice the scars forming on their feet from the broken glass, and I was the same way. The truth is that, when something catastrophic occurs, whether it be horrible or wonderful, it changes you. And you can't change it back, no matter how much you kick and scream. You have to adapt.
At 19, I was diagnosed with fibromyalgia. It's not a fatal disease, it doesn't require hospitalization, and there's not even a blood test that determines you have it. It's "a diagnosis of exclusion" characterized by widespread pain or muscle tenderness. Being an exclusionary disease means that doctors test you for other illnesses until the majority are eliminated from the list. Dictionary definitions always sound less severe than living with it every day. People experience it differently. Some experience mild pain that is less invasive while others have debilitating spurts of pain that prevent them from doing daily tasks.
Even though some doctors have discovered some ways to check for fibromyalgia, most doctors' offices don't accept them as valid. This is why the road to recovery can be difficult for people who suffer from it. For me, recovery sounded like a pipe dream. I went from hospital to hospital and doctor to doctor for months until I was finally told I have fibromyalgia. The word was anticlimactic, considering I had heard possible diagnoses as severe as multiple sclerosis and as commonplace as knee injuries. The way I managed to cope with fibromyalgia mirrors the way people cope with a death, which makes sense; illnesses can kill – brutally murder, more like – an old version of yourself. As you try to reconcile what life you have left to live, you realize that all of your valuables, your abilities and personality, have been defaced, and you go through the five stages of adapting.
1. Denial and Anger
Even when I was lying on the floor, wincing from a pain shooting down my leg, I would refuse any hand or kind word offered to me, because I didn’t think I needed it.
“I can stand on my own, thank you very much!” I yelled, pushing them away.
At one time, I sat on the bathroom floor for an hour until I finally admitted that I needed help. I would talk to my body and tell it to fix itself, to stop letting me get stuck in stairwells and to act how it has always acted: healthy! I kept spewing out "should"s like
“I should be able to get out of bed on my own,” and “I shouldn’t need a wheelchair to get to class.”
I was mean to a lot of people who had only wanted to help. Should is a pointless word when you can’t change the situation. I shouldn’t have had limited mobility and intense pain, but I did, and saying that it shouldn’t have happened is like saying it shouldn’t be raining. No one can control the weather, and you can’t do a whole lot about your bodies, either.
2. Bargaining and Depression
I found myself saying that “I only fell twice today!” as a way of explaining how I was. My old idea of a bad day became a daydream, and I started hoping for more of them. I bargained with myself, telling myself that if I made it up two more stairs, that means I will be able to make it to my room. I pushed myself harder than I ever had, and it only made my situation worse. When the wheelchair was introduced, though, I felt the weight of every eye on the campus judging me, thinking less of me for being an inconvenience to the world. I was only inconveniencing myself, but the mind can play hurtful tricks on you. I stopped speaking to people and tried to seclude myself thinking that I’d be doing everyone a favor by disappearing.
3. Acceptance
Today, only a year has passed, and I still have a lot to learn, but I know that I have come a long way. I can joke about aspects of my life that used to bring me to tears. I’m still on the road to recovery, but I was able to adjust to my medicine and limitations and change my old life habits to mesh better with my new ones. I’m walking, talking, and laughing again. The best advice I can give is to keep doing what you love, if you’re able, but know that, if you’re unable, there’s a whole world of new things to try. Events can shake your world, but they don't shatter your world unless you let them. Your new life goes on, and it is possible to catch it.
