Being alive

Today I realized that I'll never be able to SCUBA dive again. Its something I love doing and its something I trained for a long time to earn the highest certification for. While this saddens me, I feel better when I remind myself that I DID SCUBA dive. I dove and I loved it. I'm glad I took that chance.


When I was growing up, I had chronic pain. I would stop playing with the other kids, come in from recess to the nurse at school, and be up late crying with my mom because my arms and legs hurt. For years the doctors said it was just growing pains and that I'd grow out of it. They said I was "overly dramatic" and that I "exaggerated" the extent of my pain. It wasn't until I was 11 that things changed. I went to the eye doctor with that I thought was a case of pink eye, that I was taken seriously. The eye problem I had wasn't pink eye, it was acute iritis. To explain it simply, my iris (the colored part of your eye) was swelling, a problem linked to a group of genetic disorders on the gene HLA-B27. From there I went to a specialist for tests to see what caused the iritis and what was causing my pain. At the time, I was misdiagnosed with something called Ankylosing Spondylitis (AS). AS is a disease which causes pain, but causes calcification to form over the swelling (mostly in the spine). I was told that my spine would fuse together and I would likely be in a wheelchair. I was given medications and lifestyle changes to follow in order to prevent permanent damage from happening. Like anyone else in this situation, I was scared. 


At first, my reaction was a strange mix of anger and disbelief, I would take my frustrations out on others and didn't handle it well. Then I realized that I had a blessing in disguise. While I may be confined to a wheelchair in the future, I had the time in the meanwhile to take advantage of. It was this realization that led me to do many of the things I did growing up. I was in 7 choirs, countless plays and performances, and was an active member of many student organizations. When I was a senior in high school, I decided I wanted to learn how to SCUBA dive. At the same time, I realized that I had only been to one overnight camp in my life and wanted that experience as well. I found Odyssey Expeditions. Odyssey was a summer month long SCUBA camp in the Caribbean. I ended up going two years in a row and earning my Master SCUBA Diver Certification from PADI. Years later the diagnosis was corrected to be fibromyalgia, which is good, because there is no permanent damage involved with the pain I feel. 




In the years since that misdiagnosis, have experienced things in that I treasure very dearly. I studied in Sevilla, Spain for a month when I was a freshman in college. I went to Mardi Gras parades more times than I can count. I fished on a dock with my Grampa and caught a big one. I climbed the Great Wall, saw the Taj, visited the Pyramids of Giza, and walked through rush hour in Tokyo. I literally circumnavigated the globe on a ship. I've loved and been loved and had my heart broken. I've slept outside in a tent for a summer and cooked on a campfire. I've eaten foods without knowing what they are and things I never thought I would be able to stomach (and liked it!). I've seen a play on Broadway, a symphony in Spain, and a rock concert at the Magic Kingdom. I've been on 6 week long roadtrips with my family (and yes, we saw the landfill of the Great Dysmal Swamp). I've had a jobs I love for companies I believe in. I've helped raise over $250,000 for charity. I've done all of this because I never want to regret not doing something while I could. Like Mark Twain said, "twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than the ones you do." I've lived by those words. So now, when my health is failing me yet again, I know I have no regrets that I didn't do the things I wanted to do. I did the things I wanted to, I lived, I experienced life to its fullest. So now, if I find that I don't ever get better from POTS, I know that I've still done so many wonderful things. 


I have many years left, I'm not done. Not even close. I fully intend on continuing to travel, while going 8 hours into the rural mountains of Vietnam may be off the table from now on, I can still travel to places that are new. I guess I'm just going to have to find my new adventures. New ways to get that "adrenaline high". But no matter what restrictions life throws at me, I'll never stop trying to find the loopholes and experiencing life. I plan on living, not just being alive.