Giving Father Time the Middle Finger.

I once thought that Totino’s pizza rolls were the world's most perfect food. It's the summer of 2017 in Bar Harbor, Maine, and I’m grabbing some of those delectable morsels from the fridge, when my right foot spasms with pain so gnarly, it felt like shattered glass was shredding my instep.

To find out what fresh hell my body was throwing at me, I booked an appointment with a podiatrist, which, in retrospect, turned out to be a fool’s errand. After pinching, poking, and practically tasering me - the physician shrugged his decrepit shoulders, surrendered to any meaningful inquiry, and slapped a catch-all diagnosis - plantar fasciitis - on my pain. That’s it? That’s your answer?

He should have known, as I do now, that it was my nerves dying. But he was - to put it kindly - a prehistoric fossil. A modern, progressive allopathic physician he was not. And I should have known that the solution to my dilemma was not to shovel even more Doritos and Snickers into my mouth with the ferociousness of the cookie monster.

Three years prior, due to a psychic ‘accident’ with plant medicine gone awry, I had lost my relationship, my house, and almost my entire career. Seemingly overnight, all my empath spidey senses - which were not only an important interpersonal compass but on which my entire career as a healing practitioner was based - were yanked from me, leaving me adrift on choppy seas where no lighthouse could reach me. I woke up every morning muttering “shit, another day.” Lifting off the covers was harder than lifting concrete.

In Autumn 2017, my ex, Dipu, and I took a little jaunt out to San Francisco. We did the tourist thing, Fisherman’s Wharf and all, and I should have been lit up - having spent a good amount of time with my gays in San Francisco for five straight Pride festivals in the early 2000’s. All I remember about that trip was two things: feeling an insatiable desire for In-N-Out burgers - and not having the breath or oxygen to propel my rather expansive ass up the hills. Dipu loves to leisurely stroll, in his ethereal Piscean way, relentlessly wandering in search of pastries and mochas. I couldn’t, because my feet wouldn't let me. Case closed.

I almost experienced an embolism when I topped out the scale at - ready for it - 202 pounds. Prior to that period in my life - and ever since - I’ve been a lean 165 pounds. Carrying around a 40-pound blob of pre-diabetic visceral fat while huffing it up Lombard Street had me feeling decades older than I actually was.

When I gained enough courage to look at photos of myself, my eyes edited out everything except the baby bump. All of my favorite clothes no longer fit, and I lost the desire to buy new larger-sized ones. Why even bother? I might have bought a few colorless oversized items at Goodwill that I hoped would hide my impending pregnancy, and that’s about it. I stopped combing my hair, stopped shaving, and many days I didn’t even brush my teeth. On waking, I started counting the hours until I could go to back to bed. I spent my days longing for a past that no longer existed. Extreme grief has a way of doing that.

Not much changed until the revelatory, and disastrous, year of 2020. To his credit, Dipu had given up his dream job in order for me to leave Maine, where I was deeply unhappy. But the health issues continued - my ribcage felt like it was collapsing in on itself, being seized by an agonizing compression. Explorer that I am, I ransacked the internet for everything I could find. MS Hug. Shit. I’ve got M.S. I had all the classic symptoms, from the numbness, neuropathy, burning sensations - and brutal muscle spasms from head to toe. Oh yeah, and throw in an involuntary myoclonic head jerk. Try falling asleep with a head jerking violently to the left every 3 seconds. Good times.

By that point, the marriage had become toxic with daily arguments, and I was resenting my husband, myself, and God. I didn’t realize that the environment itself was making me sick. The moment I punched my hand through my office wall, I knew I had to leave the relationship. I was drinking cortisol out of a bottomless cup, and my mental health was being pulled into a gathering funnel cloud.

Somewhere deep within, though, I didn’t accept what felt like fate.

After going through a ton of fruitless MRI’s, endless labs, and two different neurologists with no official diagnosis - I could have said fuck it and just given in. But that ain’t me. Even at my lowest.

I’ve been the recipient of many miracles in my life, including a rainbow landing squarely on the hood of my car. I've seen a lot.