Getting a Life
Finally getting a diagnosis was extremely empowering. I like to refer to it as "Finally having a better name than crazy for my condition."
I was more or less bedridden from sometime in January 2001 to sometime that April. In May, I was diagnosed with atypical cystic fibrosis.
I immediately decided "A handicapped person like me needs to make more Bs" and enrolled in a college class or two (online) again to resume trying to finish my degree. Sometime that summer, I also decided I would get divorced if I ever got well enough that it seemed at all feasible to make that happen.
The following summer I was able to attend GIS Summer School, a two-month long boot-camp style condensed course for what is normally a year-long certificate program. That was made possible in part because of my diagnosis: They assigned me a dorm room designated as for a handicapped person.
It was in the same building as all my classes but on like the top floor. It was right next to the elevator and I was across the street from a shopping center where I could buy lunch.
I went down to Southern California for the first half of the course alone and then there was a week-long break during which time I returned home to the SF Bay Area to pick up my kids because my husband needed to travel for his work the following month. While home on break, I went to see a doctor.
Just before the break started, the air in Riverside had turned yellow and I began to turn bright red and feel my throat closing anytime I left the building. It was most likely sulfur in the air from local factories to which I was reacting. A sulfur allergy runs in the family.
I told the doctor "I've taken out a $19,000 student loan. I have to finish this course." and told him what drugs I wanted prescribed.
He prescribed me everything I asked for and threw in a few other things he thought up, which was not at all how I got treated before my diagnosis when everyone just acted like I was some kind of hypochondriac. This is how I ended up on something like eight or maybe nine prescription drugs and it helped save my life.
The year before when I was mostly bedridden and literally dying, I couldn't get good drugs like that. When I expressed my fears that I might die because they didn't know what was wrong with me so weren't prescribing me anything, I was asked if I would like a referral to a shrink.
During the break, in addition to seeing a doctor, I told my husband I wanted a divorce, which was not really how I had been planning to handle it but I think was for the best. After GIS school ended, I returned home and began 22 months of withdrawal from all those drugs and also began the long, slow process of leaving my long marriage and getting a life of my own.
Long before we filed any paperwork, I began very slowly moving all of his stuff into the master bedroom and all of my stuff out of the bedroom and into the dining room. I bought a sleeper loveseat for the dining room and began sleeping in the dining room.
I turned the master bedroom into something akin to a studio apartment for him. I was sleeping in the dining room but I didn't turn it into a studio apartment. Instead, I turned the dining room into my office because I planned to start my own business and work from home due to being so sick as a means to support myself.
To separate my office from the rest of the apartment, I put up cheap floor-to-ceiling curtains made from sale-rack bedsheets and professionally altered. I began decorating it just for me without worrying what the husband wanted and it was the first space I had as an adult that felt like "mine" in some important sense.
This included putting up artwork that was personally meaningful to me. I took a puzzle I loved and glued it together and had it professionally framed.
I registered a bunch of business names with the county and I opened a business bank account but I really had no idea what I was doing and I was still very, very sick. Ultimately, I moved back home to my parents and got an entry level corporate job.
But it was a life of my own, not as someone's little wifey. Pretty much every year since the diagnosis has been the best year of my life so far.
I was more or less bedridden from sometime in January 2001 to sometime that April. In May, I was diagnosed with atypical cystic fibrosis.
I immediately decided "A handicapped person like me needs to make more Bs" and enrolled in a college class or two (online) again to resume trying to finish my degree. Sometime that summer, I also decided I would get divorced if I ever got well enough that it seemed at all feasible to make that happen.
The following summer I was able to attend GIS Summer School, a two-month long boot-camp style condensed course for what is normally a year-long certificate program. That was made possible in part because of my diagnosis: They assigned me a dorm room designated as for a handicapped person.
It was in the same building as all my classes but on like the top floor. It was right next to the elevator and I was across the street from a shopping center where I could buy lunch.
I went down to Southern California for the first half of the course alone and then there was a week-long break during which time I returned home to the SF Bay Area to pick up my kids because my husband needed to travel for his work the following month. While home on break, I went to see a doctor.
Just before the break started, the air in Riverside had turned yellow and I began to turn bright red and feel my throat closing anytime I left the building. It was most likely sulfur in the air from local factories to which I was reacting. A sulfur allergy runs in the family.
I told the doctor "I've taken out a $19,000 student loan. I have to finish this course." and told him what drugs I wanted prescribed.
He prescribed me everything I asked for and threw in a few other things he thought up, which was not at all how I got treated before my diagnosis when everyone just acted like I was some kind of hypochondriac. This is how I ended up on something like eight or maybe nine prescription drugs and it helped save my life.
The year before when I was mostly bedridden and literally dying, I couldn't get good drugs like that. When I expressed my fears that I might die because they didn't know what was wrong with me so weren't prescribing me anything, I was asked if I would like a referral to a shrink.
During the break, in addition to seeing a doctor, I told my husband I wanted a divorce, which was not really how I had been planning to handle it but I think was for the best. After GIS school ended, I returned home and began 22 months of withdrawal from all those drugs and also began the long, slow process of leaving my long marriage and getting a life of my own.
Long before we filed any paperwork, I began very slowly moving all of his stuff into the master bedroom and all of my stuff out of the bedroom and into the dining room. I bought a sleeper loveseat for the dining room and began sleeping in the dining room.
I turned the master bedroom into something akin to a studio apartment for him. I was sleeping in the dining room but I didn't turn it into a studio apartment. Instead, I turned the dining room into my office because I planned to start my own business and work from home due to being so sick as a means to support myself.
To separate my office from the rest of the apartment, I put up cheap floor-to-ceiling curtains made from sale-rack bedsheets and professionally altered. I began decorating it just for me without worrying what the husband wanted and it was the first space I had as an adult that felt like "mine" in some important sense.
This included putting up artwork that was personally meaningful to me. I took a puzzle I loved and glued it together and had it professionally framed.
I registered a bunch of business names with the county and I opened a business bank account but I really had no idea what I was doing and I was still very, very sick. Ultimately, I moved back home to my parents and got an entry level corporate job.
But it was a life of my own, not as someone's little wifey. Pretty much every year since the diagnosis has been the best year of my life so far.
