LEARNING TO DO WITHOUT
In December of 2011, I was working as a manager at a local fastfood restaurant. On my way home from a routine doctors appointment, I began to shake and lose body control. I pulled over at a local gas station and called my family, alerting them to the situation I was in. I was able to make it to my grandmothers home before I was taken to the hospital under the impression that I had or was in the process of having a stroke or even a heartattack.
When I awoke, I had no memory of most everyone and everything that I knew or had done. Eventually I lost my job and had to move back in with my parents and have help from family members that I did not even know. I had to be reintroduced to almost everyone, including my own son, who didn’t even recognize me in the state I was in.
Doctor after doctor denied me because I had on medical insurance and my family still had no answers to the mysterious illness that had taken its hold on me suddenly and without warning. I discovered myself first hand that sometimes, some doctors don’t care for anything or anyone, just the money and benefits. I became bitter towards everyone and began to slowly but surely cut myself off from everyone trying to help me.
After searching and reading on everything from ms to parkinsons, we discovered that I had been bit by a small tiny tick, a tick which carried lyme disease. I went to be tested immediately, but to my shock, the tests came back negative. I became convinced that I never would discover what had cost me my memories and my job.
I began having to give up all the things I thought were so valuable and I needed and got down to the essentials. Namely medicine, food, and clothes on my back. As much I had hated it, I had no choice but to give up my cell phone as well, my only communication outside of the house besides the internet. For the most part, I stayed in the bed, taking antibiotics and just keeping the essentials on hand.
Time marched on and day after day became harder and harder to live the way I had been basically forced into by way of this disease. With no income and no way to travel outside of family members having or making the time to take me where I needed to go, I pretty much became isolated from the world around me.
In turn, thanks to this disease I learned that things that people now a days believe they cannot live without they actually can. It has been months since I have even used my cell phone, months since I purchased anything that wasn’t necessary. This wasn’t a choice on my part but it taught me a very valuable lesson. Possessions and valuables aren’t necessary.. As long as you have the essentials, the rest of the things you can live without.
