Disorders, Depression, Silence, and Renewal
A personal essay on overcoming disability and returning to purpose.
My cane’s rubber tip made a dull thud as it made contact with the cold, white floor, catching my weight as I walked down the hospital corridor. The bright red skull-shaped cane topper that I carved myself felt smooth in my hand as it swung back and forth.
This memory from January 2022 filled my mind as my 2023 started out much the same. The circumstances were much different, though. Last January, I walked slowly with a cane into a testing lab to get an echocardiogram to see if the genetic disorder I had been diagnosed with in 2021 had damaged my heart. This year, I’m feeling healthy and productive, at least so far, even as I visited a sleep lab to determine if I have sleep apnea.
2022 was rough for me health-wise. My genetic disorder, hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome (hEDS), started snowballing in 2011. Snowballing is a euphemism for new issues caused by hEDS making themselves known while old problems worsen at an ever-increasing rate. I say “issues” instead of “symptoms” because the effects of hEDS often present as discrete diagnoses. It’s hard to say if any one problem is caused by a connective tissue disorder like hEDS.
Before 2011, the issues were disparate in both time and body systems. Every few years, I would have to…
