Charity Marie Blogs!

BCOF 2273: My Will

Life has many ways of testing a person’s will, either by having nothing happen at all or by having everything happen all at once.”~ —Paulo Coelho

That's the description of my life in a nutshell. For the last three years, it's been one crisis after another. I feel like I'm living life as a character in a novel and the author is tormenting me. I'm on a first name basis with most of the staff at our local ER. Directors shudder at the sound of my name at multiple mental health facilities. Two schools in the area that my children attended had me on speed dial.

I'm a very passionate advocate for my kids, have no doubt. But with so many crises, you become intimately familiar in an almost negative way. There's one principal at a local elementary school that was so sweet to me but I can only imagine every time she saw my number, she groaned. The entire school administration knew me. Did I mention I'm a vocal advocate? I should probably mention that.

In the last two years, we uncovered asthma for our son. That was a scary time before we knew what was going on. We, of course, thought the worst: lung cancer, lung failure, some horrible unknown lung issue. It came out of nowhere one day and was awful. We had four ER trips in a week. By the fourth one, we realized he was having panic attacks, which weren't helping the asthma. We did a series of allergy test (21 injections of foreign substances!) and found he was most allergic to grass. Really? The thing that's EVERYWHERE on the earth? But we learned, we adapted, and two years later, he has a nebulizer and inhaler he hasn't used in almost a year.

I'm really proud of the progress we've made there. But because he was in school then, we had to put this whole incredible protocol in place for him to go to school. And they insisted he run and be outside. I couldn't believe it. I had documentation stating his worst allergy was grass. Didn't matter. So they used the inhaler. Multiple times. Until he had to be sent home due to a severe asthma flareup and we rushed him home for a nebulizer treatment that turned in to an ER visit again because his heart rate was seriously elevated.

For almost a year we were focused on his lungs, trying to help figure out the issue. Turns out he is a shallow breather and can't fill his lungs. He'll grow out of it eventually, but in the meantime, restricted airway, plus allergy to grass equaled a crisis regularly. He also was sensitive to cold and wet temperatures or extreme heat so we restricted his activities.

My daughter on the other hand, is a regular cycle of crises. The time frame varies but often it's in 30 - 60 day cycles. There's a lot about it in my Loving Libby blog at "Loving Libby"  that we've had to learn to cope with. In three years, she's relapsed frequently and spent over 120 days inpatient last year.

Then in March 2018, my husband began having issues. It started slowly but then by November 2018 he was having non-epileptic seizures caused by his nervous system. He became suicidal and I had to have him admitted for treatment. Three different times I thought my husband was going to die. Thankfully he's still alive, relatively stable, and giving me a hard time at every opportunity. Something I pray continues.

But no matter what happened, is happening, or will happen, I have retained my strength of will. I refuse to succumb to the pressure of it all. I refuse to be defeated. So life can just keep on being life and I'll keep on being me.


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