Friends and family who know me know that I have always had a deep love for music. Music is what comforts me, inspires me, brings me joy. Music is my Happy Place. Not being able to hear music was a heartbreaking loss for me. However, in between the tinnitus and the silence, there was a song stuck in my head. What was so miraculous is that it wasn’t a well known song, or one I even remembered singing. This song, with lyrics inspired by Psalm 40, became my mantra. I sang it to myself, in my head mostly, but often when left alone I would hum it softly or belt it out in the shower. The lyrics were so perfect for what I was going through that I considered it my theme song.
Jesus, Lover of My Soul
Jesus, lover of my soul Jesus, I will never let you go You’ve taken me from the miry clay Set my feet upon the rock And now I know I love you I need you Though my world may fall I’ll never let you go My savior My closest friend I will worship you until the very end
This is another story that took place in late 2013 when I was still very new to vision loss and hearing loss. I have quite a few stories packed away, and plan to bring some out here on the blog, once a week or so. This one is quite funny to think about in retrospect but at the time it felt quite terrifying…
Our kids were gone to Grandma’s for the weekend (my mother-in-law) and I woke up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom. For some reason I used the one in the hallway, rather than the master bathroom. I’m not sure why, and it doesn’t really matter, only that this wouldn’t have happened otherwise.
Remember now that I can’t see well, I’m completely deaf, and all the lights are off so it’s pitch dark. I made it to the bathroom without issue, but when I turned off the bathroom light and stepped into the hallway I was rather disoriented. I knew enough to turn to the right, having lived in this house for fifteen years, but then I kept walking forward into my room. Or what I thought was my room. When I didn’t find my bed, I panicked. Legitimate, full on panic. I was reaching around trying to discern where I was but I had no idea. I was turning and flailing expecting to find our closet, a bed. a dresser, anything that would register familiar.
And then I started screaming for my husband. “Mike, Mike! Help! I don’t know where I am! MIKE! I couldn’t hear myself, or any response from him, of course, so I was just hoping I was screaming loud enough to wake him, and then I would wait a minute for him to come to me. When he didn’t come, I would start screaming again, to be sure he would know where to find me.
Did I mention this was an 1100 square foot ranch with three bedrooms? Not an escape room or corn maze. Not rocket science.
So this screaming and waiting went on for several more minutes, maybe 10 or 15, until I decided it wasn’t working and I was just going to have to sleep right there on the floor, wherever that was. So I sat down in defeat. That’s when I felt the rug, and I realized then by the texture that it was the race car rug in my son’s room. Right next door to mine. I was so relieved I didn’t even bother laughing at myself. I’ve had plenty of time to do that since. I just got up, felt around for the doorway I had just come through, and found my way to my bedroom and safely into my bed. I laid a hand gently on my husband’s chest, wondering why he hadn’t come to my aid. I could feel the vibrations; he was snoring. He hadn’t even heard me screaming. He slept right through it. I didn’t tell him about the incident until five years later. He wasn’t even sorry, can you believe that?
This journey I’ve been on since 2013, adjusting to life with disabilities, learning how to be me with limited vision and deafness, has taught me so many things, but one of the biggest lessons I’ve learned is that God isn’t always (almost never, if you ask me) going to tell you His plans. He may be keeping you in the dark about all the details and sometimes you just have to sit and wait until He shows you where to go, one grueling step at a time. And no matter how lost you feel, you might just find you’ve been in the right place all along.
A fascinating part of this story of my plunge into disability is that for almost a full two months I was sleeping close to twenty hours a day. That seems to fascinate the people who hear about it after the fact. For the friends and family who lived it, it was terrifying. And for me, well, I don’t remember much so you could say it was sort of a blur.
I’m told a lot of things happened. There were times I was sleeping in bed or on the couch. Other times I was falling asleep at the dinner table. One time I was actually falling asleep while walking through Office Max with a friend. At least, that’s what I was told. I sort of wish I had that on video.
