Hello world!
My name is Eve I’m a wife, a daughter, a full time graduate student, an intern minister, a dog mom, a friend and the future recipient of Molly the service dog. I have a joyful and very full life in spite of having an invisible disability. It wasn’t always that way. In the first months and few years of my disability were a nightmare. In 2008 I had a reconstructive shoulder surgery to help repair the damage sustained by a rare birth defect. In fact my condition is so rare the medical community doesn’t have a name for it, only a long string of medical terms to describe each malformation of my shoulder. For more information about my condition click here.
Before I started training with my prep dog, Zach. I could tell you how a service dog would improve my life. I knew that having the load of school books l carried for me would be a great help. I new having Zach open my doors for me would reduce my pain, and I knew having Zach push, pull and carry stuff for me would increase the quality of my life. I knew that Molly being able to help me dress and undress, grocery shop, pick up dropped objects, carry a pack, carry bags, and numerous other tasks would be life changing. However, living with a service dog is a lot like eating chocolate cake, I can describe it to you but you never fully know the experience of eating chocolate cake until you eat it yourself.
I reached a point as an invisibly disabled person where I accepted that life for me would never be the same. I thought my joy was as disabled as my body. Nothing made me laugh, nothing made my heart sing with passion, and nothing could stop the anger burning inside of me. I was angry at God for making me this way, at my doctor for not being able to fix my upper body completely, I was angry at my body for being in pain from the day I was born, and I was angry at my friends with normal bodies for not understanding what I was going through. My doctor’s and physical therapist told me I had come as far as I could with recovery and that the state of my body was the best it was going to get. But my friends judged my inability to function like I used to. To some I was faking it. To others I wasn’t trying hard enough. To others I was lazy and mentally weak. I was hopeless and therefor I felt helpless.
My first day with Zach
I remember my first day on campus with Zach (my prep dog). I loaded his pack with the stuff I needed for school and headed out. I was so relieved to be rid of the back pack on wheels I would strap around my waste and pull around campus. While it was a better solution because my shoulders can’t bear weight on them, pulling a back pack up hills, stairs, water, ice, and mud for long distance was making my fibromyalgia flare ups worse and more frequent. My first day with Zach and without my back pack on wheels was amazing. I didn’t have to walk completely around a building just to use the access ramps. Zach and I took the most direct route to class. He carried my books and opened my doors. We were two doing the work of one. Before life with Zach I would be so exhausted from dragging a heavy back pack around I would have to go straight home and not function for the rest of the day. However, with Zach it was different. We went to class, and I still had enough energy because I wasn’t hurting to go run errands after school.
I feel like that first day with Zach was the day I started living again. That day the disability of my mind started to break off of me as I began to see a world of possibilities open back up for me. Slowly my joy came back. I was smiling again. I didn’t know how much I missed laughing until it came back to me. Surprising with the return of the joy of living I noticed I was getting just a little stronger and more agile on the right side of my body. My upper body was actually getting better in spite of what the doctors and physical therapist said. Now I am not fully functional, and I will never be. However, I can do more physically as a result of working with Zach and Molly than I ever could have with out them.
Because of Zach and Molly I can do things that most people take for granted. Grocery stores used to be source of huge anxiety for me. There was the hassle of physically dealing with increased pain because of the cold environment in the stores. Then there was the task of getting groceries into the cart, pushing the cart, getting help with the items that were to heavy for me to carry, getting the groceries out of the cart onto the check out platform, getting the groceries back in the cart, and having to ask for help getting everything into my car. Without a service dog it was hard to get help from any store employee with tasks I needed help with. That’s the pit fall of invisible disability. Because I “look normal” I shouldn’t need help with the seemingly easy tasks. However, I have discovered that having a service dog is a positive visual cue to the world that I might need help beyond what I service dog can provide. People are more friendly and eager to help someone with a service dog. Sad but true.
The Unexpected
Zach (my prep dog) is the only reason I was able to make it through my last under undergraduate semester. In my eagerness to graduate I decided taking 17 hours my last semester would be a great idea. Zach carried heavy loads and did everything I needed of him with joy in his heart. I truly realized the miracle of service dogs when I finally figured out a strange behavior Zach had been having for a while. Zach had developed this strange behavior of jumping up from a waiting position, turning in circles, and trying to take my shoes off. After a trouble shooting process with his trainer we finally figured out that Zach was alerting me to pending fibromyalgia and myofacial pain flare ups. His trainer and I figured out that from the time that Zach started his strange behavior I had about 15 minutes to take medicine to avoid the flare ups that would render me non functional. Once we figure that out we were able to work with him on a different behavior to alerting me. With that skill came even greater freedom. The freedom came in finally not being afraid to be “to active” or stay away from home for to long. Because I never knew when my condition could cause me to be nonfunctional, I was always afraid of getting to far away from home or being gone to long because I didn’t want to become non functional. But now, because Zach has figured out when I need to take my medication and is not teaching Molly I don’t have to fear being out in public and not being able to get home when I get to that nonfunctional state. I am certain too, that having less fear means less pain as well.