The Mighty Empowerment of Vulnerability

My appointment at OHSU went very well.  I have never had a doctor more patient and kind than my neurologist, Dr. Smith.  After a three hour consult, he believes my health is one of three things.  1)  I have POTS that is resistant to pharmaceutical treatments.  2)  My POTS is triggering non-epileptic seizures.  3)  I have partial-complex epileptic seizures in the autonomic center of my brain.  The third is the least likely, but inorder to rule out epilepsy (because its treatment is very different than POTS)  I will go back to OHSU in Portland on August 29th for a week-long video-EEG test.  I'll be admitted as a patient and will be hooked up to EEG monitoring (25 leads out of my head) in a room that has a video camera.  The doctors will do everything they possibly can to induce an attack so they can capture it inside and out of my body.  Please join me in prayer that I will have an attack quickly.

I'm learning through my struggles that in order to see my trials and physical limitations as strengths, I need to accept and embrace them.  Embracing vulnerability is MUCH easier said than done, that is why I have decided to make my blog public and to start writing more about how my physical trial is affecting me in all of the other areas of my life, not just physically.  This is something that terrifies me but I've learned through many different trials that what is requisite to overcome obstacles is usually the hardest thing that I could be asked to do.  For me, that usually involves expressing my real emotions.  I feel like, in life, that I am responsible for helping to uplift all of those around me.  I see that to mean that I can only talk about positive things and emotions and when I express my fears and frustrations that I'm only "dragging someone else down emotionally".  I am wrong.  There is a mighty power in the humility it takes to express vulnerability.  To completely and utterly open oneself up to another.  It requires faith and an understanding of who one is as a child of God in order to overcome the fear and uncertainty all mankind faces of rejection and inadequacy.  When I think of the stories and people that inspire me the most, it's not the "happily ever afters" that empower me to do hard things.  Hopefully opening up my blog will be a means to empowering others, or maybe just myself.