The Beginning (Chapter 1)

Disclaimer:  This is a short overview of how things started out.  It will take us forever if we go in detail for EVERYTHING, so we plan to add details as we remember them and as we have time.

Philip and I got married in May of ’08.  That summer I planned to babysit for a family and enjoy my summer with my new husband until I started classes again in August.  About a month after we got married I began to get very tired, but thought that it was just from watching three kiddos.  However, it just got worse.  It got to the point where I would come home after work, take a nap, eat supper, then go to bed again!  Not long after that,  I also began to get nauseous.  I wasn’t sure what was going on, but throwing up certainly made me realize something was wrong.  Soon I began to notice that I was running a fever so I stopped working (didn’t want to get the kids sick) and I decided to stay at home and rest so I could get over whatever it was.  It obviously didn’t work.

I ended up getting so sick that I couldn’t even get off of the couch for days. It was then I decided it was finally time to go to the doctor.  At our first (of many) visit, the doctor was pretty concerned.  I was running out of breath from just talking and I had been quite ill for longer period of time than a normal virus would have taken.  He decided to run lots of tests and we went back a week later to get the results.  I had mono.  This explained everything but the shortness of breath, so he ran more tests.  Everything but the mono test came back normal.  Long story short…mono knocked me down and I was not able to go back to work or doing anything else that summer.  I rested up in hopes that I would be okay to start my first semester of graduate school.

I began school at the end of August (’08).  I was enjoying classes, my clients, supervisors, etc.  Everything was amazing, except for the fact that I couldn’t seem to keep up or ever have enough energy.  I began to have fevers quite a bit.  Eventually I was having fevers a couple of times a week at least.  The entire semester I seemed to get sick often.  I thought it may have been because of being around the kiddos and because my immune system was compromised by mono.  When looking back at my doctor records, I was going to the doctor with something new at least once a month, but usually two to three times a month.  It was getting ridiculous, but there never seemed to be any direct reason for me to think something else was going on besides getting sick a lot and having mono, so I pushed on and finished out my first semester of graduate school.

Our Christmas break was amazing.  It was my first time to not have a job and not be in school at the same time.  I relaxed a lot.  I thought that if I rested and allowed my body to heal completely from all the illness’ I had in the six months before, then I would be healthy for the Spring semester.  Philip and I spent lots of time together and were sad when it was time for me to go back to class.

As soon as I started back to class in January, I realized I was not as healthy as I thought I was.  I started running a fever almost every single day and I became leery about working with clients as a result.  I had no clue what the fevers were from, but I did worry I could give something to others.  Everything started to become a big blur.  I did whatever I had to do, but I was not mentally present at any time.  I was feverish, tired, and out of it.  It all began to frustrate me.  I had always done well in classes and on tests, but I suddenly couldn’t seem to remember anything or think clearly at all.  Less than a month into the semester I began to not be able to sleep.  I was so tired, but i couldn’t sleep more than a couple of hours a night and I was lucky if I got a couple of hours.  Things really seemed to be going downhill, but I honestly wasn’t paying attention to what my body was trying to tell me or how bad things were getting.  I just knew I had to do well in classes and with clients.  However, I wasn’t doing well with either.

I went back to the doctor and he couldn’t find any reason for the fever, memory loss, inability to sleep, or the various other symptoms (there were lots of symptoms I haven’t mentioned, it would take forever!).  I continued trying to get things done for school, but others around me were noticing that my health was getting out of hand.  I thought I had been hiding it well, but I obviously hadn’t.  I remember the last time I was getting clinical hours:  I was at our local Head Start working with groups of kids and I was supposed to be teaching the children seasons, but I am sure I was just confusing them.  I would hold up a pictures of a season and tell them what I thought was the correct season only to find out that I was totally wrong.  I would tell them to point to a certain picture but have the picture faced towards me instead of them  (all they could see was a blank card).

No matter what, I couldn’t seem to snap out of it.  I started slurring words and having word-finding problems, but I tried to hide it.  My supervisor, however, was watching me with my clients and she didn’t buy it.  I was embarrassed, ashamed, and scared.  All of my symptoms increased very fast.  I was slurring my words so much that I just started not talking as much.  My supervisor ended up talking to me about how I was keeping up in school and how my health was.  She recommended me cutting down on clients or stopping them all together.  She let me know that my health was much more important than school.  I have to admit that I didn’t like hearing that at all, because I knew it was the truth and what I needed to do.  I had been in denial about what had gone on until then.  I didn’t want to admit that something was so wrong that I could no longer live my “normal” life.  I thought that surely if I had enough drive I could make it, but I couldn’t.  I ended up dropping all of my clients.

After I began to admit to myself that something was very wrong I suddenly realized that class wasn’t going well either.  My first realization of this was that I had no clue what book went with what class.  I had just been going, sitting though class, and that’s it.  I had no clue what the topics of discussion was about much less what the class itself was suppose to be about.  A while after I realized things were getting worse then Philip began to talk to me about dropping some of my classes.  I fought him like crazy, but I constantly had my supervisor reminding me that my health was more important than school (I am very thankful for her reminders now).  I finally gave in and dropped half of my classes.

I cried for a couple of days afterward.  I was scared because dropping my clients and classes forced me to realize that I was not okay and made me face the truth.  My academics had come before my  health the entire time, but now it had to make a rushed and unwanted transition because whether I wanted it or not, my declining health was taking the front seat.

-Maegan

~ by hopefortheweary on January 11, 2010.