I know I spent a lot of time in the hospital for monitoring and testing. I remember getting a spinal tap, a CAT scan, and numerous middle of the night blood draws. There was one particular night I woke up to half of my extended family sitting around the room with me. My aunt and uncle from Georgia, my cousin from Grand Haven, and perhaps my grandma and grandpa as well. These were all people who were following the progress updates being posted on Facebook and who sacrificed to be with me, to make sure I knew they were all in my corner. I’m really grateful I was awake enough to remember their visit.
I had to take a visual field test at the neuro-ophthalmologist’s office to gauge what I could actually see. This is a pretty standard test where you sit with one eye covered and stare into a machine. You stare at the light in the center of the screen and click a button whenever you see a blinking light in your periphery. I’ve taken this test numerous times since, but this first time was the worst. If it was a pass or fail test, you could say I failed. I could not stay awake. It didn’t help that the room had to be dark for the duration of the test. It’s maybe a five or ten minute test and they kept having to stop the test to wake me up again. Over and over and over. It’s comical now, but it was pretty scary then. I vaguely remember this first test but I had no idea I had been falling asleep so frequently.
I slept through most of my daughter’s 4th birthday party. I remember bits of pieces of that event but only after I was shown videos and photos showing that I was there. I cried watching the video because I didn’t even feel like I knew who I was looking at. It felt like sort of an out of body experience. It breaks my heart a little to realize how absent I was for so much of my children’s everyday lives during this period. I can never get that back but you better believe I’m doing everything I can now to make up for it. I have asked my daughter over the years if she remembers me before I was deaf and she always says she can’t. She does remember thinking she had caused my hearing loss because she had been making too much noise. She was only four years old. You know?! See, now your heart is breaking too.
I also remember Thanksgiving that year. It was the only year within the past decade I didn’t host. Because of course, I was checked out. This made me sad but I was grateful that my husband’s grandparents were willing to fill in and host at their house. I went with no expectations and I was happy to be with loved ones. But when I sat down at the dinner table, I looked down and could not decipher what was on the plate. See, my visual impairment also includes some atypical color blindness, making it difficult to identify anything with bland, muted, or similar coloring. I looked around the table at all the smiling faces as people chatted in silence over their meals. It was just too much. I was there, but I was still missing it. My favorite holiday. With tears spilling over my face, I ran to the bathroom. I was able to calm myself down but I didn’t want to face the family with this red, splotchy, sad face. I cleaned myself up and returned to the table, apologizing for my abrupt exit. I certainly didn’t want to ruin everyone else’s Thanksgiving. And then my daughter Natalie reached over and hugged me. Because God speaks love and grace through four year olds. Of that I am certain.
So that’s how I spent October and most of November. In a dazed, trance like state. I was never left alone. I had a friend who came and stayed at the house with me every weekday while she home-schooled her children. She made sure I was fed and that I took my medications. She even helped with housework quite a bit and kept me engaged as much as possible. When I was too afraid to do normal things like showering, she never laughed or pitied me. She somehow understood the state of fear I was in and rather than scoff at me, she gently encouraged me to take everything one small step at a time.
When I was too afraid to cut an apple for fear of slicing my hand, she told me she believed I could do it and looked forward to the day I would have the courage to try again. So when that day came, I didn’t tell her what I was doing. I just slowly sliced that apple, artfully laid the slices out on a plate and walked up to the dining room table with a proud smile on my face. She smiled back with tears in her eyes (I imagine) and gave me a big mama hug. Cutting that apple was the first big step for me on the long and arduous path of healing and rehabilitation. I still had a long way to go, but that small but meaningful victory over slicing an apple gave me the courage and confidence to keep going, one tiny step at a time.
I mentioned at the end of my last post here, that I thought it was the steroids that were affecting my vision. As it turns out, it was not the steroids. What I had started to notice was that things looked blurry or foggy. It didn’t seem to really bother me until I was driving home from a weekend out of town with my sister. I remember closing my right eye for the entire drive home, because it seemed to help. I do realize in hindsight that isn’t the safest way to drive. I should have known this, given a previous experience with wearing an eye patch, but that’s for another post to come.
