61 days...

it was march 23rd, about this same time of the day, when i woke up in an emergency room. i just sent an e-mail out to friends who have been so good and patient about sending me messages to check up on me, messages to which i've been too absent-minded and distracted to respond. in it i described the past two months as the most bizarre and out of control of my life. that is most certainly true.

i thought at first to describe these past two months as the worst of my life, but i can't say that that is true. i've had some of the worst and most fearful moments of my life in these 61 days, but despite the head-swimming and the reeling and the panic and the denial and the madness, i've been shown real, unbelievable beauty...in the world around me, in my friends, and in myself.

i wanted this to change my life and it is doing that. i've described myself on this weblog as not being the same as i was a few months ago. it would make a lot of things in my life easier if i could go back to who i was on march 22nd, but given that i can't do that, i think what i've been given in return, or maybe what i've found as a result has proven to be nothing short of amazing.

it's like this: in my old life, i would have never thought that i could deal very well with having a brain tumor diagnosis. but when i had a brain tumor diagnosis--even a malignant brain tumor diagnosis--i was scared and i cried a lot and i freaked out, but when the dust settled, i was strong and ready to beat it so i could get on with my life. and then, in the wake of that brain tumor diagnosis, a situation that i viewed as temporary, when doctors started talking about multiple sclerosis, a situation that would become part of the rest of my life, i wanted so badly for it to be a tumor.

i've had this mantra that i've been using with any pain or anxiety or fear or sleeplessness--"this will pass". i say it over and over and it truly makes me feel at ease. but MS will not pass. MS doesn't pass. and when that MS diagnosis finally came, i felt destroyed and betrayed and damned. but, the more i've learned about it, the better i've felt. and as i said in that e-mail i sent out to friends today, knowing that this is a disease that has a lot of ambiguity in how it affects different people, it does me no good to live any other way than as if i'm going to be fully functional for a long time.

i'm reading this book called _One L_ by scott turow. it's a terribly mainstream book to read for the soon-to-be law student, but i'm reading it out of curiosity and the need to read something relevant to my life that isn't about MS. it's about turow's first year at harvard law school in the 70s, and it makes the experience out to be almost physically painful--12 hours a day of studying, upped to 20 hours a day during exam time; cutthroat classmates; pretentious professors; never seeing non-law school significant others. now, i'm not going to harvard law school...on purpose. i don't want that kind of environment. but i'm excited about the school i've chosen and i'm excited about immersing myself in being a law student. and even if it gets even remotely close to what turow has described, i can't imagine it being any worse than what i've just gone through. so, pitt law, bring it. piece of cake.