The Blankest Year

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There are things here that are difficult for me to say.

And there will be things I say that I can say no other way. 

Consider this my disclaimer.

*  * *

“I had the blankest year

I saw life turn into a TV show

It was totally weird

The person I knew I didn't really know”

-from “The Blankest Year” by Nada Surf

To say the past year of life has been exceedingly trying is an understatement. If my life over the past year has been a TV show, it has been a mix between The Big Bang Theory and House, M.D. 

The Big Bang Theory only because my story features a socially awkward but (hopefully) loveable nerd protagonist. Hey, that’s me! My story will also probably contain a few kinda funny jokes, probably of the “dad joke” or sarcastic variety, which I fully acknowledge is a coping and deflection tool I use when I have to talk about anything serious.

The House, M.D. part of the story is more straightforward. It involves a medical mystery, the very real (to me at least) threat of a life completely derailed by an invasive and chronic illness, even the fear of death.

It was July of 2018 when this really began, so it is there I will start. I had begun to notice some strange feelings occasionally haunting me: I was tired much of the time and had had a few spells of dizziness while driving. The aging process being a great mystery to us all, these slight discomforts must have surely been part of the process. However, on a drive to Lake Meredith, the dizziness and an overwhelming sensation that I would pass out became so strong, I was forced to pull over and Liz had to take over the driving. I, in my infinite emotional suppression, downplayed exactly how terrifying the feeling was, but I know that the fact that I had asked for help in driving, of all things, caused concern. 

As the next few months wore on, those sensations while driving increased and occurred almost daily, especially when driving on the highway or for any extended period of time. Really, fifteen minutes or more would turn my world asunder. I now know what these sensations were, but it would be a year before the answer was painstakingly and fortuitously discovered. I can only equate it to finding a switch in a gigantic, unfamiliar, pitch-dark room. 

“I get a sick feeling, like I'm rocking in a little boat”

-from “I Got the Reason” by Conor Oberst and the Mystic Valley Band

The month after the trip to Meredith, I informed my optometrist that I believed there was a problem with the way my eyes perceived the world. My diligent eye-doctor scheduled appointments to test the delay between reality and when my brain perceives what it sees. I would have to repeat the test at least 6-weeks apart. These two tests would set off a journey through an Indiana Jones-esque medical temple of doom from which it felt like there would be no escape.

The first test showed that my left eye perceived at a normal rate, but my right eye had a delay, enough to cause concern, so we scheduled the follow-up in November, until then I would wait, waiting being another motif of this journey. The doctor also proposed that I might have some issues with the way my eyes deal with high-frequency flicker, as occurs in movie theaters and in fluorescent lights. His theory seemed to hold some weight. After all, I had felt queasy at the movies recently. I began leaving the fluorescents off at school, and saw a slight improvement in headaches, but the dizziness, fatigue, and the passing-out-feeling persisted. I had also almost fallen down at school several times, once even jolting forward, a feeling much like passing out.  Also, new symptoms began to rear their heads—an increasing pain in my legs and an extremely foggy brain. 

Going to work became difficult. I spent many seventh periods holding on to the handle of the filing cabinet at the front of my room and refraining from looking up, even to write on my whiteboard. It felt as if the world were aslant at a twenty-degree angle. Each day began with a bit of a reset. I would feel my best in the mornings, but the sensations were there, lurking, waiting to intensify as the day wore on. And they did intensify, nearly every day. I searched for a rhyme or reason for the way I felt. I spent a week eating a healthier diet. I felt worse at the end of that week. I tried to exercise, but quickly abandoned that potential cure-all when I couldn’t muster the energy to do anything but come home at the end of the school day.

I never considered not going to work: the alternative being a day at home alone with my own thoughts, worrying about what was going on with me. I love my job. Even though I felt awful, it became a haven, a place where I sought some distraction from the seething thoughts in my mind.