This was mid-September of 2013, roughly a month after my hearing loss. I still couldn’t hear much of anything, but I do remember blasting my music really loud in the car, so I must have still retained a small level of hearing. Not enough to be functional, unfortunately.
I had just finished a round of intravenous steroids the day I left for this trip, which is a standard course of action for MS relapses. At this point I had steroids injected into my ears, taken orally, and infused intravenously. None of it was curing my hearing loss. It may have slowed the progression of my vision loss, but did not stop it completely. At the peak of my vision loss, I was left with a VFI (visual field index) of 60% in my left eye and a measly 20% in my right eye. If you’re doing the math, that’s a 60% overall loss of visual field. Meaning I can only see 40% of what everyone else sees. And there’s no order to it. The blind spots are scattered, as if someone had taken a completed 1000 piece jigsaw puzzle and randomly removed 600 of the pieces. You might still be able to tell what’s in parts of the puzzle, but you never get the whole picture. That’s my new literal worldview.
I can no longer drive, and I have an extremely difficult time reading and writing (sadly, those are three of my favorite activities). I’ve had to make adjustments, millions of tiny little adjustments, to make life feel normal again. To feel useful. Capable. Whole again. Rehabilitation is a long, slow process. I’m still working at it but you can bet I’ve come a long way since that fateful fall season of 2013. This was just the beginning…
I ran another race! This one was kind of special because my plan was to run it solo. Back in May I had a nice conversation with the race director and she made me feel really confident that it was something that I could pull off. And that if anything were to happen to me along the course, I would be well taken care of. The Capital City River Run is a race right here in my hometown. They offer a couple different distances, with the longest being the half marathon. That’s what I ran this weekend. The people involved in this race are incredible and there’s just something magical about running around this city that holds so many memories of my life over the past 25 years.
Hanging out with the back of the pack, waiting for the countdown. I am super grateful for the enthusiastic and supportive pacers.
To be honest, right now, four hours after I finished running, I’m wondering why I even do this to my body. I ran a strong race, my legs were holding up well, but a short time after it was over, I started feeling really ill. Stomach upset, nauseated, and lightheaded. I’m feeling a lot better now after a nap and a shower, but my body is still questioning my life choices.
The bottom line is, I had FUN. And I’m so glad my husband reminded me of that when he dropped me off that morning because I was so nervous and scared that I was forgetting the whole reason I was there in the first place. To have fun. Running is fun. People who run are fun. And when those inevitable hard days come, it helps to remember you ran some really awesome races that were hard to do but you ran them. You set goals and you didn’t give up on those goals. You met people along the way who cheered you on even as they were battling their own struggles, fighting to finish their own races.
And fast forward; it’s now Tuesday. I had to pause writing this post on Sunday because I was just so tired. And I didn’t finish it on Monday because Fatigue. Level 10 fatigue, all day Monday. I wasn’t in so much pain as I had expected to be in. Just a bit of hip pain on the right side, but I was definitely feeling more fatigued than I had anticipated. Y’all, I could barely hold my head up sitting at the kitchen table to eat my breakfast. All day I was struggling to move. Fatigue is the most common symptom of MS, and I’ve learned to avoid it most of the time by keeping up with regular running. This race, however, kicked me right in the rear. Leading up to the day of the race I had already decided to dial it back on the long races, because I had so much trouble keeping up with the training, but Monday, that decision was cemented in my mind. I am super proud of my accomplishment, but I need to take it easy for awhile. My body made that glaringly obvious – the debilitating fatigue that keeps me from doing basic, simple tasks is just not worth it right now. Maybe down the road I’ll set my sights on another pie in the sky goal, but for now I am ready to do some serious resting.
This was Sunday, post-nap. I ran 13.1 miles and did not die!!
