You'll deserve it.
So here's the thing. Two months ago my foot started hurting. Just a little pain on the ball of my foot. No big deal. I probably banged it up on some rocks getting out of the water. The rocky, volcanic Kona coast is renown for causing all kinds of bruises and cuts.
But two weeks later the pain had grown and spread to a smattering of joints throughout my body. I couldn't blame the rocky coast for my sore, swollen knuckles or painful elbows. The progress of the pain was so fast that it freaked me out. To go from fine-and-dandy to an arthritic 80 year old in a matter of a few weeks was shocking.
Fast forward eight weeks to today. Now almost every joint hurts. My feet and knees cause me significant problems. Walking is painful, sometimes unbearably so. I've caught myself daydreaming about using crutches to help curb the pain.
But what do you do when both feet are killing you? And no, a wheelchair is not an option (yet) unless it involves airports or Disneyland. My fingers are constantly sore, my wrists are weak, my shoulder aches, my ankles are swollen. Fine motor control like buttoning a shirt can be hard or almost impossible some days.
I don't want to get into it all. Suffice to say all this interferes with my life in a serious way. When it this started back in June, two things significantly complicated matters. First, the progression of pain started just a day or two before I went on a six-week trip which would take me to nine different cities in two different countries. Seriously bad timing.
Second, no health insurance.
Talk about crisis. I had a very real health problem and no way to do anything about it. I saw doctors here and there as I traveled and they all said the same thing. I needed extensive tests that I absolutely could not afford. I can't tell you how frustrating that was.
The docs threw around words like lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, Reiter's syndrome, chikungunya (what is that?!) and thousands of dollars worth of testing.
There was disagreement about the cause of my pain.
Auto immune?
Reaction to that dengue fever I had in Thailand?
Not dengue fever but another weird tropical disease?
And there was disagreement about what to do about it.
All the while, I was learning to deal with the implications of an increasingly broken body. Painful feet meant every step hurt. I watched my hobbies fade out of my grasp. No hiking. No running. No biking. No walking.
As things got worse, my concerns over losing my hobbies grew into a more overwhelming worry about my ability to function in daily life. How do I open a sealed package when my fingers can't grasp things? How do I go shopping when I can't walk around the store? How can I make it through a six hour flight when my feet hurt so much?
The first month was the hardest and scariest so far. The transition from healthy to broken was traumatic. I didn't have any coping mechanisms to deal with it, no prior experiences to draw from, no mental discipline not throw myself down the dark, scary road of what-if.
I was all panic. The terrifying idea that I'd live in significant amounts of pain for the rest of my life haunted me.
Thankfully, I've gotten better at steeling my mind against those fears (for the most part). My awesome friend Karisse has been a serious encouragement and helped me learn the art of living one day at a time. I've come to better understand that God never gave us the ability to deal with our entire life-span all at once. He gives us the strength and grace to get through today.
I posted one of my most recent lessons on facebook the other day.
"God knows how to lead us to the point of crisis, and he knows how to lead us through it." We're not promised a life devoid of difficulty and trials but we're offered a life marked by the victory of overcoming them.
It's been a journey and I haven't been able to write about it until now, not without becoming a sobbing, pathetically slobbery mess.
But in the last month or so, I've become increasingly at peace with my situation and that is definitely testimony to God's work in my life. I still have moments of complete melt-down (usually having to do with a particularly painful day or frustration over a mundane task that I can't do) but they come with less sheer panic and despair. I'm sure I'll look back one day at the me-I-am-today and be amazed at how much more I still had to learn through this.
Of course, I'll need a place to process everything. My journal doesn't come with enough accountability. With no one to read my thoughts I'm in danger of veering towards self pity. At this particular point in my journey, my thoughts are not allowed to have free reign, but locking them up entirely isn't good either.
Blog it is!
So (and raise your cups to this) here's to the journey, here's the lessons learned and to be learned, here's to the struggles and trials, here's to God and everything he wants to do through this. Here's to complete healing and victory in Christ. And here's to not losing my sense of humor or sense of adventure and believing that the best days are yet to come.
Last but not least, as of yesterday I officially have health insurance. Full coverage! It's a total answer to prayer. Let the testing begin!
Now go eat some ice cream.
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