The second test at the optometrist showed the same results. My doctor was alarmed. He did try to soothe my worries with the idea that perhaps my right eye had always been this way, after all my right eye has been wonky from birth. When I was born, my right eye crossed in. I have a condition called myopic amblyopia. My right eye is healthy, but pretty much only chooses to see peripherally where my left eye can’t. The doctor’s other proposal was frightening: I might have swelling in my optic nerve (called optic neuritis), which was a warning marker for multiple sclerosis. He instructed his assistant to schedule an MRI on my brain.

What I knew of multiple sclerosis wasn’t good: unbearable pain, losing motor skills including the ability to walk, and, oh yeah, it is incurable. The disease became my obsession. I spent hours doing research on the internet (this is dangerous, I know), reading blogs of people who had the condition and their symptoms prior to diagnosis. WebMD’s symptom checker became my most-frequented bookmark, at every new twinge of my body and in my mind. Certainly, I had never been a hypochondriac, but I became convinced that MS was my destiny, my new master. It also seemed to explain everything.

Due to one cold, snowy day in November, I called in sick to work as I did not feel comfortable driving in the five inches, given the vertigo-ey light-headedness that now struck me every time I drove but held me in its tight grip that entire day. I called the doctor and begged for the MRI to be bumped up. They called me back with an appointment for the next day. 

*  * *

Everyone who has ever had an MRI knows they are not fun—you have to remain dead-still for forty-five minutes to an hour as they slide whatever part of your body (the head, in my case) into a three-foot diameter cylinder that makes all kinds of loud and strange noises.  The tube didn’t phase me. I was ready. Ready for a diagnosis. Ready to get medication. Ready to do whatever science could do to me to make me feel . . . not like that. I had the test, grabbed a bite to eat, and went to work, looking forward to bad news.

My brain is a little fuzzy, and time distorts events, but I know the results came either that day or the following. My optometrist called: “Good news! Your MRI is completely normal. You don’t have MS. The bad news is that I am out of my area of expertise, I am going to refer you to a general practitioner who specializes in internal medicine.”

A general practitioner hadn’t been a necessity for me. The only time that I would ever need a doctor, I would go to a clinic with a cold and get an antibiotic and be good as new in a few days. 

Of course, there would be a catch with this new doctor: it would be two months before I could get in as a new patient.

*  * *

December wasn’t kind to me. I celebrated my 37th birthday, and for the first time in my life, I felt old. All I could muster in celebration was a dinner with my family and a trip to Cinergy to play video games. I had as much fun as my body would allow, but I was hurting and exhausted.

I wouldn’t make it the two months to my doctor’s appointment, I began to call often, asking for openings, asking to be put on their list for cancellations. My phone never rang. Finally, one day I called, nearly in tears from frustration and the nausea, agony, jaw-clenching (that was new), dizziness, and fogginess that had become my hell. I begged and pleaded for them to get me in and asked if there was anything I could do. I recounted my story thus far. The assistant was sympathetic and said she could get me in with the nurse practitioner, also saying that if my case baffled her, she would call in the doctor anyway, that the doctor was good about doing such things. If the doctor saw me, I would become an established patient and wouldn’t be required to wait as long. 

Sure enough, that is exactly what happened. The doctor’s concern and expertise impressed me immediately. 

Over the next month, I would be poked, prodded, and monitored, but now there was a sense of urgency. The doctor wanted to move fast. 

But the script, as it so often does in sitcoms and medical dramas, became very predictable. In my case, the script read, “Your test came back normal.”

My life became letters and numbers over the next months: T4, TSH, B12, CM, CBC, ANA, SSB, RF, RPR, CPK. Normal. It became a chemistry lesson: Magnesium, glucose, folate, testosterone. Normal, normal, normal. It became scary at times. Lyme disease: negative. West Nile: negative.

