Basically one day I had what I suspect was some sort of seizure? Except the ER doctor and everyone since just, without really testing anything, shrugged it off as just "a panic attack." Well I've had panic attacks before and since and none was ever like this one. I managed to go to work that night but I was twitchy and off-balance and generally wasn't 'right'. I refused to do any ear piercings, risking my job, because I didn't know what the twitching was and was afraid I'd hurt someone. And at my coworkers insistence I went to the ER after work and that's where the doc pretty much just waved me off.

Ever since, literally overnight, I've had chronic fatigue, chronic pain (that doctors keep trying to blame on my diabetes despite my not developing diabetes for several years after that), motor tics (uncontrollable movements like the warn you about on medication advertisements), balance problems (it's not uncommon for me to start drifting to the side when I'm walking for instance), vertigo (I do not get along with ladders or looking straight up which became a problem at work since I couldn't access stored merchandise), concentration problems including suddenly having a really hard time doing even basic math in my head or even on paper (it took me several tries to do the nightly books at my store that night because it kept coming out wrong--normally it took me no time at all to get it done and correctly), and I started having nasty debilitating panic attacks while alone at work, which is a problem for obvious reasons.

Honestly I'm probably forgetting something but those are the biggies. And every doctor then and since has no answer for me. I've had several MRIs done and they came back normal. I'd like to see a neurologist and try to get to the bottom of things but every time I start to something has come up--usually an unplanned move or insurance change--and I've had to switch doctors or something.

Oh and in the days following the initial incident, I had at least one episode of terrifying double-vision, like really bad. I struggled to get around my tiny one-room apartment to even go to the bathroom. There was at least one day where I could barely move and had to call in--after struggling for several minutes with both hands to pick up my cell phone and call--because there was obviously no way I could possibly drive to work or work at all in that condition.

I ended up having to quit my job, which gutted me. I liked my job (I worked as a third-key management for a slow-ish Icing in the mall--you know, like Claire's but for a somewhat older clientele) and was really good at it as well. It was honestly the coolest job I ever had. My store was failing when they transferred me to it and in a while because of my sales and organization started doing really well. I was commended for my work regularly and they expected I'd be running my own store before long if I could just get my tardiness sorted, which I was working on. (Pretty sure I have undiagnosed ADHD which I believe contributed to that, but that's another story.)

Ultimately I lost my apartment because without work, I couldn't pay my rent. I would have moved home while I worked things out but my stepdad always hated me and he insisted that I just wanted to "live off the government" and that helping me in any way would just be "enabling me" so my mom was forbidden from doing much to help me (another can of worms altogether). So I lived in my car, sick and scared, for around six-ish months, including the height of Texas summer, which was super fun. Some days too sick to leave my car for anything other than going into a store to go to the bathroom. Eventually I ended up in California with a friend who had a spare bedroom, and I lived with her for like 8 years before bouncing around again and ending up back here in Florida.