4 YEAR UPDATE

I can’t decide if this day (January 4th) is a renewal-rebirth-reset celebration day or a dark-hard-heavy-mournful day. There is a ‘Charlotte’ [me] before January 4th 2020, and a me after January 4th 2020. I love who I became because of that day, just not sure I love the starting line of when-how-why I became her.

January 4th is the anniversary of the day I was diagnosed with RR-Multiple Sclerosis [MS] in 2020. I remember the chairs, the office, the fear, the relief, the phone calls, the drive home… I just can’t decide how I feel about this day, years later. It is one of those core-memory moments. The kind that you can feel/see/smell/relive in an instant.

On the one hand, it was the day I got my answers. It was the day I gained understanding of what was happening to me. It began a new journey (an MS’ed Up one) and it gave me a new starting line. It gave me the ability to completely reset my life…. perfect timing too because 2 months later the whole world went to heck in a hand basket with COVID. I had free reign to adapt my lifestyle, my needs, my control-freak nature… carte blanche to be my truest self.

But… on the other hand it took as much as it gave. It took the light out of life. It knocked the wind from my sails. Life suddenly felt less whimsical. It took the care-free (laissez-faire) energy from my spirit. The “in sickness & in health” vow I wanted to make to Anthony had actual weight/meaning. I had answers, so what? Now I had to deal with the reality of a lifelong cognitive & motor function auto-immune disease that could take everything away from me… Great.

So I suppose it’s both. The give and the take. I am mourning the diagnosis but I celebrate the starting line. I am both heart broken and energized.

With that though… this year, I have every reason in the world to celebrate. My scans in December came back clean. Like CLEAN & CLEAR & UNDER CONTROL. I have almost no lesions in my brain or spinal cord. The ones that we’d found 6 months ago are healing and there are no new ones! So all things considered there is little physical proof that I have MS. With prayers, care, support and treatments, Lord willing it stays that way for a long time. It’s a joyful way to start the new year and my 4 year MS-aversary. I am bless and I am forever grateful. It’s a miracle. It’s incredible. It’s almost unbelievable. It’s an answer to my prayers.

I accept that something can be both joyful and painful at the same time. I celebrate the amazing results, and I thank the Lord for the healing. I also acknowledge the weight of the mental-physical-emotion-what-if load of MS in the background. Life is hard… get a helmet.

Choose your hard. It’s all hard. It’s all challenging. it’s all Brutal. it’s all Beautiful.

Today I celebrate. Today I cry. Today I accept that it’s all Brutiful.

A special shout out to Dr. Hu. She’s an incredible blessing to me. She is an amazing woman and Dr. and role model and mom and care giver. Through the good and the bad and the ugly and the hard… she is one of those blessings in your life that you cannot miss or take for granted. I know that without her my MS would not be in the place that it is. She is a gift from heaven to me and my MS’ed up Journey.