Tunnel Vision

If you've been reading this blog with any degree of regularity and with any amount of observation...you know that for the last fifteen months I've been going through an unidentified health situation that has caused me more distress than when Family Ties went off the air. Lately there have been tears and trips to the doctor and tests and more tears and SUR-GER-Y and more tears and more tests and....you get the idea. Seemed like no one in the medical community could figure me out which left me feeling crazy. Like I was making it all up. Like I was a liar.

But I wasn't. The pain was real.

A few months ago my friend Nivah gave me the number to a specialist in town...a special specialist if you will. A specialist so special my exact problem was written right on the front of the brochure. A specialist needle in the haystack of docs. The brochure terrified me immediately and I shoved it to the bottom of my purse hoping to never have to think about it again.

But then I got a new purse.

Making the call to the Special Specialist was hard. You might wonder why I wouldn't jump at the chance for a solution. Charge right in and demand answers. Dial the phone...at least. But I couldn't do it. After everything I've been through, every difficult test with a negative answer, I didn't think I was up to another "We don't know what's wrong".

So I waited.

But let's face it, problems rarely solve themselves. There's work to be done, therapy to be had, drugs to be swallowed....or something. So on Wednesday I called the S.S. Save My Life Please. The chirpy girl who answered the phone seemed all too pleased to hear about my issue. The very same issue that's hounded me and clawed at my heart and left me in an unrecognizable puddle. Instead of horror and disbelief, she expressed pure joy.

"THAT is exactly what we do here! We help people just like you!"

Help? People? Just like me?

So today I went to see the Special Specialist, sure that I would hear another sad sigh. Sure that I would be told yet again (after a series of invasive and embarrassing tests, of course) that no answer could be found. I was nervous. Suspicious. Cynical. Scared.

And I was wrong.

I heard new words this time. I heard "Your pain has a name" and "This is completely treatable" and "It's a medical condition...you are not crazy". I heard "There is hope". I heard "You could potentially be healed in as little as three months". And I cried and cried.

I'm still in the tunnel....but now....I can see a light.