Some things that are easy and simple for most people are things that became scary for me 8 years ago. When I suddenly lost my hearing and then half my vision that fall of 2013, it was a drastic paradigm shift for me. The cochlear implants help a lot, but they don’t provide me with 100% normal hearing. And nothing can be done about my 60% visual field loss.
I still remember vividly standing in my kitchen all those years ago, terrified to cut an apple. I couldn’t see much and I was so unsure of myself. I feared I would cut off one of my fingers. However, after some encouragement from a friend who assured me I could do hard things, I took what felt like a massive risk and I cut that apple.
I can do hard things.
I’ve been working very hard these past 8 years to find some sense of normalcy in my life. There are still a lot of things I cannot do, or can only do in a limited capacity. I cannot drive or cut straight lines. I can’t seem to determine north from west anymore. I get lost very easily. Hearing and reading are both extremely exhausting because they take so much mental effort.
But what I’ve recently learned I can do is walk half a mile to the bus stop. I can get on the bus, pay the fare, sit down, and listen to my phone with my cochlear implant Bluetooth connection to be notified when my stop is approaching. I bought my first bus pass several years ago and I didn’t use it for the first time until this year because I was afraid. I had never ridden the bus before, and I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to hear or read the cues and I would miss my stop, get lost. Not know how to get home.
But then I remember that apple and am reminded that I can do hard things.
My first trip was a couple months ago with my kids, before summer break had ended, and they were there as a safeguard to be sure we got off on the right stop. My second trip was last week with my daughter, who was a huge help calming my nerves. She viewed it as an adventure, and was not worried at all about getting lost.
My third trip was today and I went alone. All by myself! It seems silly to me that I get such a sense of achievement and excitement at riding the bus by myself, because regular people do this every day without issue. However, I have to remember that the functions I have lost between my vision and hearing, do make this more of a challenge. Riding the bus was an entirely new thing to me, so I didn’t have any old habits or familiarity to draw from. It took a lot of courage for me to take these trips and I should not discount that. This was hard for me, and I did it anyway. This was a fear conquered, a giant slayed.
Mindy rides the bus!
I can do hard things, and so can you! What hard thing are you avoiding? What’s holding you back? I dare you to stare that hard thing square in the eyes and just do whatever it is.
I’ve been a little nervous about this upcoming infusion, as so much has changed from 4 weeks ago. We are now under a shelter in place order to stop the spread of the coronavirus. Essential workers and activities are still allowed, but people everywhere are taking all the advised precautions. I’m wearing a hand-sewn paisley face mask a dear friend dropped off for me last week, as well as a pair of latex gloves.
My husband dropped me off, and we tossed virtual kisses at each other as I got out of the truck. I walked into the cancer center, where my infusion center is held on the 2nd floor. In the entrance area, between two sets of automatic double doors, a man is sitting on a bench, wearing a face mask. I walk through the interior double doors and I’m summoned to a Purell stand and asked to sanitize the latex gloves I’m wearing. The woman at the station then asks where I’m headed. When I tell her the infusion center, she informs me that they have their own procedures and will ask me the necessary questions and check my temperature. I’m wondering if she can read my timid hesitation and confusion through my half-covered face.
I took the elevator this time, to get to the second floor. I usually take the stairs, but I still have poor balance and wanted to avoid needing to touch the handrail, even though I was wearing gloves.
On the second floor there are two women blocking the check in area. They are standing at makeshift stations, tall, round tables holding boxes of face masks. Each table is proceeded by a line of red tape on the carpet several feet away. This is where I’m asked politely to stand. Everyone is wearing a white face mask. I wait patiently for my turn.
When it’s my turn I’m instructed to remove the mask I’m wearing and put on the mask they have provided. They said I could wear my mask over the white mask if I wanted, but I declined and put it in my purse. I’ll save it for another day. I’m asked a series of questions and my temperature is taken, and the woman signs the form for me. So I don’t have to touch anything.
Once I’m cleared they tell me to stand at a red paper square on the floor, several feet ahead. I walk over and wait to be called but it’s tricky because the masks muffle all the sound and I can’t read lips that are covered, obviously. I forget how much lipreading plays a part in my speech comprehension.