The only issue the doctor found was a possible arrhythmia in my heart when he had me hooked up to an EKG. So I wore the most uncomfortable heart monitor in the world for a day, including one night of extremely disjointed sleep. I felt as if an octopus had its tentacles draped and suctioned all over my chest. The doctor thought that when I slept that I might have an issue, so he put me in a smaller monitor just in time for Christmas. I spent the entirety of my Christmas break sleeping poorly and trying not to scratch this thing off my chest:

At the end of which I learned I am a really chill sleeper when it comes to BPMs (even more abbreviations, I know). Other than that, my heart was healthy. Good news, but still no answers.

We tried medication for silent migraines, but it was a dead end that just made me tired and even more dizzy.

The baffling of the doctors continued. The diagnosis of multiple sclerosis was back on the table, resurrected from the grave in which I thought he was interred. More tests and a neurologist were on the way, but so was a two month wait that wouldn’t be quickened through a cancellation list or any loopholes in getting into the office. It would be a hellacious delay as my symptoms continued to pile up. 

“What reason do you need to be alive?

Just merely survive

Or don't, you are or you aren't”

-from “Free to Be Or Not To Be You And Me” by Cursive

The winter was harsh. After school each day, I would come home, change immediately into fleece pants, and remain mostly curled up in a ball on the couch, trying to contribute as much as I could around the house—doing dishes on legs that ached constantly and trying to keep our laundry from becoming an insurmountable mountain. Damage control was about all I could achieve. I struggled to keep up with grading, and fell more behind than I ever had in previous years. 

When it came to social engagements, I became increasingly fearful that I would feel so out of sorts that I would pass out or be unable to be any fun because quite frankly, I wouldn’t be any fun. I could feel my sense of humor slipping away—I no longer made lame jokes. My wit was extremely slowed due to the fogginess. I would turn down most invitations and never initiate even something as simple as having friends over to play games. I felt myself becoming even more awkward in social situations (if that is even possible). Everything was a struggle. Despite my introverted nature, in recent years I have become aware of the importance of other people in my life. I am better when I make an effort to spend time with family and friends and to get myself out of my bubble. I had grown to enjoy spending time with others, but that joy had vanished.

What I have come to realize is that I was spiraling into a depression, a depression which certainly took a toll on all around me, especially my family. I didn’t know what depression really was. In college, I certainly threw around the term, but really that was just teenage angst and listening to too much emo and shoegazer sad bastard music. I thought it was how I was supposed to be, but really, it was a facade. I was stuck—drag myself out of bed, struggle through the workday, come home, curl up, pray I didn’t fly off the face of what I perceived as the chaotically spinning earth.

Without something to look forward to, I am not sure I would have made it. Luckily, I had something. I had bought tickets to go see one of my favorite bands, Cursive, in Lubbock in February. Seeing live music is one of my favorite pastimes, but due to my eclectic (some might say snobbish) tastes, it is a rare occasion anywhere within a 200-mile radius of Amarillo, Texas.  Inside me, hope swirled that the show might lull me into a sense of normalcy or at least into a feeling of nostalgia that had become hard to capture.

The week of the show arrived, and I felt a little better. In the background, the nagging thought that I might not feel alright for the show lingered. Liz had to drive, of course, but we made it to Lubbock, checked into our hotel, and ate a great meal. It was around then that I began to feel my symptoms coming on with a vengeance. By the time we had gotten dessert, my whole body felt as if it was vibrating, my knees were shaking. I was pissed off. Why now? I would not let this night, this night I had looked forward to for months go to waste.

We pulled into the venue, feeling like my body would vibrate through the seat and into the depths of the earth. I was afraid of being swallowed whole. I reclined my seat as Liz did her best to comfort me. After fifteen or twenty minutes in the parking lot, I convinced her that I was well enough to enter, but the truth was I didn’t know. It was entirely possible I would fall over and die right there on the stained concrete of the backroom floor. 

The moment Cursive hit the stage and struck the first staccato chord of “Free To Be Or Not To Be You and Me,” an electricity surged through me. My knees were still shaking like mad, and I had to move around or brace myself against a pillar or wall to keep from falling over, but I was in it, singing along. The massive adrenaline rush that hit my body would sustain me through the night. I even got to meet Tim Kasher and have a brief conversation. It was not a return to normalcy, but it was exciting. I was alive.

