Day +42

I am here to report my progress over the past few weeks or rather the complete lack of it. I am continuing with working out every day. I have managed to walk the 20 steps to the mailbox once. That felt like a huge prize worthy moment even though I was hanging on to my husband the entire walk.

But at the end of it all I am still tired.

Recovery, I have realized is more to do with patience than physical well-being.

I actually started to type out this blog post 10 days back as a celebration of my one month old immune system. But I realized I had nothing to type even before I started, hence the rant in paragraph 1.

The newest development in my life is that I have started to work full time again. I cannot yet walk the distance from the parking lot to my cubicle, so I will be working from home for a couple months. I am so thankful for such understanding co-workers and management. This is something I realize I am very lucky to have – The support at my workplace.

I always thought that somehow luck always eluded me, but quite the contrary. Here’s why…

• I came to live in the USA back in 2008. I thought I was alone in a new country, but not true. I always had the support of my cousin that lived in the same city. Not everyone has family nearby when they move to a different country.
• I lived on a Teaching assistant’s salary of $600 for the first 6 months. Of this $300 went towards the rent of a furniture-less home shared with 3 others. The other $300 was split as $200 for living and $100 savings (Yes, I saved 🙂 ) In retrospect I cannot imagine how I managed life back then. But I now know that there are people who do not even have that promise of $600 a month.
• The next 6 months saw a phenomenal rise in income. $1800/month. That’s right! But in true middle class Indian fashion, I just sent every remaining dollar into the hole called College Loan. And the loan was paid off in full even before I started work full time!
• This was followed by a 1 year internship! I thought life was made. But here is where the Multiple sclerosis hit.  2009 – 2010 were tough years. I had to learn to walk again. Because surprise surprise, your brain happens to forget. Oh and I didn’t really tell my parents back in India that I was diagnosed with MS. There was no point in letting them live in worry about their daughter living across the planet. But like I said, I am lucky. They have been nothing other than supportive since they found out a year later.
• Did I mention my husband? 🙂 He has been my rock through all this. I  read about so many couples that split owing to the stresses of living with a chronic illness. I am one of the lucky people that never had to think along those lines.
• My one gripe was that I did not know about HSCT sooner, but in the end I am glad I had that opportunity. Let’s face it, it is very expensive to fall sick in America. After all my ultra expensive medicines came HSCT that took the prize on being the highest priced. But here again I feel so lucky in that my friends, family and so many strangers around the world rallied for me and helped me raise the funds I needed to pay the hospital up front. All this in 3.5 days. I couldn’t believe it. Plus I got treated under Dr. Burt. Now that is like learning how to play basketball from LeBron J 🙂

Writing this blog has given me even more clarity on how I need to be patient and give my mind and body a chance to recover. But I am still hoping that this darn symptom  of ‘Heat intolerance’ will disappear before the Texan summer.