July 7, 2015
Cleveland Clinic day. We arrive early, not totally certain of where we are heading. The entire complex is beyond imagination—enormous, overwhelming, but the Mellen Center is surprisingly easy to find. We park just twenty feet from the front door. We give them our name, and I’m immediately directed to a row of cubicles to take a basic inventory of my symptoms. It asks simple questions—a lot of ranking how often I feel this or how many times in a day/week/month I’ve felt this. It asks about the tingling and numbness. This isn’t so bad, I think. But then it begins to ask other questions, like whether or not I have certain involuntary movements when I sleep at night. Wait a minute, I think, that’s my MS? They are so subtle—so easy to pass over, but now I can give them a name: MS at work and active inside my body. I didn’t even know those were related, and as the inventory continues my heart sinks a little. This inventory fits me. I really do have MS.
It doesn’t take too long to finish, and I return to sit with Brian. An enormous fish tank sits across from us. We video a fish doing some crazy acrobatic act to take home and show the kids. But what strikes me most is the clientele. It’s a busy place—people coming and going, nurses buzzing in and out of the large entry/waiting area. I lean over to Brian: “Are all of these MS patients?” I confess it to him in my question: I am frightened. Many of them can’t walk, need considerable assistance, some you can tell have severe mental disabilities. I don’t judge them—I don’t even pray for them in that moment. I selfishly only think about myself: Will I be them?
At first, Brian agrees there are only MS patients being seen, but as we look around, we see from the signs, from the information on the walls that there are various diseases being treated in this building, and I confess that I am relieved. This is all still so fresh, so new, and I am still so ignorant about my own disease. And the waiting room is a reminder of what my life will be like now: a waiting room of its own. But it is also a reminder of how blessed I really am. Yes, this is hard, but it could be so much worse.
When we hear our name, we are amazed to see that in a place as renowned as this, the doctor herself has come to retrieve us. She looks like she belongs here—formal, professional, doctor-ish. But she also looks like my neighbor and talks to us like we’ve met before. I already know this appointment is going to go well.
Over the next two hours (yes, I said two hours!), she speaks to us in terms of reality. She speaks with confidence and certainty, and yet she is a soft spot to land after the last week and a half.
She pulls up the MRIs on her computer. “Let’s just make sure you really do have MS,” she says.
Hope. What if they were wrong… .
She quickly dispels any hope in a misdiagnosis. This is definitely MS. I confess the spots on my brain and spine are hard to look at. It’s a little like a punch in the gut. And yet she still provides hope for the future.
She walks us through each of the spots, ones that appear to have been there for a long time and ones that are active, enhancing—“This one is probably responsible for your hands. Give it time,” she encourages us. “It’s in a very tough spot in your spine. It will take a long time to heal.”
Children, she says, are not totally out of the question. In fact, she grills me about having my own children—about any postpartum symptoms. Is there anything at all I can think of that was different in those weeks and months after having kids? she keeps asking me. A tingling in my back after Charlotte is the only thing I know for sure—I just can’t remember with the boys.
But she agrees definitely no children right now. Too much going on in my brain--in my spine--to entertain that at the moment. We need to get this under control. Everyone keeps saying it, but I feel it.
Get this under control.
I think I know in my heart that I will probably never have any more children of my own—but yet the fact that she says it’s possible makes all the difference. It’s like I’m a little kid—I hate absolutes—I hate being told, “No, you cannot have that.” And I know that it’s selfish—I have three beautiful children of my own. There are so many people who can’t have any children of their own. And it goes back to this fallen world, of my interrupted plans—my interrupted plans. It is just another form of loss in this process, and a reminder that I am called to honor the Lord’s plans for me rather than my own.
Another call to obedience.
This doctor understands that I’m a mom--she senses the importance of basketball in my life. She says depression is a real concern when people are diagnosed and that taking basketball away in addition to the other losses may be more detrimental than good. She recognizes the enormity of the decisions we are making and is patient with all our questions. She says that my brain will not shrink—obviously a concern I had coming in from last week. She comforts me: “You have more of CMS than MS going on up there! Cluttered mind syndrome—you’re a mom, a coach, a wife. You’ve got a lot going on!”
Deep breath. I smile. I laugh.
We discuss all the drugs. She listens to our concerns about the one and tends to agree. She helps us make an informed decision. She encourages us that our doctor back home is taking all the right steps. “Come back and see me in six months with new MRIs,” she says.
I leave the doctor and I still have MS, but I feel as if I have a little more hope in what the future holds. I know this appointment is a gift from God. I know that she basically told us the same thing as the doctor did a week ago, but I also know that in that short amount of time, the Lord has been working on my heart. It’s one appointment at a time. It’s day by day, prayer by prayer. It’s deciding to get up each morning and be thankful for His new mercies and the grace that comes with each new dawn.
Today is a hard day. But as I tell my team all the time: "Get up. Look in the mirror: Today is a good day!" And it is a good day, too.
Hope.
I can feel it.