A woman far ahead looks in my direction and points at me, because it seemed clear to her I wasn’t getting the message to come over to her desk. She checks me in, quickly, puts an ID bracelet on my wrist, and then I’m sent over to the waiting area. I find a seat away from other patients, breathe deeply, and wait.
When my intake nurse comes through the doors ahead, she sees me immediately and I can tell from her eyes that she’s smiling. As we walk back to my corner station, she mentions that it’s probably hard for me with all these masks on. She remembers me well; I’m a regular at this place. I say yes, that I forget how much I use lipreading until it’s not available anymore. It’s not impossible to understand, just a little more challenging than normal. Nothing I can’t deal with.
To be perfectly honest, the rest of the infusion went just as usual. It was a bit strange to see everyone walking around with face masks on, but I didn’t feel a heightened sense of dread or anything. It felt like business as usual for everyone. For all the nurses and staff, this has become their new normal (for now, at least) and they are well adjusted to it. Once I was sitting in my infusion chair, I felt completely at ease and had no reason to be fearful. And once I had my mask on properly, it was actually quite comfortable to wear. To quote the Dread Pirate Roberts, “I think everyone will be wearing them in the future.”
Welp, I did it! I ran a half marathon. All 13.1 miles with minimal walking. All of this training I’ve been doing really paid off, and I was able to run pretty much the entire way. I walked over slippery bridges and once late in the race because I was sensing some drop foot, but other than that I was good to go. I did NOT feel like I was dying, and despite how I looked to others at the finish line, I felt fabulous. I was all smiles and ready to sign up for the next one.
The Comradery: I simply could not have done this race without my friends. Alicia and Staci were with me every step of the way, guiding me away from obstacles and leading me down hills so I wouldn’t lose my balance. They even kept me from taking off in the beginning at too fast a pace, which is something I tend to do, and pay dearly for on these long runs. I happened to see a couple other running friends before the race started, and that really helped to boost my adrenaline. All the runners I have gotten to know are pretty special people. We are a diverse crowd, and yet everyone is so supportive of on another, regardless of all our differences. We are all running with the same goal, but for very different reasons, and I find that pretty awesome.
The Spectators: I had an entire team of spectators cheering me on throughout this race, and this was pretty dang awesome. My husband, my son and daughter (who had no shortage of hugs), my dad and stepmom, my sister and her boyfriend, my niece, and as a last surprise of the morning, my big brother. I was so surprised to see him there because he has been so busy working lately I just didn’t expect he would be able to make it. But he was there. They were all there, and they knew why this was such a big deal. It wasn’t just a race. This race happened almost exactly 6 years from when I lost my hearing and vision. In fact, that morning a memory came up on my husband’s Facebook feed. It was a posting he had sent out updating everyone on my long hospital stay. I was so sick and no one knew what was wrong with me, and I could not walk unassisted, among other numerous issues. So to have that come up on his feed the day I was running my first half marathon was just incredibly fitting.
The Final 5k: At 10 miles my family was there cheering us on, as they had in several other spots, and my son started jogging next to me. The excitement of the moment took over, and I invited him to run the final 3.1 miles with us. They frown on this sort of thing, I guess, but no one bothered us about it. He did a great job keeping me going and holding me steady down the hills. However, when we were nearing the finish, we were at the top of a very steep concrete ramp that feeds into the baseball stadium where the finish line was. He danced on ahead of me while Alicia and Staci took my arms to help me down. I was so embarrassed to see my husband at the bottom of the ramp, taking our picture. It looked rather pathetic, as if my legs had stopped working, but really it was just a matter of keeping my balance down the incline. When we reached flat land my son was waiting for me and we began to sprint the last stretch towards the Finish. I was so giddy I was almost in tears. And after I crossed the line I tried to stop but instead just fell to the ground. This is what seems to happen after my races and it alarms people because it looks like I’m hurt but really it’s just muscle weakness and poor balance. The motion of running keeps me on my feet somehow, so when I try to walk it never works. They brought me a chair and a woman put a medal around my neck and we all just stayed there congratulating each other and taking pictures.