After arriving back at the hotel, I was spent, debilitated, the most tired I have been in my life. When Bilbo Baggins says in Lord of the Rings that he felt “thin, sort of stretched, like butter scraped over too much bread,” I knew how he felt. I expected sleep to take me instantly as my head hit the pillow. Sleep did not come. I stared around at the unfamiliar room, the strange shadows. I listened to Liz breathe as she slept soundly next to me. It was hours. After a night with my emotions and nerves all over the place, the adrenaline had wired me like 47 cups of coffee. I came to understand what would be fully realized in the next few months: the chemicals in my brain were, with no other way to put it, entirely fucked up. 

“Learning to walk again

I believe I've waited long enough

Where do I begin?”

-from “Walk” by Foo Fighters

Spring came about slowly, the mornings refused to shed their winter chill. Flowers were reluctant to bloom. The blooms on the pear tree out front did not arrive in March, as they usually do. The holding pattern extended to me, as I awaited the neurologist. 

The neurologist’s personality, how can I put this, was . . . quirky, abrasive, but I immediately recognized an expert—someone who was good at his job and cared deeply about finding answers for his patients. He interrogated me, and really my symptoms, as if he were a tough cop grilling a suspect who was handcuffed to the table (really, now my life was a crime drama, too? Ugh.) I even boasted a new symptom, all the fingernails on my right hand had formed divots, known as pitted nails. They were brittle and unhealthy. Luckily for me, Liz came to the appointment with me and was there to recall the events and symptoms my fog-ridden brain couldn’t recall. 

He performed a string of physical tests. He asked me to skip. Skip? Really? I couldn’t. When had I lost the ability to skip? He had me stand in the hall on one leg and close my eyes. I had to catch myself on the wall. He asked me to walk, simply walk, in a straight line heel-to-toe. I couldn’t do it. I nearly fell. He continued to perform what seemed like extended sobriety tests on me and drew the conclusion that something vastly peculiar was going on with my brain. 

I mentioned that my MRI had come back entirely normal in November. He wanted to take a closer look. He took us around the corner to a computer and began spinning the wheel on the mouse as he zoomed through the layers of my brain. “Woah!” he said and wheeled back. “You see these? They are small, extremely small, but these are UBOs, unidentified bright objects. They may have been congenital. Maybe you were born with them. Maybe not.”

I knew it, I had MS. I had been right all along. The neurologist pulled back on the reins. Woah! He was nowhere near diagnosing me with MS just yet, but he was concerned and ordered another bevy of tests, including another MRI, this time on my entire spine, to be followed by a lumbar puncture, a spinal tap, the kind of test you hear horror stories about. 

*  * *

The MRI went off without a hitch. It felt like old hat. But as with the other tests, the result was “Normal,” free of lesions or any bright objects.

After having to delay the spinal tap due to having taken Aleve too close to the procedure which they said would cause a bleeding risk, the calendar flipped to the month of May and I flipped onto my stomach and slid under an X-ray machine and under the needle of a radiologist. 

The tap itself was unnerving, but the professionals explained to me that they would actually be nowhere near my spine, but in a sack that extends beneath the spine. Nonetheless, I became overheated with anxiety while on the table but was able to literally sweat out the procedure. 

If the procedure itself is like ripping off a bandaid, then the 24 hours afterward is like having all of your body hair plucked off one at a time. The threat of getting a massive headache, described by every single nurse who tended me as the headache from the literal and completely flaming depths of hell, from the draining of fluid is a real possibility. I followed the instructions to the T, remaining flat on my back for the next day, except to use the restroom and for the brief car ride home (which I spent reclined). I even ate in a completely supine position. 

That evening, I felt a headache come on. I was nauseous, barely managing to choke down part of the food that Liz so kindly had gone to get for me. I braced for the worst, but mercifully, the headache subsided.   I slept, albeit not well, on a single pillow, gingerly turning from side to back to side, making sure that my spine remained straight.

