Then I wake up one morning and I can see again. Just like that.
I return to work after a year off, and no one knows what I’ve been through. I keep it at that. I don’t tell anyone. I get back to work and it feels great. Months later, I begin taking a very expensive drug treatment, a needle I have to inject every single day. A nurse comes to the house to show me how to do it, and The Husband sits with me and learns, too.
I read a pamphlet about how there are actually several different types of MS, including the not-so-bad type I have, called relapsing-remitting. The other main type is called progressive, which, as the name suggests, is much, much worse. After reading up on it more, I realize how strange a disease MS is, in that it can take so many forms, and the range of severity is massive. It seems like every symptom is possible, or not possible. With relapsing-remitting, the neurologist tells me, I could have another attack at any moment, or maybe not for another ten years. Or ever. There’s no way of predicting it.
“Attack” is what they call it, which sounds pretty dramatic and I’m not too sure it’s a medical term. I learn that the attack I had, with the jumpy double vision, was caused by a huge lesion on my brain stem, which is basically the comms room of your brain, controlling the flow of information between your brain and body. It’s also responsible for basic body functions, like heart rate, breathing, reflexes, and motor control.
I see the MRI of my brain and they aren’t joking: the lesion on my brain stem is massive. That big blurry blob affected the motor control of my eyes, causing my jumpy vision (called nystagmus) and the double vision (diplopia). But those things have cleared up now. The attack is over, I’m back at work, and the neurologist is convinced that as long as I take the expensive drug, I will remain in remission.
And so, there’s nothing for me to do other than continue on as normal. I feel confident that this will all be fine. I will inject a needle every day for the rest of my life and it will be fine. I could have another attack or I could be hit by a bus, the chances seem the same to me, and so I choose not to think about it too much. There is too much life happening, too much to do, too many other things to focus on. I push out any thoughts of wheel-chairs and walkers, of tremors and degenerative tissue, of growing lesions on my brain. That won’t be me! I say to myself after the allotted five minutes of feeling sorry for myself.
That won’t be me.
CHAPTER THREE
RUNNING UP THAT HILL
FINISH LINE
I don’t know where I get the idea or why, but one day in the spring of 2009, I decide I’m going to sign up for a 10K race. Other than during soccer games, and a few years on the track team in my youth, I haven’t exactly been a runner. Or at least not a distance runner. Ten kilometres is a lot of kilometres if you’ve never really run, are supremely overweight, and have had a baby and an MS diagnosis in the past year. But this is a thing I decide I’m going to do. Run 10K. Alone.
I go to a running store and buy proper shoes for running on asphalt and concrete. The tiny woman who works there gives me tips on how to do “ten-and-ones,” which is to run for ten minutes then walk for one, and repeat. I sign up for the 10K online and try not to be overwhelmed by words like corral and best time. I put on some yoga pants and a stretched-out old sports bra and wake up at 5:30 a.m. to run around the neighbourhood before work. I do this a total of six times before the race. To call that “training” would be generous.
On the day of the race, I’m standing in my corral alone. Well, alone in a crowd of two thousand people. I’m freezing, because it’s seven thirty in the morning in early May. I’m wearing my ratty yoga pants and the free T-shirt I got when I registered. Even though it’s extra-large, it feels really tight on me.
I’m not so much afraid as awkward. Everyone is with buddies or in big groups. They’re all wearing sporty clothes that seem to fit them properly. I don’t know why I thought this was a good idea. What am I even doing here? By myself! I put my earbuds in and adjust my iPod, which is attached to my arm on this iPod-attaching thing someone lent me. When the starting gun goes off and the crowd surges, I press play on the perfectly crafted race playlist I’ve made, and I surge, too. Maybe this is cheesy, but, in case you’re dying to know, the first song on the playlist is Kate Bush’s “Running up that Hill.”
I’m not going to lie, it’s not easy, especially considering the most I’ve ever run is four kilometres, and that was only on the last of my six “training” mornings. But I run. I do my ten-and-ones, passing the flags that mark each kilometre, through Kate Bush and Arcade Fire, K’naan and The Clash, Vampire Weekend and Magic System. I’m amazed at the people that line the streets, cheering us on, offering us water. The sun is out in full force now and it’s a lot warmer. I’m sweaty and my lungs feel like they’re going to burst but I push on. The last kilometre is the worst; it feels like another ten for some reason. My legs are rubbery and I feel like I’m looking at the finish line forever, like I will never actually get there.
When I do arrive, I see Birdie in the crowd. She’s two years old now and on top of The Husband’s shoulders, wearing her white sun hat, the one with little flowers embroidered on it. The Husband is pointing me out to her and as I’m running toward the finish line, her voice cuts through the noisy crowds’ shouts and the ringing of bells. “Mooooooooooooooooooommm!”
And I think, Oh my God, I have MS.
I don’t know why, but this is when it hits me most. Everything that has happened in the past two years just pummels me in this moment, the moment I cross the finish line. I burst into tears. Uncontrollable sobs. And the two of them run over, hugging me and cheering. The Husband’s mother is there, too, and, ever the nurse, she starts quizzing me on my vitals. She hands me a banana and a bagel, which I scarf down immediately after I stop crying. I get my participation medal and although it took me an hour and a half to do it, I’m really proud of myself. I just ran 10K. And everything is going to be okay.
Time passes. Mostly I forget I even have MS. I still forget. I mean, other than taking the daily injections and pills, there’s nothing much I can do about it, so I actually don’t think about it that much. We go on with our lives, with this new phase of marriage, the one with a child in it.
I keep up with the running. I get up at 5:30 a.m. twice a week and run for an hour all around our neighbourhood. It’s amazingly quiet, the city at that hour. There are hardly any cars on the roads and even fewer people. I sometimes pass young men, construction workers, sitting on their front porches sleepily waiting for the truck full of other young men to come and pick them up. I like that they always have a giant cooler at their feet, the kind you’d take on a camping trip, but they just have their lunch for today in there.
I also pass women, of all ages and ethnicities, standing at bus stops, going to whatever jobs they’re going to so early in the morning. They hold their handbags close, look weary. I smile at them and sometimes they smile back, but not always. I wonder if they think I must be pretty privileged, to be jogging at this time of morning, instead of already dressed and on my way to work.
These early-morning runs are the only real time I have to myself. Just me and my thoughts, me and the quiet, me and my bursting lungs as I run down streets and through cemeteries and over streetcar tracks. It’s not that I love running at all, or getting up so early, but more that I love the time alone that is so precious when you’re married and a mother with a full-time job and a house to clean when you get home.
More time passes. The Husband is still so cute to me, even though he’s changed a lot. He keeps his hair really short and spiky now, his shoulders are broader, his chest and body have thickened out with age and the diet of being married to an Italian. He’s had laser-eye surgery so he no longer wears glasses, and when he had dental surgery to fix some damaged teeth, without asking they went