By: Merdeka Pravda

I had not seen a mirror since I had been in the hospital. When visitors came, I just asked whoever was with me, if I looked ok. So I never knew that my appearance had changed so dramatically, that even my own child didn’t recognize me.

I hugged and kissed and kissed and hugged my little girl. She was still dazed from sleep and probably didn’t understand why this strange lady was hugging and kissing her. Her dad was watching and so was her grandma, and this is probably why she didn’t offer any resistance.

Eventually, I felt my strength failing me again and my husband prompted me to go upstairs to the bedroom so I can rest. In the bedroom, on a mirror, I saw a reflection. The form was that of a woman so thin she was gaunt. I couldn’t see details of the face but I am sure even if I did, I wouldn’t have recognized ME. I held back until I was lying on the bed, after assuring my husband that I was comfortable and that I needed to sleep. Then the tears came in torrents. Finally I am home, I felt safe enough to let go of every other gamut of feelings I have been feeling since that day I woke up in the ICU.

Then the tears ran out and I fell asleep. When I woke up, I felt someone was moving beside me. It was my daughter. She was trying to cuddle up next to me, while being careful not to wake me. I put my arms around her and hugged her tight.

“Love you mummy…” i heard her whisper. My heart filled up. My lungs seemed to expand for the first time in a long time. I inhaled the scent of her hair.

I knew once again, it was going to be ok.

Recovery was slow and painstaking. I hated the insulin injections. The injection sites hurt when it was cold. When I hit a capillary or a nerve, the skin would bruise. Plus I had to prick myself for glucose testing five times a day. I had to re-dress my surgery with a then, experimental gel. I had an open wound and the gel provided for an aseptic moist cover while encouraging the surrounding skin to pull together to close the wound. I had to take so many pills it was giving me a headache just trying to figure out which to take when.

Then fate struck another blow. I had been noticing a certain numbness on the left side of my face. What was just irritating at first, became terrifying, real quick.

The left side of my face started to literally droop. It got so bad that I couldn’t close my left eye, even as I slept. I couldn’t drink from a cup and had to use a straw, shoved deep in my mouth. My speech was badly impaired.

The mirror showed the face of a woman who could have been mistaken as a victim of a bad stroke.

My husband immediately took me to a neurologist to determine what was wrong with me, once again. More tests, more blood taken out, probing, thumping etc. The verdict: BELL’S PALSY.

The neurologist said it was going to be tricky. The treatment for Bell’s Palsy was steroids. Steroids elevate blood sugar. So it’s a damn you do, damn you don’t situation.

I was given a treatment program with lots of guidelines and entailed even more pricking because I needed to monitor my glucose levels even more intensively. Sigh. Chances of complete recovery: HIGH. I was allowed to hope.

She was right. If you look at me now, my left eye is slightly smaller than my right. That is the subtle remembrance, left by Bell’s Palsy…

Looking back, I remember it as if it was some other person whom I just watched go through everything. Weird, because I remember everything. The memory of the pain,both physical and emotional are so poignant though. I remember the exact feeling of that day I woke up as I stared with disbelief at my bruised arms. I remember the helplessness of being in that private ward when my whole body ached so bad it felt like I was run over by a train… I couldn’t even turn over in bed. I had to ask for help to change my position because I felt my skin already burning and I feared I would get bed sores.

I remember the badly blurred vision. I remembered my badly cracked lips and acetone breath. I remembered everything tasted like paper and felt like gravel in my mouth. I remember the pain of the surgery and the stitches on my upper arm as they closed the venous cut down…

It has been nearly a decade. A decade filled with battling diabetes and battling the meds and how the meds made me feel even worse at times, instead of better. A decade where I almost died again as I went through with the pregnancy of my son. Where once again I was in the ICU, the Maternal ICU. The only thing different was that I feared more for my son’s life than mine. Where I talked to my husband and told him if he was made to choose between me and the baby, to leave the choice to God. Thankfully, he never had to.

Now I have a 15 year old daughter and a 2 year old son. My meds aren’t working as good as I want them to. I am not feeling as good as I want to. It feels like it’s a losing battle and it is not from lack of trying or determination.

There has to be a different way than just killing my blood sugar as I kill my other organs as well.

Nature must have a better way of healing me, the way nature intended my system to be.

This is what I have embarked to do. This is the journey I invite you to join me in. I will tell you as I go, what I am doing. I need help. This is one of the toughest battles I have yet to fight and I intend to win.

It involves giving up foods and habits that I have imbibed in all these years. Foods like, refined sugar (in any form), white flour (including biscuits and breads). I will have to get used to whole grains only. I will have to get used to chowing down raw nuts, raw veggies, raw fruits. I will have to completely wean myself from any form of caffeine. My only beverage would be water.

Impossible? No. Not really. Hard? YES. But NOT Impossible I’m still alive aren’t I, even when the doctors and experts in the field didn’t think I would be. Impossible is a word I have learned to use sparingly.

But the question has to be asked…

Why now?

Because I only live once. I cannot tell you how many other times my life was in peril. But, I am still here. God must have a plan, and who am I to stand in the way of that? Maybe this is one of my purposes. Maybe, if this works, I can help others. Who knows? Maybe it’s something else in the future. Maybe it’s for my children. Maybe it’s for my father. Maybe it’s for my one and only sibling. Maybe it’s for a complete stranger. Who knows?

All I know is that I will do my part and survive a few more decades. If I die, it won’t be because I didn’t exhaust every means to beat this disease.

I intend to go down fighting.

Care to join me?

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reynz is one Uragon and a Filipino-American, has many years of public accounting & auditing, broadcast investments, housing tax credits and equity investments as his background. Based in the US, he maintains his personal and humor blog at reyna elena dot com. A graduate of Aquinas U, he went to GWU and Temple U in the United States.