The next day I was weary, but able to get up and around. 

The results came a week later. Guess what? “Your test came back normal.”

*  * *

Baffled, I walked in to my next appointment at the neurologist. “So what is wrong with me? What about all those physical tasks I can’t do? Your silly little sobriety test?”

“Well, you just might be, you know, clumsy. Your spine may have not formed 100% correctly. It happens all the time. Have you always been clumsy and uncoordinated?”

Well, I think we all know the answer to that one. Fair enough. “But what about these symptoms? I feel like shit all the time.”

It was then that the doctor began to ask me questions about my mental state—anxiety, depression, family history. It all clicked. I was open and willing to try what he proposed—anti-anxiety medication. 

I went back to my general practitioner. He wrote a prescription for the lowest dose of a common anti-anxiety medication, a tiny 10 milligram pill to be taken once daily. I began taking the pill during the week of the graduation of the class of 2019. Summer was coming. 

“And I don't wanna be an old man anymore

It's been a year or two since I was out on the floor

Shaking booty, making sweet love all the night

It's time I got back to the good life”

-from “The Good Life” by Weezer

On June 1st and 2nd, the sun shone bright as Liz chauffeured our family through the mountains of New Mexico, Colorado, and into the rock formations of Utah. We headed toward Salt Lake City. “This is the place,” the Mormon settlers had remarked when they came through the mountain pass and into view of the large body of water they didn’t yet know was unusable. I was there to read and score AP tests and to experience a new beginning. This was, indeed, the place.

The chemicals flowing through my body were doing something. I couldn’t tell exactly what yet. The medicine seemed to induce dizziness and drowsiness at times, but I could swear that I felt better in the afternoons and evenings, a strange sensation I didn’t think was possible. I thought maybe my response was psychosomatic.

By the end of the twelve-day trip, I resolved that my brain was normalizing. The pain in my legs faded. Energy returned. The pits in my nails began to grow toward the tip as they returned to normal. My thoughts cleared. I was surprised just how cloudy my brain had become, how slowly it had been moving. Being around people was, once again, no big deal; in fact, I relished it. Sure, I am still that awkward nerd that started this journey, but I felt comfortable being that nerd again. There was even something new about it all.

There were a few lingering side effects, but I was willing to deal with them for the rest of my life if need be. One of which was that I gained 8 pounds in 12 days on top of additional weight I had put on due to the inactivity that had plagued my year. However, even that side effect gradually faded perhaps in part to my newfound four to five time-a-week exercise habit, only made possible by the lifting of the veil of fatigue. It was the toughest twenty pounds I have ever shed, but I was energized to feel better and to keep on feeling better every day. 

*  * *

Plainly said, with no cliché intended, life cycles like the seasons. 

On this past Saturday, my family hopped in the car, I slid in behind the wheel and drove us to Lake Meredith, my first driving experience outside an Amarillo postal code in fourteen months. I felt free. I had worried that I would forever be a dependent burden on others when I needed to go anywhere more than ten miles from my house. I didn’t realize how trapped I had been feeling.

As I got out in the water to wakeboard and kneeboard, I felt a full ten years younger than the previous July. I rode the wakeboard longer than I had in as long as I can remember, even getting up an additional three times in a quest to go outside the wake, a goal I achieved. Later, the kneeboard tilted side to side as I hopped wake after wake. We camped out for a night, then I drove the winding Fritch highway back home. 

*  * *

On the following day, I had the energy to hit the gym. That in itself was a miracle, I had always been too sore to do much of anything the day after a lake excursion, even as a teenager. A former student stared me down at the gym and walked up to me with his hand extended, “Hi, Mr. Wilson. I didn’t recognize you at first. I thought I knew you from WT or something. You look so young.” I told him thank you and we caught up.

