On the Bright Side

Well, it certainly has been an eventful month.

It started on an enjoyable enough Friday afternoon. My team had spent the last 5 weeks kicking ass and to wrap up our development cycle, we had decided to take the afternoon off and play some Among Us together. I had a slight headache, the kind right behind the eyeballs, where you start to question just how secure they are in your skull and whether or not they could come popping out at any second. I didn’t think too much of it though. It was a long enough week and I stare at a computer screen for much longer than is probably healthy. These things happen. So I carried on through the game and discovering just how terrible I am at trying to tell the truth in a way that doesn’t come across as super suspect (but I suppose that’s a topic for another day.)

After the game, I laid down for the evening, hoping some rest would help alleviate the headache. Unfortunately, it would not come so easily. When I woke up on Saturday, the pain had coalesced behind my left eye. My vision had started becoming slightly blurry and it was hard to really concentrate on anything else. Though slightly more concerned, I still thought it was likely just a fluke and would probably go away with some ibuprofen and additional rest. When Sunday came, things were getting worse still. Everything out of the left eye appeared clouded over. When I would cover my right eye, it looked as though everything around me was melting. I could see bright colorful spots, as though I had been staring into a bright light for a while and looked away. The difference in vision between the two eyes made me feel dizzy and nauseous. Something was definitely wrong.

First thing Monday morning, I managed to get an emergency appointment with an eye doctor. She ultimately could find nothing wrong with the eye, other than a slight hint that perhaps my optic nerve was a bit inflamed, but that was not conclusive. She passed me on to a retina specialist for further examination. So on I went to the next doctor. They ran what seemed to be all the same tests as the other doctor and took some additional photographs of the inside of my eye. They popped some dilating drops in and proceeded to shine some bright ass lights into my eyes. Oddly enough, this was only noticeable out of my good eye. I barely noticed any light at all going into the bad one. Then, in a rather frustrating conclusion of the day, they also told me they were not able to find anything wrong, but that there was some things they wanted to look at when my eyes were not dilated. Seems like something they probably could have looked at before they put the drops in, but what could I do at that point. It seems it would be another few days in agony before I might be able to figure out what was going on.

Things continued to get worse over those next couple of days. I was to a point where I basically could not see anything anymore out of my left eye. For some reason, when I returned to the retina specialist, they seemed like they really didn’t want to believe me on that. They ran me through several more vision tests. When I would say, “No, I can’t read those letters. I really can’t see much of anything out of that eye,” they would try to adjust my position, or give me some weird contraption that allegedly was supposed to help, but ultimately did not. Finally, the actual doctor came in and proceeded to shine some more lights into my, this time un-dilated, eyes. Within just a few minutes, it seemed he finally was able to tell what was going on. Optic Neuritis. My optic nerve was severely swollen, but due to where the swelling was located, they were largely unable to see it with any of the techniques at their disposal. I was ordered to immediately head over to the Emergency Room for some MRI scans and to start receiving steroid treatments to bring the swelling down. Oh joy. Those who know me well will tell you just how much I love hospitals.

I had never been confined to an emergency room before. The experience was definitely not something I would ever like to repeat. There were a few saving graces that made it more bearable though. The mom of one of my long-time friends from high school happened to work there. I have referred to her just as “Mom” for as long as I can remember, and she always greets me in turn as “son.” While she didn’t happen to be working this particular night, I had texted her with the details of what was going on. She was able to whip her team into action for me and I had what seemed a constant stream of personal nurses coming by to check-in on me. It was comforting to be so well taken care of in an otherwise state of pure anxiety.

Eventually I was whisked off to get my MRI scans done. I had to sit in that machine for nearly two hours trying to stay as still as possible. Thanks to some really nice anxiety medication and my over-active imagination able to pretend I was just stuck in a cramped spaceship escape-pod awaiting rescue, it rather flew by. Shortly after I was meeting with a neurologist who was explaining to me all the various spots they had found on my brain and spinal cord that were indicative of inflammation. This was apparently not just some fluke. There was something more serious going on.

I had to stay the night in the hospital. To make it even better, they were over-crowded. Most of the night I had to spend still in the ER bed, and once I finally got out of there, I was just moved to another semi-private room where only a thin curtain gave me refuge. I was able to hear a lot of people coming and going and collect probably more details about their various medical problems than should probably be legal. To pass the time, I started collecting stories in my mind. Small vignettes into the lives of strangers, their relationships with the people they had come with, and their own fears and anxieties. Unfortunately, I would never know how most of these stories would end, and there were definitely a few I grew to be quite invested in.

