Why I've been M.I.A.

I've been busy...as if that's some excuse....for ignoring you...for ignoring myself...or rather "selves".
It isn't any big surprise that things can get chaotic in a person's life, but in mine, I'm subjected to more than my own chaos...I'm forced to deal with the chaos of many.

So what has had me so busy? Well let's see...
In October, I lost my Uncle, a very dear part of the family and a piece of the unsolvable puzzle that is my life. This happened a week before my wedding. He was young. Too young...for this.
Throughout my life I've experienced too many people dying, this year alone I've lost 4 people in my life whom I was extremely close to and connected with. But my uncle's death was one that hit too close to home for me. Why? Because out of all the people in the our family I could honestly say I knew how he was feeling. He had cancer of the brain and from the beginning was forced to fight a battle he could not win....and in what seemed to me like a blink of an eye...he was gone. Though sadly, it was longer than that, I say that only because of his suffering...and the pain our family endured.
A few years ago, I was fighting a battle like he was. I was sick all of the time, with one serious thing or another landing me in multiple hospitals. My luck with health...isn't luck at all. I had years of doctors telling me that nothing was wrong with me other than a stretch of bad luck and what seemed to be a compromised immune system, though they couldn't quite explain why. As I continued doing what anyone at my age would have done, school, work, family, etc...I started to experience seizures, memory loss, migraines, slurred and broken speech, confusion, disorientation, insomnia, deafness, blindness...creating the perfect storm of a life if I may say so myself.
My doctors told me that I was epileptic and that lots of college kids had trouble remembering things or sleeping...and attributed most of the other symptoms to migraines and "silent" migraines. Deep down, I always knew something was wrong...I did have this impending sense of doom, as if the sky was going to fall. Let me just say that the feeling that something is wrong within you and getting worse, while a doctor keeps telling you that you're wrong, well... it's not exactly the warm fuzzy feeling you can curl up to at night. I became restless, irritable, and increasingly frustrated and weak.
It took years to diagnose me with what I really had. Neurocysticercosis. Or in layman's terms. Worms in the brain. When I was about 15 my family and I went abroad on a cruise, one of the countries we'd visited had made us a BBQ before we all went trail riding and sometime during this barbeque, I'd injested pork tape worm larva.
My family of four plus all the other travelers all ate the same food and I was the only one that we know of that got sick, of course it would be hard to know since we didn't keep in touch with strangers from a land tour so I guess it's possible I'm not the only one. 3 and a half years later, I was diagnosed...all that time, the pork tapeworms were eating away at my brain. You can get brain tissue back, but not cells, so the damage that was done was permanent (totally unlike a show I saw later on with one lady who went totally back to normal, gotta love t.v.). In case you're wondering it's not why I have D.I.D. That's another story entirely.
There's only one treatment for Neurocysticercosis and that's albendazole and steroids. They could not surgically remove the worms because of their placement in my brain ( I would have ended up dead or as a vegetable) so we went for the treatment.
It wasn't covered by insurance and it was excruciatingly painful. At first, the treatment didn't work and at 19 I was told I was going to die...and to get my "affairs" in order....as if I could possibly fathom what it would be like to die. I was mature for my age but certainly not capable of accepting not only the reality of mortality, but that of my own. I became angry....sad....angry again....irritable.....sad....guilty.....angry.....the cycle was constant.
I never did get that sense of peace that I'd recognized in other terminal patients...I didn't feel I could relate because most of them had cancer. Their daily symptoms were the same, though worsened with time, whereas mine, well it was alot like catching a piece of confetti as it fluttered through the air. Everything was changing...I was depressed and no one could comfort me. I remember sitting one day on my couch from the moment I woke up until the moment my boyfriend came home from work at 2 a.m. the next day...just....staring. I was a mess one day, a shell the next...mix in with that a cocktail of painful drugs to treat an illness that refuses to be extinguished and you've got a grade A clusterfuck.
There were days I couldn't talk or that my body was exhausted from seizing over and over with my muscles pulsing and ticking, there were days I couldn't eat, days I couldn't figure out how to open up my car door because I'd forgotten how a handle worked.
And then one day....out of the blue....what could only be described as a miracle....the treatment began to work. How? Not even my doctors could tell you that...but 6 months later I was cleared.....5 months later it turned out I still had worms and needed to undergo treatment again but at least that time my body responded to the treatment immediately (didn't make it any less painful though).