It hadn’t occurred to me until this point that people have always told me I look younger than the birthdate on my driver’s license indicates. From early ages, much to my chagrin in those younger years, my age has been mistaken by others. I nearly cried when I would walk into a restaurant with my parents at the age of thirteen and be handed the ten and under children’s menu. Of course, as the years go on, this age mistake becomes flattering and uplifting. I understand that I am lucky in this and the genetics smiled upon me, but I stopped hearing these words as my fatigue wore on over that year. It was hard when people stopped telling me something I had heard my entire life. I must have looked exhausted. Old. I was.

Over the past months, the comments about youth have returned: the lady who cut my hair before school began, my new students, new faculty members at school, and then the epiphanous event with the former student, someone who actually knows me. These statements, while not being entirely the truth feel true on the inside. I am young again.

Now, I recognize, through these trials, that life is a celebration. A day will inevitably come (many years down the line, I think and hope) when something again ails me. That day will be a celebration, too.

“You don't have to be alone

You don't have to be on your own.”

-from “A Message” by Coldplay

We’ve now come to the public service announcement section of the program. If you or someone you know might be struggling with anxiety or depression, ask for help. I am poorly equipped to ask for help and should have asked for more and asked sooner than I did.

If you need the help of a mental health professional, don’t resist the urge to reach out. Not in this particular instance but in the past, I have reached out to a licensed professional counselor. To find help in your area go to https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/therapists. 

Also, seek medical attention. I hope if nothing else, that my story proves that mental health can have very real and dire physical consequences. 

Lastly, ask for help from those who love you: friends, family, mentors, teachers, school counselors, and the like. It can be, and is still for me, extremely hard to do this, but these people love you and want you to live a joyous and free life. 

Be part of the solution. End the stigma on mental conditions and disorders.

“All things to those who wait

Take time to find your way

Some will say the truth is not so plain

Don't confuse your truth with your pain”

“You know, I think I’m gonna live.”

-from “All Things Good and Nice” by Jets to Brazil

I would not have made it through the past year without the help of family, friends, colleagues, and students (both present and former). I didn’t tell all that many people. Once again, I have a problem asking for help. I am working on it. Please don’t feel insulted if you didn’t know what was going on with me. My insecurities are my own. 

Firstly, I have to thank Liz, my wife. Thank you for putting up with me during the dark days and carrying more than your share of our lives and the emotional baggage that I suppressed so adamantly. Also, thanks for driving me most everywhere for a year, including the 28-hour round trip to Utah. From now on, we’ll split the duties. I love you.

To Carter, thanks for pushing me to be active, even when I didn’t feel like it, whether that was taking you to scouts, playing video games, or getting down on the floor to play Legos with you, you improve my life every day. You give me purpose.

To Mom and Dad, thanks for your ongoing concern and always checking in on me. Thanks also for your willingness to do anything asked of you, including keeping Carter on short notice and your readiness to come to any of my medical appointments at the drop of a hat.

To Shawnda and Shane, thanks for checking in on me and especially Shawnda, in all of her growing nursing knowledge, for making sure that my doctors were asking the right questions and running the right tests.

To Mamaw, my in-laws, and the rest of my family who had an inkling of what was going on, thanks for your prayers and positive thoughts.

To the few friends who knew, thanks for your love and support always. Thanks for checking up on me from time to time. We should all catch up sometime. I feel great these days!

To my colleagues, but especially Jennifer, Serena, Maria, Brad, and Tricia, thanks for always checking up on me and picking up my slack when I couldn’t be at work. Your support was another reason that I hauled myself up to work every day.

To the class of 2019, thanks for keeping me sane and motivated and also for being so understanding on the really bad days when I didn’t have all that much to give. I wish I could have given you more.

To former students, I don’t know how so many of you found out that I wasn’t feeling well (class of 2019?). I am pretty sure I only told one of you. Thanks for your concerns and your impromptu visits. It lifts me up to see your smiling faces and to see you doing so well at this celebration called life.

If I forgot you, thank you, too! Much love and I am always here. If you need anything, please reach out.