The next day I would continue to meet with various doctors and therapists and continue my steroid regiment. I was growing quite restless and I think they could tell. They wanted to keep me there for 5 days to fully complete the steroid treatments. That sounded like absolute hell to me. Thankfully, after being walked around on a leash a couple of times to make sure I wasn’t going to fall over, they presented me with an option to continue my treatment at home. It would involve having a nurse come by to stick another IV in me and I would have to work the infusions myself, but despite my fears of all that, it still seemed to be the better option. When I finally left the hospital, I still didn’t know much more about what was causing my ailment than when I had arrived. But at least I could worry about all that in the comfort of my own home.

The steroid infusions were quite awful. It burned dripping into my veins over the course of an hour. It felt as though I was shooting up about 5 shots of espresso straight to the heart. It made me jittery as all hell and sick to my stomach. My mouth tasted like I had just sucked on a dirty old penny that had been dug into the side of the road for a decade. I would close my eyes and try my hardest to just pretend I didn’t exist anymore. Trying to take a shower with an IV stuck in my arm was frustrating. Every minute of it felt like hours as I patiently counted down to the day it would be all done. I would tell myself to get through it just one day at a time… one hour at a time… one minute at a time… one second at a time.

I got through it. The IV finally came out and I didn’t have to experience those awful side-effects of the medication anymore. My vision was slowly returning to normal. The pain was gone. I was on the road to making a full recovery. I was able to return to work and was greeted with much support from my teammates who had been concerned about me through the whole ordeal. My life was returning to some semblance of normalcy.

It began to look like the final diagnosis was very likely to be Multiple Sclerosis. As I found out rather recently, that has been confirmed. I did a bunch of reading and learning about the disease and began to make plans for how my life would proceed moving forward. There are many lifestyle changes one can make to reduce the risks of attack. The biggest and the one I knew I had to do immediately was quit smoking.

Within a week of finishing the steroid infusions, I smoked my last cigarette. Unlike every other time I’ve attempted to quit, I finally felt like I had a huge motivation and basically no choice to continue the habit. Despite how good that smoky, nicotine-filled goddess may be, it would mean significantly more risk of ending up back in the hospital. It would mean more uncomfortable overnight stays longing to be home, more IV’s jammed into my veins, and more awful steroid treatments. After such an agonizing experience, I will do anything within my power to not have to repeat it. At the time of this writing it has been almost 2 weeks since my last cigarette, and despite some tough moments trying to break the addiction, I have really not looked back. And to top it off, I’ve been waking up every day feeling quite a bit better than I have in a long time.

I have also been taking regular walks multiple times a day. It’s been quite pleasant getting out and moving around. I particularly enjoy all the other nice people I’ve come across while out who will share a hello, and sometimes a quick and pleasant chat before we both continue on. It’s by no means the scale of a deep connection with another person, but it is a connection nonetheless that I have not got much over the past few years of working from home. It is also giving me some much-needed exercise in my otherwise sedentary life.

I have plans made still for other lifestyle changes to make, which I plan to introduce slowly and gradually so-as not to overwhelm myself. My health has been shoved to the top of my priority list, where it probably should have been in the first place. I have a treatment plan set up with my neurologist to tackle the MS from that perspective and it’s one that comes with a staggering degree of past success.

Overall, I’m feeling great, both physically and mentally. Which has come with a certain degree of dissonance as I share this story with other people in my life. I’ve gotten so many, “I’m so sorry!”‘s that I have lost count of them all. A lot of thoughts and prayers and pity and people trying to cheer me up. I do not feel sorrow over what has happened, though. I do not really feel anxious or depressed about any of it. In many ways, I feel relief that I finally know what is going on and that I have a solid plan of attack to deal with it. In many ways, I am grateful for it happening.

It’s true, the whole experience sucked more than I can even describe. But on the bright side, I came out of it feeling like I’m a stronger person. Like I am better prepared for other difficulties that I’m sure are in store for my future. I am getting healthier and doing a better job of taking care of myself. I am in high spirits and have confronted some long-time fears that at one point would have paralyzed me.

So, don’t feel sorry for me. This experience has improved my life, not made it worse.