Veterans Day Musings on MS and My Medical Retirement

I had been on active duty in the Air Force eight years almost to the day when I got my official diagnosis that I had multiple sclerosis. I knew that day was coming, too. What I didn't know was what my future held. At all.

Celebrating after my commissioning!

When I went on active duty in February 1997, I was only 22 years old and didn't have much figured out. Years later, I still loved my job as a Special Agent and started getting my career trajectory more or less in order, thanks to some great mentoring. At the time I didn't really want to get married and I didn't really want kids, so I figured I could milk the Air Force for 20 years, retire, and become a civilian contractor like most of my colleagues did. Of course, that changed when I met my then-husband, who got commissioned and went on active duty himself around the time of my diagnosis. For months we had been worried about how and if/when we would get stationed together, and the eventual need for one of us to likely separate if we wanted to live together for any reasonable length of time. Now it became the worry of, what in the hell am I going to do for the rest of my life??

Target practice as a cadet training officer

After the diagnosis, I couldn't decide what I wanted--try to convince my agency to let me stay on at headquarters where I wouldn't have to deploy, or gamble that the Air Force medical board would decide on a medical retirement? The decision was ultimately made for me, and five months later I was medically retired from the Air Force on June 1, 2005. I was living in Alexandria, VA at the time, and since my then-husband was living in San Angelo, TX, that was my destination. But then what??

Well, I needed to find a job. I would only be living there for five months before he finished his training and we would be moving somewhere else. Who would employ me for that short a time period, knowing I would be quitting five months later? It appears God was looking out for me yet again; I got hired as the Assistant Director of Human Resources for Tom Green County; making roughly ¼ of the salary I had just left as an active duty captain living in the capital region, but at least I was gainfully employed. I was also just happy that I wouldn't be sitting at home alone all day for months.

Deployed to Paraguay as a Special Agent

It's really strange how your brain tries to create order out of chaos. When I arrived in San Angelo, not only was I out of a job; I was out of the FREAKING MILITARY somewhat unexpectedly with a very promising career ahead of me, sure to retire as a Lieutenant Colonel with an impressive resume. I was also saddled with this whole incurable disease thing, for which I now had to give MYSELF weekly injections with a 1 ¼" needle. In the muscle. Yeah...good times, I tell you. Probably 95% of my household goods went into storage, and I had mostly my clothes and a few personal items and necessities sent to Texas (my ex was living in a one-bedroom loft, and he definitely didn't think I'd become his roommate while he was there). When the movers brought my stuff, they emptied the contents of all the boxes onto the living and dining room floor and all over the kitchen counters. There wasn't an inch of empty space. Total. Chaos.

Getting promoted to captain!

After the movers left, I lost it. Just tears and tears...tears for my ruined career, tears for having an incurable disease, tears for not being able to control my own future, and tears for saddling my new husband with a broken wife only three months after he married her. I HATE crying. I completely despise it, and I'm extraordinarily uncomfortable around other people who are crying because I don't know how to "fix it." I was taught indirectly at a young age that crying is a sign of weakness, and it's completely useless when you're in a profession almost completely dominated by men. So here I am, alone in Texas while my then-husband was in class, surrounded by a few meager belongings and an uncertain future. And sobbing like a three year-old girl who just had her favorite Cabbage Patch doll taken away and run over by a garbage truck.

So I did what any typical OCD-prone person would do--I picked the closest and easiest thing I could put into some kind of order. In this particular moment, it was the spice rack.

If my ex is reading this right now, I know he's having a good belly laugh because he's told this story a million times. He came home from class that afternoon to find his then-wife with a tear-streaked face, surrounded by piles of God-knows-what everywhere, and putting together...a spice rack. But you know what? It made me feel better. Because it was my first real step towards getting my shit together after my world-turned-upside-down medical retirement.

Wearing the uniform as a retiree

I'm crying as I type this, and it's pissing me off because I'm going out in an hour and I don't want to screw up my makeup, dammit! Sigh. But I need to get this out. This was one of the most difficult times of my life, and if you don't give yourself a pass to get emotional when thinking or writing about something like this, then I think you're destined to spontaneously combust at some point. Anyway, I think retirement or separation from the military is a mixed emotional bag for most veterans. Some people can't wait to get out, while some go reluctantly or because they have no choice (like me). Some may have a job waiting for them when they get out, but some may be undergoing a TON of stress not knowing where their first civilian paycheck is going to come from. I was REALLY lucky that my medical insurance would be taken care of for life, but veterans who separate either have to deal with the VA or very unpredictable civilian insurance. Add to that uncertainty a medical condition like MS or a psychological condition like PTSD and all of a sudden you have a gazillion new variables.

So what happens when I have a deer-in-the-headlights moment in life? Like, the completely life-altering ones that involve questions like, How am I going to live/survive for the next 20 years? Well...I find a spice rack. My closest friends (and even some of my more casual acquaintances) know I'm a complete control freak, so it calms me down if I can just find the tiniest thing to help me create some order in the chaos. It could be as simple as making a things-to-do list. Or making an appointment. Or helping my son with a puzzle. Or doing something routine or work-related that reminds me that I can still function. Then after the "spice rack" is done, I move on to the next thing that needs to be put together and put away. Pretty soon I'm Miss America, a Nobel Prize winner, and living in Fiji with a cabana boy. OK, not really (I hear Fiji isn't particularly handicap accessible), but at least I'll maintain my sanity by doing things one baby step at a time.

So... my biggest life lesson on Veterans Day 2015 that I can hand down to you from the experience of my MS diagnosis and subsequent medical retirement? When your life goes to shit and you have no freaking clue what to do next...find your spice rack :).