American Cancer Society, March Photo Challenge #26
Healing through Love.
Rebecca and I met in middle school at the age of twelve, and our bond has only grown over time. The first time I knew Rebecca was a devoted friend was after my family experienced a house fire the day before a major blizzard in the Northeast.
After the storm cleared and we returned to school, Rebecca was the first person to see through my facade of “it’s all good,” to see the pain in my eyes. Without hesitation she hugged me tight, and I started crying. The hug lasted for minutes but remained with me throughout my life. After the hug we parted without ever saying anything to each other. In that moment, no words were needed and her energy spoke to me in ways that shaped our friendship.
As we moved through the school years, we became close friends and were married years after high school. We have shared a life full of experiences together and both can say we know each other very well.
Throughout Rebecca’s life, she always had very subtle signs of something going on with her health, but she remained healthy. In the years that followed our wedding her health started to decline, her brain was starting to glitch. She would struggle with remembering where she was, as well as our pet’s name. (Things got bad quickly.)
Not long before Rebecca’s health problems started, my battle with my weight began. At the time I was considered morbidly obese (class III obesity today) and in rough shape. Struggling to breathe and move were my biggest problems, yet I knew my problems were nothing compared to what Rebecca faced.
Both of our struggles were rough on us but experiencing them together only compounds the problems we faced. My best course for better health was to eat better and start stretching. I told Rebecca that she is not obligated to do what I was doing. At first, she was hesitant to make any changes but after a couple of months she slowly started to eat better and stretch with me on occasion.
Rebecca’s hesitation to change is normal and we still had no idea what type of illness she faced. For the next couple of years, we battled together to help each other heal. After countless doctors, Rebecca finally received diagnoses for her illness, late onset temporal lobe epilepsy.
We were excited to know the cause of Rebecca’s troubles but at the same time we entered the try all the different medication to see if one worked faze. We ended up trying them all and each medication had its pros and cons. After a couple more years we decided to remove Rebecca from all the medications and worked to improve our situation through Love and patience.
When we made the decision to heal naturally, Rebecca fully committed to eating better and taking small steps one day at a time. With this thinking, Rebecca started a food journal and when she started to feel ill, she could look back to see what might have caused her issues. This method worked great to find a baseline for her health so we could slowly make tweaks to improve her health over time.
Now, it has been years since our struggles began and both of us live a much healthy life. We monitor Rebecca’s health daily and she knows all her signs of epilepsy as well as what triggers her illness.
The reason I wanted to share this story with you is that the most important part of going through a health scare is to be patient and approach the situation with Love.
By focusing on removing things that caused our health problems and working on what we need to do daily to make our situation better, we have reached a healthier space. We know that Rebecca will never heal completely, but through patience she has overtime put herself in a better position to heal her body naturally. As for my weight journey, I no longer struggle to breathe, and I have controlled my weight through diet and mild activities.
ONE Love john & rebecca
