TW: Mention of death, depression

December 16, 2019, is a day I thought, and secretly hoped, I might finally get relief. It’s the day I thought I would die. Thanks to science and the valiant efforts of my medical team, relief came indeed, though certainly not in the manner I expected. Let’s get into it.

My journey to getting diagnosed with several chronic illnesses started in December 2015 with scary news that almost landed me in a hospital bed simply to preserve my ability to walk. I quickly found myself in a friend’s office, who happened to be a pediatrician, when it was suggested that I seek answers at Mayo. My first diagnosis came rolling in February 2016, and then I spent a literal year undergoing tests and various procedures trying to piece together the rest of the puzzle. In March of 2017, there was a surgical complication that left with me a debilitating migraine that became my closest companion for over two years. This migraine was so distressing that it took three hospitals, countless hospitalizations, and a massive surgery to rid me of pain, but I’m getting ahead of myself.

When you go from living a mostly normal life to one where your Type A, highly independent, overachiever self is completely bedridden overnight, it’s more than a shock. I lived every day in the worst pain I had ever known. I lost forty pounds I didn’t have to lose because I could barely hold down food. I was instantly thrust out of the workforce, and weekend trips to the park with the kiddo were definitely out of the question. I experienced deep, dark depression and in 2019, I was convinced things would never improve. Instead, I hoped my body would just succumb to the anesthesia as I lay on a table for 12 plus hours fighting for a life I didn’t believe in. If it sounds bleak, it’s because it was.

So last week when I found an instruction manual I had typed out in the event of my death, it took me back. Back to that place of endless hopelessness. Back to the place that tried to squeeze the life from my lungs. As the feelings flooded my mind, they forced themselves down my cheek in a sole, quiet tear. The realization that I had made it overwhelmed me.

See, December 15, 2019, I was so sick of living in hospitals and being held captive to pain and illness that I didn’t care if I lived or died the next day in that operating room. I thought those around me would likely be better off it something did happen because I needed near constant care. I watched it drain them. None of us asked for me to be sick, but I felt it unfair to subject them to my reality.

I’m so thankful for my doctor, who changed the trajectory of my story. A year and three weeks later I met my daughter for the first time. Three years later we were back on airplanes taking vacations that I could actually enjoy. I didn’t see hope on December 15, but December 16 changed the narrative forever and I feel like the luckiest person alive to have lived these last three and a half years. It’s not to say my chronic illness doesn’t still exist, or even that life is happy-go-lucky and pain free, but comparatively, things are so much better.

I know in the middle of darkness and despair, our vision changes. We can’t see the forest through the trees. This perspective doesn’t make people in suffering morally wrong. It makes us physically blind. It’s important to differentiate the two. As someone who has been blind to depression, I hope that anyone living in their December 15 season can trust that December 16 is coming. I hope you dare to use a semicolon instead of a period, and I hope your sight is restored soon.

I’m rooting for you .