In the beginning of May 2023, I was under the care of my new allergy team and my existing internal medicine team. I was set to start immunotherapy for my cat and dog allergies with our oldest, and scheduled with the internal medicine team to return for blood work including rechecks of my iron levels in 3 months. Except I was doing a bit of a nosedive in energy levels and strength, so I got my recheck moved up to As Soon As Possible.
I was home resting waiting on further medical care and taking iron supplements. I could not get out of bed without help and sure as <anything> could not do stairs.
The kids were both around and were (and are!) amazing, but could not be here every minute.
Against EVERYONE’S advice, including Abby’s, I insisted on helping Abby fold a load of laundry while we watched Ted Lasso.
I reached up to my top closet shelf to put a folded hoodie away - which I absolutely did not have the strength or steadiness to do - and knocked my favorite Christmas decoration down.
I keep one decoration out each year, and this year it had been a tiny glass tree Dr. Neubert had given me. I kept it on the top shelf because I could see it every day and it made me happy, but it was out of the way enough to be safe.
Except it wasn’t safe. Not when I was SO flat and had zero coordination. Normally I at least have Barely Enough Coordination to Adult. Usually that’s enough - I make it work. But this day, through a series of really poor choices on my part based not on reality but on what I wanted reality to still be - I had a beautiful little glass Christmas tree in hundreds of shards on my closet floor.
Too tired to even cry, I let Abby help me to bed and fell asleep while she cleaned everything and finished all the laundry.
The next day was worse.
I opened the closet and stepped squarely on an invisible piece of glass shard left from the day before.
I sat back down on the bed. I tried really hard to look at the bottom of my foot. I tried as hard as I had tried to pick up that Yorkie pup a few days before. But I just did not have the energy or strength to move my foot how I needed to.
So I put a towel under my foot, called Russ to ask him to come home as soon as possible and called Mom and Dad to tell them I was scared and sad, then fell asleep.
Russ and Travis were working at our friends the Helts’ house nearby - hovering to keep me safe I suspect - and were home in minutes.
Russ woke me up, took the glass out of my foot and patched me up, got me a walker (a walker dammit!) and moved me in to Mom and Dad’s house.
This was the beginning of the scariest part of my ordeal - I continued to decline - but also the best part of my ordeal. When life is the toughest, I need Mom and Dad, and they were right there for me - at the very beginning and through it all.