People underestimate how long it can take to get remission from chronic illness

Yesterday, people all over the world saw something they never thought they’d see: A massive solar storm brought the aurora to countries that never should have experienced them. It was as though the sun had sent us a spectacular easter egg.

You never know what life will throw at you.

I should have died when I was four, but I didn’t. In my first years of life, I’d already survived Scarlet Fever, a near drowning, and a forceps birth. Then I almost choked to death after putting a packet over my head.

Yes. I did that. I turned blue. I was every bit as ridiculous then as I am today. So bite me.

I should have died at 21, too, and then again, at 27, and again at 28. I’ve had enough near-death experiences to start my own religion, but epilepsy and depression were the most harrowing of them. One day I stopped thinking about the times I should have died and began thinking about how I wanted to die.

I should have died from the suicide attempt that followed, but I didn’t.

My odds of surviving two decades of uncontrolled epilepsy and status epilepticus were slim, but I got through that, too. It took two decades to find a drug that worked, and like a Floridian sky, I transformed into something inconceivable: A healthy person.

Many beautiful things happened after that because you never know what life will throw you. Gifts arrive as sure and unexpected as the northern lights. I don’t know how I found the strength to keep fighting. Sometimes, all I could really do was not die. When I had a spurt of energy, I returned to doctors’ offices in search of an effective treatment.

People underestimate how long it can take to get remission from chronic illness. They underestimate how many medications you need to try and how many relapses you need to endure. They also underestimate how many times your medications will try to kill you. This is not easy work. It is devastating, especially when you’re nursing a severe depression.

Just because you’ve been searching for remission for decades, doesn’t mean it will never happen.

When you’ve lost all semblance of hope, something breaks through. The sky fills with light, and you get a different life. It’s every bit as possible as a Southern Northern lights display—You know… the thing we didn’t know was even possible last week.

Just because you’ve spent 40 years looking at a black night sky, doesn’t mean this will always be so. This journey is often long and always harrowing. I have been there. I know, but then the sky turned pink. Electrical particles slammed into the earth’s atmosphere, and the world learned that just because something is inconceivable, doesn’t mean it’s impossible.