Putting one foot in front of the other

By Megan Reeder Hope

Four years ago, my world as I knew it fell apart as a domino effect of health issues forced me into medical retirement at 44-years-old. I am attempting to walk 76km in May for the Stroke Foundation, no mean feat for someone who recently had difficulty walking 100 metres. I have cathartically processed my health journey in the best way I know — a story.

The lights in the stroke ward are kept on all night. The bustling nurse’s station stands to attention in the middle of the room—a vigilant soldier.

In the bed next to mine, a woman with ghost-white hair exhales small haunting moans. Across the room, the side of a man’s face is fallen—melted in an invisible war. A woman struggles against the orderly, her wig askew, her sentence on repeat.

The lights flicker. My left eye struggles to focus, an instant semi-blindness that came with seven ‘migraines’ in ten days. I close my eyes and think of dying at 43-years-old, leaving my husband and child cuddling together at home. I cannot read their texts. The words swim. What it would be like to live caged inside my own body—robbed of my gift of the gab?

I live with unexploded bombs. Some are WWII missiles hidden in the depths never to detonate, others triggered by the slightest touch. On CT scans my carotid arteries are a string of pearls nestled in my neck like a Chanel necklace, filled with fragile spiderwebs of fibrous material, sewing my arteries shut and bubbling open in a delicate weave. Fibromuscular dysplasia.

For more than four years, I struggled with the shackles of psoriatic arthritis, fibromyalgia, diverticulitis and endometriosis (which claimed my womb).

I was rehabbing from crippling autoimmune disease, desperate to return to the high-flying, high stress work I loved as a Director of Media and Communications, my role of career mum, the high-flier, the overachiever. Skinny, stylish and always presenting a smile to the world. The perfectionist. The superwoman.

On my wall hung my engraved platinum records from the music industry, beside my smiling superwoman captured in framed photos of art galleries in Paris, adorned in diamonds for red carpet launches, or hob-knobbing with celebrities. Superwoman couldn’t save me now.

I had angioplasty on my renal arteries to stop blockages in my kidneys, the operation performed by a one-armed surgeon reputed to be the best in the biz. A tear in my carotid artery caused mini-strokes (TIAs) and a haemorrhage in my optic nerve.

My husband sat shotgun, right next to me in this rollercoaster of deteriorating health, feeling each rise and gut-wrenching fall, white-knuckled hands entwined. He carried the domestic mantle across his shoulders like a yolk, his strength surpassing an ox, his patience infinite, his love and care unmatched. Every day for three years he battled thoughts I would die. I owe him my life.

My daughter snuggled close and showed me that she just needed me to be there. One day, when I had lost my voice, she lay with me in bed, posting emojis to each other in notes and giggling.

My mum did dishes and carried washing home in loads, returned the next day washed and folded. She brought home-cooked food, flowers and books I couldn’t see.

My sister took our daughter on adventures to the snow or weekends at her ‘mansion’ where she could escape the ghostly figure in the bed.

My best friend talked me down from ledges, believing my family was better off without this burden of illness.

My life coach told me this was an amazing opportunity. My superwoman had been driving my body like a race car for too long, pushing boundaries for fear of never being ‘enough’. “Time to get her drunk and lock her in the trunk”. I laughed but failed to see how this pain, this broken me, could ever be an opportunity, let alone an amazing one.

Suddenly, I found it difficult to walk—so breathless I couldn’t stand. Going to the ensuite was a marathon. I spent five days in the cardiac ward. The monitors screamed, triggering alarms as my heart rate rocketed to above 200bpm.

A stent was inserted into my left carotid artery. The doctors crowded round, the manufacturing rep observing, joined by intrigued interns fascinated by new technology designed to last for 50 years: a macabre show.

After another year of struggling to do basic life tasks, I returned to work. They had created a new role for me, limited to several hours a day, one day a week. Even that proved too much.

A female cardiologist acknowledged the mountainous peaks in my heart rate made my life hell—Inappropriate Sinus Tachychardia—causing fatigue, breathlessness, dizziness, chest pain and exercise intolerance. The regulator to my heart was kaput, broken forever by the fibres in my veins. Yet I kept on, thinking returning to my career was the end goal.

Then COVID-19 triggered all the symptoms of my autoimmune arthritis, fibromyalgia, heart and vascular condition, along with a black eye from a fall in hospital. I was back at the beginning.

It broke me. I gave up. I didn’t want to be me anymore. I didn’t want to be here.

So, I held a funeral, burned to dust the woman I once was, set aflame the corporate ladder, melted the glass ceiling. I cremated the superwoman and her cape, shed the costumed skin I wore as armour.

I gave a eulogy—farewelling meeting schedules, colour-coded To Do lists, and media calls. I said a prayer to let go of the part of me that screamed silent in the night, ‘You are not enough’.

I stripped bare, peeled back my layers of designer clothes, and shucked my heels. I saved my broken body—my new form re-formed—disabled.

In the mirror stood a woman fuller, rounder, scarred, wrinkled, wounded. Stronger, older, wiser. Free.

I embraced the grief of losing what I thought defined me.

Now, I am medically retired at 45-years-old. I walk with Nordic Poles along the sand next to the wild Tasmanian sea. I retrace my steps, but my footprints have been washed away. I am not the person I was. But I am the person I was meant to be.

The waves crash. I allow everything to drain away, leaving me with the things that matter—my health, my family and my creativity. The pain doesn’t ebb, but I let it wash over me like the tides—in and out. One day, I will be strong enough to swim.

For now, putting one foot in front of the other, every day, is my greatest achievement. So, I walk on and think to myself, ‘what an amazing opportunity.