“Help me remember what happened right before I lost my memory,” I asked Misty. “Do you have footage of what was going on then?” 

“Ah, yes, I can do that for you! Hang on one moment. Uploading the scene…right…now…” 

Instead of a VR Room, I was instantly in my previous two-bedroom apartment. We had converted one of the bedrooms into a home office. I was struck by how real everything felt. I was sitting at my makeshift desk–a black folding desk with two monitors, a laptop, and a printer on top. I could feel the gray shag carpet beneath my toes. My ergonomic white and black chair faced the oversized tan and brown couch to the right of the desk. I’m still unsure how we fit the couch into the room. It took up 8 of the 10 feet of the back wall. I looked up at the bright room divider that I had propped up on the couch. I decided that instead of dividing a room, it would look magnificent taking up the entire back wall above the couch. It was a very large print of “The Great Wave” by Katsushika Hokusai. I lingered on the struggling fishermen beneath the wave.

I looked down. I had a phone in my right hand. One missed voicemail. I played it. “Hi, Brittany.” It was the voice of my primary doctor. “Yeah…so I know you thought you had a pinched nerve. Um…your MRIs came back and it looks like we see a mass on your brain. We don’t know what it is. I’m asking a few other doctors about it. I’ll let you know as soon as we hear back.”

Alright, I thought to myself. A mass. Could be nothing right? I grabbed the eye patch I purchased and put it back over my right eye before turning back to review a few more spreadsheets for work.  For now, that patch seemed to slow down that icy-hot feeling that randomly ran behind it.  It didn’t stop the pain completely, but looking at computer screens definitely made the feeling worse. 

All I could think about was how I couldn’t lose my job. Not now. Not after losing my $2000 cash savings nearly overnight to try to save my aging (but new to me) truck, only to find out that after driving on what felt like 3 wheels down to Virginia and back, the frame was bent on the truck and it was irreparable. Not after finally selling it for nearly nothing, still being $10k in debt because of it. Not after needing to make a split decision “new to us” purchase on a 3-year-old truck and put us nearly $50k in the hole with a payment that we honestly had no idea how we were going to make.

That was a month ago. And after making all of those decisions, after balling my eyes out and going through what felt like the 50 stages of grief, my eye wanted to go, and so did my hand, and my leg. …And come to think of it…pretty much my whole body.  There were strange moments when my body went from standing or sitting to randomly twisting itself in the strangest contortions, all without me asking it to do so, and I was trapped in this contortion until it let me go. 

Talking to my husband about this, he thought I was just freaking out at first. That I was having another panic attack and I’ll get over it. Talking to my parents who are pastors, they immediately prayed healing over my body and then thought it was demonic activity. I would pray with them believing that the prayer would make all of this stop. But it didn’t and I started to believe that my faith just wasn’t good enough. Which didn’t stop the incoming panic attack that was just a few thoughts away.

Thing is, I was healthy. Very healthy in fact, and I operated off of the old-school mindset that you don’t see the doctor unless you have a broken bone or you are actually dying. The falling, the contortions, the inability to grab a mouse, and the headaches didn’t even phase me, but when the pain behind my right eye got to the point where I couldn’t see my computer screen without it feeling like it was burning my retinas, that’s when I accepted…an eye doctor appointment.  

“List your symptoms again?” The receptionist at my eye doctor asked for a second time. I listed them again for her. “Oh honey… The eye doctor can most certainly check your eyes, but you need to call your primary doctor right away. Like after this phone call. I doubt that this is an eye problem.” 

I did not call my primary right away. I just found some fabric I could tie around my head so I could continue to work. This is such a distraction. Nothing is going to interfere with my job… You hear that, Devil! You liar! Nothing! My eye doctor fit me in for an appointment that same week. “Your eyes look good, but I do see a little bit of inflammation behind the right eye. You sure you didn’t check with your primary? This looks serious.” 

I sighed. “If I can avoid the doctor, I’d prefer that. Seriously, I’m a healthy person!” That’s right. Speak it into existence! Healthy! Only healthy! 

She shook her head and bent down to shine her light into my pupil once more. “Alright, but my tools do not give me the full story.  The only way, I could confirm if this is an eye problem is if I had an MRI.  Your primary can order that for you.” As she pointed the light into my eye, the acid feeling ran down it again. I winced in pain and she quickly pulled her light away. Grateful to be in a dark room once again, I blinked away the tears. “You really think this isn’t a problem with my eye?” 

She pulled her glasses back down from her forehead to the bridge of her nose and looked down at her chart as she took a seat to the right of me. “I mean…you are in need of a new set of glasses and it looks like you’ve developed an astigmatism. But…no, all those other symptoms look like something else. Something beyond what I can do for you.” 

Feeling defeated, I reluctantly researched and found a primary doctor who could squeeze me in that week. He was kind, and compassionate and spent nearly an entire hour trying to understand the heart of the issue. “I agree with your eye doctor,” he said gravely. “Yeah… so this definitely requires an MRI.” 

“How much does that cost?” I immediately asked. I really just couldn’t with life and how expensive it was becoming. 

“I wouldn’t worry about that right now. I do know that if we don’t figure out what this is soon, it will cost you a lot more.” The way my primary said that statement, evenly, seriously and full of compassion paused my spiraling mind. 

And so… here I was. Waiting on my doctor’s assessment of my MRI.  My phone rang again. 

“Hello, Brittany?” This time it was the voice of a nurse from the same doctor’s office. “So you need to go to the ER. As soon as possible.”  

I hung up slowly. Shaking. I sat there, with my eyepatch staring numbly at the neat and orderly numbers on the spreadsheet in front of me. I inhaled shallowly.  On the next exhale, out came, “Dang it! What the heck, God?” 

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