All of that said, hearing what my uncle was going through sounded so much like what I had lived through and even lived to tell about later.
When I heard...I didn't cry...I just told my father that I needed to get off the phone and resolved to go out to visit my horse. Being with my horse is theraputic for me. It's as if xanax is being shot through my veins when I'm close to him.
I asked my fiance if he would come out with me to visit the horse and he did that thing little boys do when you tell them they have to come inside from playing and wash their hands for dinner...not enthused. He didn't see why I wanted him to be there, I guess a dead uncle really doesn't count for much when it's football season.
I tried sending a text to my friend to ask if she could join me but she too was busy...and I guess I just reacted. I tore out of my garage and off to go spend time with the horse. Alone. Reminding me that I'm the only one I can count on I guess.

When I got there, he was waiting for me as if to say "Hi Mom!"...I heard the "others" inside talking about how dirty he was and how much he needed a good brush out.
I took him out of his paddock and began talking to him while grooming his beautiful coat he's so soft like a silky, oversized, teddy bear.
He nuzzled me as if to remind me that he loved me, that he'd always be here for me to talk to, or to listen.
I went to go grab a different brush and the next thing I knew he was snorting...hard...I looked up and there was a bee that flew up his nose and stung him....
He reared up and began pulling away from the fence. I told him I was going to pull him free and went to pull his lead rope just as I heard the fence begin to crack. As I pulled he backed away from me trying to avoid hitting me...as he backed up he hit my car which was parked right behind him. All in what seemed to be one second he tore the fence down, which hit me, then got shocked by the fence and I got kicked in the head and trampled.

Honestly, I remember everything leading up to getting clipped in the head, the next thing I remembered was screaming for help...but no one heard me.
My horse, ran to the front of the ranch to where the people live who maintain the property and screamed until someone came out and then showed them where I was. For a few minutes, he protected me, wouldn't let them near, fearing they would hurt me...but then finally allowed them closer. My horse should audition for a revival of the show "Lassie"... Before I knew it all I could feel was excruciating pain in my legs. I couldn't move either of them. After that the ambulance was called and I was rushed to the trauma center. I sustained a concussion, a broken knee cap, a broken ankle and several torn ligaments...my back is another story all on it's own. I was bruised everywhere and everything was either swollen, bleeding or broken.

All of THAT happened a week before my wedding.
I worked an entire year to pay for the wedding I was planning to have. I had friends and family coming in a week later and the timing couldn't have been more inconvenient...for everyone.
But there is a happy ending...I walked down the aisle at my wedding thanks to medication, two braces and my father who was willing to shuffle slowly with me. I had the perfect wedding day, everything I imagined it would be and more. I spent our honeymoon in a wheelchair...that's fun let me tell you. The honeymoon was a series of disasters but somehow just having time to recuperate from a year of planning and a week of total emotional meltdowns over not knowing if I'd walk again, or needed surgery was nice. And without the headaches of our daily lives we did share some laughs and make some nice memories.

I would like to say I don't think I have the worst luck, but that would be a lie. I know many people have it worse than I do, I'm not crazy enough to believe otherwise...but still. My life is sort of like a mixed bag of bad and worse, yet somehow I reflect on things warmly as if it isn't really as bad as it is or was. Glass half full syndrome? Hardly. I'm realistic and pessimistic like anyone would be in my position.

Now I'm back from the honeymoon, just began working again, driving, walking, struggling at physical therapy. I'm fortunate, until just recently I didn't really process how dangerous my situation was. Many people don't survive getting kicked in the head let alone being trampled, I was really lucky. If there is a God, He might want to let me know what His plan is for me so I can hurry up and do it, since unlike a cat, I don't have 9 lives to spare. I've already cheated death 4 times that I can recall off hand...I've gotta be reaching my maximum dispensed amount per lifetime.
Back! In red & black. -Divided Mind-