This is a reader's submission from:
Kelley Kirkpatrick from Ann Arbor, Michigan.
I was in a serious relationship with my (ex)boyfriend Dan. We've lived together too. We rarely fight and when we do, fights usually end as soon as they start. Me and my boyfriend talked about marriage a lot. We had our future dog picked out, our wedding plans picked out and even his mother would call me her daughter-in-law. Never in my life have I felt anything that stable, because I came from a very broken household. My parents weren't exactly prime examples of what a happy marriage should look like.
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About 5 years ago, my left eye was blurry. I went to work thinking it would just go away. Then around lunch time, my left side felt like pins and needles. I thought maybe because I sit down all day and maybe my leg/arm just fell asleep. When I got home later that night, I could barely see anything out of my left eye and that pins and needles sensation was still there. I asked Dan to take me to the hospital.
That night at the hospital, they did tests until the early morning. The next day, everything became worse and I couldn't move my legs. My legs felt like dead weight. I spent a week like that with every doctor doing every kind of test they could do but all tests led back to one diagnosis; Multiple Sclerosis. They put me on a high dosage of Prednisone which helped my vision but my legs still weren't moving.
Dan was great through all of it. He held my hand, he comforted me, he was my rock when I spent a month in the hospital. But then it happened. Five weeks in the hospital, doctors told me I would have to be fitted for my very own wheelchair. Weirdly enough, Dan took it harder than I did but I didn't think anything of it at the time. Finding out I'd have to use a wheelchair devastated me more than the diagnosis. But this is not what my story is about.
A month after I came home from the hospital, me and Dan were in the middle of fixing our townhouse so it was handicapped accessible. He got annoyed when my wheelchair made scuff marks on the walls. He got mad when my wheels made scuffs on our tile floors. He was upset that I didn't leave home very much. He spent most of his time upstairs, because I couldn't use the stairs anymore. And he sounded embarrassed when he would tell his friends his girlfriend was in a wheelchair. Dan no longer invited people over. This was really hard for me especially when I was trying to accept my diagnosis.
One day, Dan's friends came over and Dan wasn't with them. They came over to move out his stuff out of our townhouse. Dan was too chicken to do it himself. I would never see Dan again. To make matters worse, I was alone in a wheelchair, living in a townhouse with a flight of stairs I couldn't use.
I can happily say I'll be married this Fall to my fiance Jason. I met him at rehab one day. He had an accident and needed rehabbing at the hospital I was doing my rehab at. Every Monday and Wednesday, we would go to lunch after our rehab session. It was love. Even though Jason is healthy and has rehabbed himself 100%, with the occasional hand tremors, I'm still in my wheelchair. I still live in my townhouse too, but Jason saved up his money and had contractors build an electric lift for our staircase. His friends love me, his family loves me and my wheelchair is as accepted as just another part of me, of who I am.
Like Natalie once said, if someone can't accept you at your worse, they sure as hell don't deserve you at your best. Thank you for reading.
Kelley.... diagnosed when I was 25 years old, April 2007
