happy tattaversary to me! (a very long and tangential post)

I can hardly believe it as I'm writing this, but my introduction into the club of the inked was one year ago today. A year! 12 months. 365 days.

So much has happened in the last year, and yet it seems like it was just yesterday that I was sitting in a room absorbing my first neurologist's words: lesions, myelin, optic neuritis, oligoclonal bands, relapsing and remitting, multiple sclerosis. Wow. It has been a whirlwind, and many things have happened over the course of the year to shift my perspective, only to turn around and shift it again. And I'm definitely in a better place because of it.

One of the biggest lessons I have learned is that I am not invincible. For several months after my diagnosis, I held on to that sense of invincibility. I honestly believed that I would be among the few lucky patients who would have a "dormant" version of the disease that would rest quietly in my body until I was getting on in my years, when the symptoms would be little more than the other aches and pains I would experience with age. Reality bitch-slapped that notion right out of me when I had my first relapse, just 8 months after my diagnosis. Too soon.

So now I know it can happen, and the odds are that it will happen again. Sometimes when I think about that, I can see down a path to a very dark place, where I feel like I am competing against time. When is my next relapse coming? And what if it does more damage than the first two, and impedes my ability to walk, or to see, or something else I have taken for granted thus far in my life? And for a moment I can't catch my breath, because there is no way of knowing the answer to these questions, and the unknown can be scary as hell.

And then I stop myself from moving toward that darkness, and I re-frame. If, in fact, the worst-case scenario does happen someday--if I lose my vision, lose my ability to walk, or worse, then what will I regret about today? Was there something I missed out on? Something I took for granted? What can I do to make sure the answers to these questions is "no?" So I will myself to experience--to do, to learn, to hope, and to enjoy.

I push myself to be very physically active, and to enjoy my activities and improve my skills. I play soccer, I run races, and this year my goal is to incorporate more cycling into that equation. As part of that initiative, I signed up for the MS 60 mile bike ride in Minnesota. (Click here if you're interested in making a donation, or finding out more about why I decided to participate in the ride.) My BFF Cindy signed up to ride with me, and she said she'd ride right alongside me, even though I'm guessing I'm going to be pretty slow (relatively speaking--she's a tough cookie when it comes to endurance competition, and she knocked out a very impressive time in a duathlon last year).

This brings me to another point I have been meaning to bring up in this blog for a very long time now, and it seems only appropriate to mention on the Tattaversary. I am not sure I would or could be in such a good place right now if it weren't or the amazing support system I have in place--my family (including my immediate family, my extended family of aunts and cousins who I keep up with now more than I ever have before, and my bonus family of my brother's in-laws in Utah who I know keep up with this blog from time to time), my friends (both local and long-distance), my co-workers, and my community. I am constantly surprised by the wonderful ways they support me, through the simplest and grandest of gestures.

So to those of you who read this blog (and to those of you who don't, although you will likely not see this shout out), thank you. You are all amazing people, and I am damn lucky for that.