It was a fantastic race and I am so glad I did it. Every time I try a longer distance I think about how far I’ve come, and I wonder how far I can go. My curiosity I think is what drives me. I just want to see how far I can go before my body says no. Yes, it tries to tell me no some days, but I’ll always try to call it’s bluff.
I am so grateful to everyone for supporting me and cheering me on. I could not have done this without you. Most of all though, I owe my gratitude to Jesus Christ. I would not have even started on this journey into running and health if it had not been for His sustaining grace and comfort. He is my constant, every day all day running partner. Hallelujah!
I use my phone every day, all day. It has tons of useful features to support my life. It helps me keep myself and my family on track. Lately I had a thought I wanted to share. My phone is like a metaphor for my life. Let me explain why.
I was canoeing a couple years ago and the canoe tipped over. My phone was in a Ziploc bag, in my running belt, and water leaked into the bag, damaging my phone. I was able to soak it in a bag of rice for awhile, which restored most of its functions, but the one thing I can’t do is use the back button and that other one on the bottom left (the one that shows you all your open apps).
However, I found a workaround by using the s-pen to use those two buttons. The phone responds to the s-pen, just not my finger. A couple weeks ago I was replacing the pen into the phone and it snapped on me. It still works the way the pen should, it just doesn’t have that spring action needed to get it back out of its slot. So now if I want to use my back button, I need to bang the end of the phone on the heel of my hand in order to get the s-pen out. Other than that, the phone works great! It’s kind of ridiculous and it makes me chuckle.
It looks like a completely normal, functional phone. It just has a few broken features but there are workarounds. And that is a metaphor for my life. I am deaf but I have cochlear implants to help me hear. I am visually impaired but have friends, family, and public transportation to help me get around. I look completely normal, I just have a few broken pieces and I have my workarounds I’ve discovered I can use in order to continue functioning. So there. That is how my phone is like me.
I was at the neighborhood coffee shop today and had a pleasant conversation with the barista. She remembered me (and my drink, a mocha with hazelnut and almond milk!) from the last time I was in there with a friend of mine. She had wanted to ask me about my cochlear implants, and hoped I didn’t mind. Her son has partial hearing loss in one ear, and she’s been encouraging him to get a hearing aid, but he doesn’t feel he needs one. That and he’s a high school student and probably fears the ridicule he might receive from other students. This is a shame, because there is absolutely nothing to be embarrassed about.
I wear my cochlear implants proudly, and have never felt self conscious wearing them. The barista, Dana, was nervous to ask me about them, but I told her I love it when people ask. In fact, I wish more people would. I know people must be curious. I know I would be. They are fascinating in the way they work, and not a lot of people really know much about them.
Dana was under the assumption that my hearing with implants would be much better than normal hearing, but I informed her that was not the case. Not to minimize the miracle of the invention, but scientists just cannot outshine God’s invention of the human ear. What I hear is clear, yes, but it has a different quality to it. No, it will never be the same as normal hearing, but having the gift of conversation back after losing it so quickly more than makes up for that disparity.
Dana also found it especially fascinating that what I hear now does not come at all from my ears, but from the microphones built within the earpieces. It’s true, my ears are now just placeholders for my glasses and my cochlear processors. You know when you clean your ears out with a Qtip and it makes that funny noise? Yeah, I don’t hear that anymore. Kinda funny, I suppose.
Anyway, it was good to chat with a friendly stranger about how well the cochlear implants are working for me, and to have someone share in the excitement. I will never take my hearing for granted, ever. I am super grateful for what I have. ‘Nuff said.
“A man was bragging about his new hearing aid and how great it was and how well he could hear with it. His friend asked what kind it was and the man responded, 12:30.”
Deaf and half-blind runner with multiple sclerosis
Little M.S. Runner 