A Cleveland Girl In A Philly World…

So, this is my first post. I’ve recently been tinkering with the idea of starting a journal or blog or some shit like that, haven’t done it til now. I’ve tried doing it before, made a couple posts on blogspot but never got more than a couple of my friends following me.

Maybe this’ll be different, maybe it won’t. I dunno. I don’t care. I just wanna write.

This installment ain’t gonna be nothing special nor profound, simply an introduction to Moi. It’s unlikely that anything I post on here is going to be Earth-shattering either.

Again, I just need to write and vent and I’d like to have more than my audience of Facebook friends. Not that they aren’t all great, more like the poor souls have been putting up with it for the last several years. Time to pass the torch.

Before we go any further, allow me to introduce myself and my aspirations for this venture…

My name is Devon. I am a 36 year old woman living in Wilmington, DE. I am living an existence that I’d never thought I’d live.

I am originally from Cleveland, Ohio. Born and raised and Goddamn proud of it!!!!!!! I bleed orange and brown. There really isn’t any place like it in the world. I think this week alone has proven that.

Anyways, off topic…I’ll do that a lot, it’s how my brain works…I’d like to say that I had it rough growing up, that my childhood was tragic and fraught with despair.

Not even close.

I grew up in an affluent suburb, went to an affluent school and did pretty well for myself. While my brother and I didn’t have the flashy clothes and cars that most of the kids we grew up with did, we were fairly privileged. I was able to go to college, I have two Bachelor’s degrees and an Associate’s degree.

I’ve had it pretty easy up until a couple years ago…

Most of my twenties were unremarkable. After shuffling around for a bit, found a job, made some new friends, started dating, blahblahblah.

I got married in 2012. And this is where things started falling apart. Shortly after getting married I got diagnosed with Asperger’s…as my friends and family will testify to, this was not a shocking revelation, I’ve always been “off”…and the effects of that were already beginning to put a strain on things.

It gets better. On March 25th, 2014 I was diagnosed with an extremely rare and bizarre neurological condition called Chiari Malformation. I’d been feeling “not right” for a couple years and finally decided to do something about it. Since I have a strong family history of MS that’s what we were looking for.

Nope.

Not MS. My brain is in my neck…

CM is a brain deformity where the cerebellum is pushed down into the cervical spinal column, crushing the spinal chord and cutting off the flow of CSF. It mimics MS symptomatically, so it’s not much of a leap for self-diagnostics like me. CM is incurable and basically untreatable. There’s no consistency in how the medical community treats it. Shit, most of the medical community has never even heard of it. There’s not even agreement on how rare or common it even is.

Anyways. Got this diagnosis. Had brain surgery on July 21st, 2014. Chiari decompression surgery is not curative, it is preventative. It only has a 50/50 chance of working. Mine did not. Three months post-op most of my symptoms had come back. Today I am worse than I ever was.

My charming, wonderful husband filed for divorce a year later. He told me, to my face, that it wasn’t fair for him to be married to a woman with two chronic illnesses, wasn’t what he signed up for. We proceeded to get into a nasty fight that lead to my current plight.

By September of last year my head was so screwed up and my body hurting so badly that I was on the verge of collapse (keep in mind that amid all this chaos one of my dogs bloated and I had to put him down). My parents convinced me to relocate out to the Philly area and start over.

So, last October I came out here and have regretted it ever since!

I HATE it here! This place blows big, fat monkey chunks! Sure, I’ve met a great guy. He’s wonderful and very understanding about my fucked-up health. But his awesomeness isn’t enough to abate my homesickness.

Now, I’m not like most other women…I’m a tough chick. Despite my body constantly trying to mutiny, I still live alone with my dog and cat, I work full time in a very physical profession (veterinary technician) and I try to live as normal as possible. There are days where I can’t even move my neck from the pain and the headaches are so bad my face feels like it will split in half…

I guess that’s my goal for this blog-thingy I’m doing here. To vent. I’m not asking for pity, I can’t stand the woe-is-me-game. I hate whiners and I hate wimps. I just gotta get all the racing thoughts outta my head before I nearly snap again.

And yes, I am trying to move back to Cleveland. My home!